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Barry Ronge's Cinema Pick of the Week
An inspiring look at a novelist whose gift for words was stolen from her by Alzheimer's
I almost wish I did not have to review Iris because it is so delicately constructed, and so perfectly acted, that no attempt to explain the richness and power of the film could possibly do it justice.
The plot is starkly simple. Iris Murdoch, celebrated author of 27 novels, lived a quiet, unpretentious life with her husband, a professor of literature. They were an oddly matched couple but extremely happy until Iris was afflicted with repeated memory loss. She had become the victim of Alzheimer's disease, and the film charts her decline into silence and a form of dementia, while her adoring but helpless husband does what little he can to protect her from the consequences of this implacable illness.
To reinforce the cruel irony of the disease, Richard Eyre, a noted theatre director, inter-cuts the story of the last years of Iris's life with images from her youth, when she was at her most vital and creative.
She was a free-spirited Bohemian artist, but not in the narrow stereotypical way of the beat generation. She was a bold, unconventional thinker who explored her world with a frank curiosity. Sex, philosophy, relationships and ideas were all part of the same fascinating web of experience, and she relished all of it.
Her husband was more timid but he found courage in her strength, and they were the perfect team. She was the high-flyer; he was the unfailingly loyal and secure home base.
In these early scenes the roles of Iris and John Bayley are played by Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville. They express the unique richness of this marriage, which is invaded by a disease that seems almost to have been maliciously designed to destroy their parti-cular happiness.
At one point the young Iris says: "If you didn't have words how could you think?" And words are the very thing that Alzheimer's takes from her. She can't arti-culate any more and her own writing becomes an impenetrable scrawl before her eyes. The very foundation of her spirit and being is stolen from her.
For John that is the greatest pain. His passion for Iris was based on his belief that he could protect her from anything, but not from a thief that steals the very thing that defined her as a person. To his horror, he feels his frustration turn into hatred and guilty resentment. The object of his deepest devotion becomes a person he dreads.
Iris's battle against blankness and John's struggle to retain the essence of his selfless love despite his own angry guilt, create a harrowing but deeply inspiring movie. The performances of Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent are flawless. There is no other word for them, and the graceful, intellectually acute story structure keeps sentimentality at bay to the extent that this becomes a film about the joy of living rather than a grim warning about the inevitability of death.
I haven't seen a better film in years, indeed, not since Anthony Hopkins dealt with similar issues in the unforgettable Shadowlands. Whether she wins the Oscar or not, Dench is the best actress of this year. She gives the greatest performance of her life in a film of exceptional quality.
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