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'Elegy for Iris' Movie Poster Edition
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Reeling in the years | January 8, 2002 | ||||
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BY SHEILA JOHNSTON Who can you get to play the younger self of an older star? Our critic bridges the generation gap During the eight weeks that Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville appeared together in a 1996 production of Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus, they were more preoccupied by the cramped conditions in their shared dressing room than by any similarities between them. They were both, therefore, mildly astonished when they were asked to play the same character in Iris, a film of John Bayley’s memoir of his novelist-wife, Iris Murdoch, by director Richard Eyre.
Bonneville was to be Bayley as the bumbling undergraduate who falls for a vibrant young Iris (Kate Winslet) at Oxford in the 1950s; Broadbent would take over as the elderly Bayley, watching helplessly as Murdoch, now played by Judi Dench, slips into the darkness of Alzheimer’s disease towards the end of her life. “I’d never seen the slightest resemblance between us,” Bonneville says. “But I’d come to know a bit about how Jim ticked and pinched a few of his mannerisms. I did my bad Jim Broadbent impression for Richard and he gave me the job.” Broadbent was equally mystified. “It hadn’t occurred to either of us that we were similar. But I’m told Hugh does a very good impersonation of me.” Broadbent would have to age by two decades to play the older Bayley. But he never considered tackling the character as a student: “In my experience, it’s much easier to age up than down.” This may come as a surprise to some viewers — such as those American critics who praised his skill in capturing the younger man when Iris opened in America last month. One wonders how many members of the Los Angeles Critics’ Association and the National Board of Review, both of which recently voted him Best Supporting Actor, were also fooled. Broadbent himself admits, “my own memory tricked me when I was watching the film. I saw scenes with Hugh and thought for a fraction of a moment, ‘I don’t remember doing that’.” This seamless transition between the two stages of Bayley’s life was the result, presumably, of a long and close collaboration, with each actor carefully monitoring and matching the other. “We did vast amounts of research totalling 15 minutes just before my audition,” Bonneville confesses. “Jim’s scenes were being filmed first and he basically said, ‘You are on your own, mate. I’m playing the blueprint, and you can catch up if you can’.” There was virtually no contact after that, and indeed Bonneville got to see little of Broadbent’s footage while shooting his own. “You have to trust in the casting and hope that by editing and directing the two will knit together.” Broadbent wonders if this was deliberate: “It’s quite possible that Richard decided it would be detrimental to start dwelling on each other’s performances instead of getting under the skin of our own.” In Iris the illusion is assisted by two factors. The performers, both of whom nobly shaved their heads for the role, are in heavy make-up. And few viewers have a strong image of what Bayley looks like (the actors themselves chose not to meet him before filming, modelling themselves instead on a radio interview). Iris opens on January 18, 2002. | |||||
Source: The Times. | |||||
