UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Douglas Skinner Well, as of my submission there will be 136 reviews of this movie. Which just goes to show that in our time of semi-education, where millions have gone to college to little effect except to have the concept of celebrity imposed on supposed intellectuals; it is preferable to the masses to watch a movie about Iris Murdoch rather than read or--what is more likely--dabble in her while sipping lattes at the Barnes and Noble. That is to say, I understand why this depressing and incoherent movie has gotten so much attention! But I couldn't finish it! (And I like Judi Dench.) John Bayley was portrayed as a male bimbo--a scholarly and compliant cuckold, so silly in his puppy dog willingness to accept her infidelities, that one wonders how he could have become a don. (Were they all so weak and ineffectual at that time?) What Iron-maiden Murdoch saw in him is beyond me; yet, on second thought, he is probably the sort of, what we would call, metro-sexual figure that might fit in quite well with her self-consciously styled alpha-female personality. Somewhat pedestrian for the learned and profound Iris, if you ask me.In that vein I think that all of Iris' years were years of decline. She just had to be sexually promiscuous and something of an exhibitionist. Ditto the communism. And the Sartre too! And her assaults on bourgeois traditions and morality. All the trendy intellectual thumb twiddling of the post-war era. In any period, I just do not like people of her genre. if she had been born 25 years earlier she would have been a Vita Sackville-West or, worse, a Virginia Woolf. The traction these writers have retained is almost wholly due to modern feminism. Ditto Murdoch. That the reader may gauge my reference point, I find Dorothy Sayers to be incomparably better as well as more friendly and reassuring. Sayers learned from her mistakes and was comfortable with her sex. Murdoch was a woman who was not happy with her lot--being a woman, that is.So to endure to the end a movie whose end was an ending from the very beginning and to focus on the dregs of the end of the end as does this movie; the bitter, slobbering attempts of a miserable creature--unaware of herself in so many ways and unable to retain enough memory to put together the lessons she should have learned--to hold together her human identity; all the while clawing and resisting the booby of a man who shared her bed for over 40 year--well, I could see the finale.

kenjha This screen biography of Iris Murdoch flashes back and forth between her twilight years as she battles Alzheimer's disease and her life as an aspiring writer in the 1950s. The casting is uncanny - it's totally believable that Winslet and Bonneville would age into Dench and Broadbent, respectively. The acting is also quite good, particularly Broadbent as the supportive but long-suffering husband of the woman who enjoyed a sexually adventurous life, a role that won him an Oscar. The problem is that there isn't much to the script other than mundane scenes of life then and now. Without a compelling plot to tie it all together, the film fails to sustain interest despite its short length.

Malcolm Parker Jim Broadbent won a well deserved Oscar for his work in this film, leaving Kate Winslet and Dame Judi Dench as also-rans for once. Iris Murdoch was a fantastic writer, but the film is not about her, it's about her husband's loss of her to Alzheimer's. The flaw is that it keeps on focusing on her without showing us who she is. Because her talent was in her books and her mind, we are told what he's lost, we only get a sort of superficial Iris. We see literally, from the young John Bayley's perspective where their relationship sprung from, but learn little about why her work meant anything or even if it did really mean anything to him. We know she was was fantastic with words, but they're not in the script because while Winslet and Dench do a great job, the script is John's story. The fact that John Bayley was married to one of the greatest writers of the 20th century should not have distracted the directors attention from the fact that this story was never about her.

Turfseer The Director and Screenwriter of Iris, Richard Eyre, states during the special features DVD Commentary that one cannot understand the enormity of the loss to Alzheimer's of the protagonist, novelist Iris Murdoch, without appreciating what was lost. So he divides the story of Iris into the present day narrative of her deterioration due to Alzheimer's and flashbacks to the courtship and eventual marriage of the younger Iris (played by Kate Winslet) to Professor John Bayley back in the 1950s. The young Bayley is played by Hugh Bonneville who bears a striking resemblance to Jim Broadbent, who plays the elderly Bayley opposite Judi Dench as the now afflicted elderly Iris.Because Eyre approaches Murdoch as a virtual seminal figure in the history of world literature, the flashback scenes add up to nothing much more than a hagiography. While the contrast between the two personalities, the mercurial, flirtatious Iris and bookish academician Baley should lead to some gripping tension, in the end there is scant conflict between the two. Yes, Iris's voluminous affairs are alluded to and there is one scene where she and Bayley have a protracted argument regarding those affairs, in the end however, there is little we learn that is interesting about the earlier relationship. While Eyre has the benefit of Bayley's recent recollections concerning the extent and scope of Iris's deterioration, the flashbacks are obviously based on distant memories of the relationship. In short, I don't believe that Eyre has made his case that there was a great 'loss' based on his portrait of the early Iris. As a young woman she flirted and had affairs with other men; eventually she matured and was a nurturing presence in not-so-confident John Bayley's life. Eyre's flashbacks are photographed quite nicely and the setting evokes the bygone era of the 50s. But I still want to know what is so special about Iris Murdoch. I might find that out reading her books, but it certainly is not conveyed here in this film.Eyre is on much more solid in ground the retelling of Murdoch's decline in more recent times. Judi Dench is excellent (as usual) as a woman who gradually deteriorates due to the ravages of Alzheimer's. The decline is subtle at the beginning as we see Dench struggle with language. Later, in a memorable scene, she is unable to recall the name of the then current British Prime Minister, Tony Blair (but remembers it later). When her novel arrives in the mail, she shows no awareness that she's the author and is more perturbed by the presence of the mailman ("it's only the postman"). More harrowing scenes follow: as she deteriorates further, she wanders out of the house, only to be found hours later by a former friend who attended their wedding (and who Bayley fails to recognize!); upon being told of the death of a close friend, Iris freaks out, grabs the wheel of the car Bayley is driving which results in an accident—she's thrown from the car but ends up lying in the woods on the side of the road, virtually uninjured.Jim Broadbent received the best supporting Oscar for his performance in Iris and it's well deserved. At first Bayley is in denial about Iris's condition. He continues to treat her as if she's normal. In a classic study of the stages of grief, Bayley (a suppressed character to begin with) finally lets out his frustration and anger as Iris's condition takes a turn for the worse. Eventually there's acceptance, despite Iris's complete loss of memory. At the end, Bayley is forced to put Iris in a home but is right there with her as she passes on.Iris is a graceful and beautifully photographed film. While the examination of Iris and John Baley's early relationship is superficial, the chronicle of Iris's sad decline is a textbook study of what happens to people when they end up afflicted with Alzheimer's. What's more, Broadbent and Dench, convey the intimate bond between the two characters despite the overwhelmingly trying circumstances.