'Iris' bounces back and forth between early, late life of famed couple
In "Iris," we watch a rare, resplendent and sometimes spiky flower blossom with palpable intensity.
During the course of the movie, we watch that same flower wither with heartbreaking inevitability.
But we never see much of it in full, glorious bloom.
Such a gap might prove fatal to some movies.
In "Iris," however, it's more frustrating than ruinous, thanks to the three Oscar-nominated performances that power its tale of intellectual passion and abiding love.
"Iris' " title character, Iris Murdoch, ranks as one of the 20th century's greatest novelists, a distinguished Oxford philosopher, playwright and teacher frequently described as "the most brilliant woman in England."
Yet even if you don't know Iris Murdoch from Rupert Murdoch, "Iris" will haunt you with its portrait of an idiosyncratic but devoted marriage ravaged by Alzheimer's disease.
Exploring the evolution of Murdoch's 43-year marriage to professor and critic John Bayley, which ended with Murdoch's 1999 death, "Iris" contrasts the pair's first days with their final years together.
Introducing the long-married Murdoch (Judi Dench) and Bayley (Jim Broadbent) as guests of honor at an 1990s Oxford fund-raiser, Bayley watches his brilliant wife expound on the importance of education and intellectual freedom.
He then recalls their first meeting in the '50s -- at another Oxford dinner, where the young literary lioness (played by Kate Winslet) dazzles all assembled, including the shy, stuttering young John (Hugh Bonneville).
Six years John's senior, Iris seems to be everything he's not: impudent, independent, intellectually rigorous, sexually restless.
Despite their outward differences, however, they forge an unshakable bond.
As Bayley describes it: "It's like living in a fairy story. I'm the young man in love with a beautiful maiden who disappears to an unknown and mysterious world every now and again ... but who always comes back."
Four decades later, Murdoch's still coming back.
Settled into comfortable domestic eccentricity, husband and wife patrol the supermarket aisles together, chat over pints at the local pub, swim in their secret spot on the Thames and putter around their notoriously cluttered Oxford cottage, Bayley typing away in one room, Murdoch wrestling with words at her own paper-strewn desk.
Yet as she nears the end of another novel, the words don't flow so easily. Nor do the thoughts, which once surged freely, confidently, but now seem hesitant and uncertain. "I feel as if I'm sailing into darkness," she says.
And as Alzheimer's gradually stakes its claim on Murdoch's exceptional mind, the balance of power in the marriage shifts.
The unassertive Bayley's never been much good at taking care of himself. But now, he must take over for, and take care of, the partner who's always dominated their relationship.
By intertwining the young and old Murdoch and Bayley, contrasting young desire and aged anguish, "Iris" creates a tender, sometimes achingly poignant mood.
Compressing Bayley's memoir "Elegy for Iris," writer-director Richard Eyre and screenwriting collaborator Charles Wood (whose credits range from "An Awfully Big Adventure" to the swinging '60s romps "The Knack" and the Beatles' second movie, "Help!") can't hope to capture the scope of Murdoch and Bayley's life together.
Instead, flashing back and forth from the '50s to the '90s, "Iris" deepens the connections between its characters through Eyre's use of evocative imagery.
The central image: the river itself. Flowing from past to present and on toward a murky future, it's where both Murdoch and Bayley can reflect on her vibrant, irrepressible younger self -- and their long journey together.
Long one of Britain's leading stage directors, Eyre demonstrates an admirable ability to allow pictures, not words, to carry "Iris" from time to time.
Not surprisingly, however, the movie's greatest strengths come through the performances, which create an uncanny bond between couples young and old.
Winslet, an Oscar-nominee for supporting actress, looks the least like her character -- she's more conventionally pretty than Murdoch -- but persuasively captures Murdoch's fierce, fearless passion, in clear contrast to Bonneville's bumbling sweetness.
Both actors also display the uncanny ability to match their performances to those of Dench and Broadbent, who prove as powerful together as Murdoch and Bayley themselves must have been. (Like "two halves of an apple," as Dench describes the couple.)
Dench, an Oscar-nominee for actress who resembles Murdoch in her later years, doesn't get much chance to show the celebrated writer at the height of her formidable intellectual powers. But she charts Murdoch's decline with spare, sure urgency, conveying the pain of her impending loss -- and its even crueler aftermath, when she no longer remembers what's been lost.
Ah, but her husband does.
And Broadbent, a supporting actor Oscar-nominee caps a brilliant year (with standout performances in "Moulin Rouge" and "Bridget Jones' Diary"), delivering a quietly heartrending portrayal that blends rage, rueful resignation and loving devotion in equal, equally potent measure.
"Iris" may not provide a comprehensive account of the Murdoch-Bayley marriage.
But in its brief running time, it tells us everything we need to know.
Thanks to Stephanie Flaherty for sending this article, which appeared in the Las Vegas Review Journal (Neon) on March 1, 2002.