Oscar Browning once said: "I never read books before reviewing them; it prejudices one so." This is the only interesting thing Browning ever said, although I confess I have never read anything else he has written and until recently had never heard of him.
Some weeks ago, inspired by Browning, I wrote an unfavourable review of Iris, but I decided, nevertheless, to go and see the film last Saturday. It has, after all, won awards and is tipped for more. It concerns ... well, if you don't know what it is about by now, then you are possibly suffering from the horrible disease that finally did for Iris Murdoch.
From beneath a terrifying haircut Kate Winslet plays the young Iris with unconvincing brio. It should be irrelevant but, for me, her portrayal of a ferociously talented woman was undermined by the memory of her simpering around the Titanic, and the knowledge that she had read no Murdoch novels (one fewer than me). She was not helped by dialogue that was meant to indicate Murdoch's brilliance, but was significantly less sharp and witty than a run-of-the-mill edition of Frasier.
Judi Dench as the older Iris is equally poorly served. In one lame scene, intended to demonstrate to the audience that she and husband John are philosophers, they discuss mustard in a supermarket: "Ah yes, mustard. Is it wholegrain we get?" "What is whole?" "You and I, we're a whole. If we split up, there'd be a hole in the whole." At this point I was going to shout: "Come on, you old duffers! I want to get to the vinegar and you're clogging up the aisle with your philosophical banter." But then I remembered again the pointlessness of heckling in the cinema.
Dench has a good go at the part, but Alzheimer's is a disease from whose bourn no traveller returns, so she is trying to convey a mental process that we cannot know. Meanwhile, you get little sense of John Bayley other than as a useless but amiable eccentric. I couldn't see why the young Iris would fancy the young John. Perhaps aware of this weakness, the writers have given old John a line about love delivered as they stow their groceries in the supermarket car park. "Oh yes, I can read it but I can't speak it."
Since writing the above I have seen the film again and I think it is outstanding. Congratulations all round.
Thanks to Mike Kennedy for sending this update which appeared in The Guardian (UK) on February 28, 2002