Enigmatic, witty novelist Iris Murdoch lived a life of the mind until her death from Alzheimer's
disease in 1999. She also lived a life of bisexuality, carrying on numerous affairs with women
both before and, allegedly, during her involvement of more than 40 years with husband John
Bayley.
Iris, the new Miramax film chronicling the couple's early years and her later deterioration, downplays Murdoch's lesbian side--yet offers a big plus in the person of Dame Judi Dench, a favorite actress of both gay men and lesbians who actually plays lesbian in Miramax's other big holiday release, The Shipping News.
So what degayed Iris? At a New York soiree in honor of the film, The Advocate caught up with director-cowriter Richard Eyre, costar Jim Broadbent, and Dame Judi herself to ask.
"It was never a question of `Should we get into that? Let's not,' because it's not that sort of film," insists Eyre, who notes that Murdoch's bisexuality was even mentioned in the film's press notes. "I wasn't avoiding it. It's there. It's not disguised. I just didn't want to go into it any further. I wanted it to be ambiguous, to be unresolved in the audience's mind as it is in her mind."
What we do get is enough for Bayley--and the audience--to get the drift, Eyre contends. "It was sort of like a tributary that seemed kind of unimportant, the gender of her other lovers," he argues. "Just the fact there had been quite a few [lovers] upset Bayley, so whatever gender simply didn't matter. If the film was a half hour longer, I would have expanded it in a number of different directions, but to some extent the length of the film is determined by the money we had to make it, and it was a very small-budget film."
Broadbent points out that, judging from the memoir Elegy for Iris, on which the film is based, Bayley was in some denial about Iris's bisexual adventures. "He just never really admitted or acknowledged that being a problem for him," notes Broadbent [see interview, page 53]. "He's also said, `I have no great respect for the truth--I don't mind lying.'"
Dench agrees, quoting a radio interview with Bayley (on BBC's In the Psychiatrist's Chair, in which guests are interviewed by an actual psychiatrist). "Bayley understood that Iris was gay and promiscuous," Dench says. "He didn't actually say `bisexual,' but he said `promiscuous.' And Bayley said, `But not after we got married, no, no.'
"But I doubt that," Dench continues. "It did go on. She was a very private person with a very private life, and he never did understand her. Nobody understood her completely."
The cast and crew of Iris did at least understand Murdoch's plight: Both Eyre's and
Broadbent's mothers died of Alzheimer's. "I suppose that was the main thing that drew me to
the script," Broadbent admits. "I knew the world, I knew the condition and situation, and I
realized how honest and perceptive the script was. It wasn't sentimental or skirting around
the edges and making something better than it was."
Dench, on the other hand, calls herself "a huge fan" of Murdoch's since the '60s, when she saw a production of the play Murdoch adapted from one of her own novels, A Severed Head. "Friends of mine were in it," says Dench. "And I read a lot of her books. So I knew about her, but I must be the only person who never knew her. I must have been in a party or something when she was there, but I wasn't aware of it."
The two creative women share connections that include devoted marriages that spanned decades. (Dench's husband of almost 30 years, actor Michael Williams, died of lung cancer six months before filming.) "Iris Murdoch was a Communist but very interested in Quakerism, and I'm a Quaker," Dench notes. "But she was a brilliantly clever woman, and I am not a brilliantly clever woman. You just find the things that are level ground to you."
Would that include any parallels with Murdoch's bisexual nature? "No," says Dench. "Not at all; I'm so sorry to spoil it." In fact, she seems quite startled to hear of her exalted status with her gay fans. "An icon?" she exclaims. "No, no, no, certainly not!"
Told she's not just a lesbian icon but a sexy lesbian icon at that, Dench bursts into warm laughter. "Oh, I like the sexy bit!" she says. "Thanks for passing it on! I'm very interested! But don't make too much of that. I'm 67--I can't be that innocent!"
This article which in the Advocate Magazine in the February 5, 2002 edition. The two photographs of Iris Murdoch appeared in the March, 2002 edition of Interview Magazine.