Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.
—Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
Iris is a film I feel quite protective of: due to a friend of mine, there are but two degrees of separation between me and the late Iris Murdoch, and I have been privy to several personal anecdotes involving her. In addition, I am an admirer of her writing. Under the Net was the first Murdoch novel I read, and the scene where the protagonist, Jake, attempts to steal a dog, only to find that he must do so while it remains locked in an extremely large cage, is is easily the most novel comic scene I've ever read.
While Iris deals with the heavy topic of Alzheimer's disease, much of Murdoch's signature comedic touch is evident in the film, though she herself did not script it (the script is based on two memoirs written by John Bayley, Murdoch's widower). For instance, the early scene where the older Murdoch and Bayley (played by Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent, respectively) are doing their grocery shopping reveals volumes about how at ease they are with one another--their banter surrounding the purchase of reusable cloth bags is absolutely charming. (I'm not being facetious--I've been a supermarket cashier, and I'm telling you, little conversations like that revealed a lot about my customers' personal lives.)
The film takes a non-linear approach, cutting between the younger and older Iris and John using an interesting device: the older Iris is haunted by images of her younger self (Winslet). It works well, and we are forced to examine the shifting dynamic in the couple's marriage. As students at Oxford, young John (Hugh Bonneville) is literally tongue-tied by Iris's intelligence and candour. Intercut with these scenes we see how Alzheimer's has forced her to be almost entirely dependent on her husband, eventually driving him to a heart-breaking outburst, which comes not out of anger, but out of devastation at their shared loss. When Iris goes temporarily missing, only to be found wandering the supermarket aisles, one cannot help but imagine that she was seeking to reclaim some semblance of the life she had the last time we saw her at this same location.
My only qualm with this film is that we only briefly see Murdoch at her best: when she is writing. As Roger Ebert pointed out, this activity is something not easily depicted on film. Director Richard Eyre has chosen to telegraph the vitality Murdoch infused in her writing in other ways: skinny-dipping (an activity, I'm told by my friend, Murdoch was fond of), singing, and cycling. While I don't know if film-goers who are unacquainted with Murdoch's work would appreciate this film at the same level as her admirers, I would hope it would inspire them, at the very least, to pick up one of her novels and take a glimpse into a brilliant mind.
-reviewed by the ladybug, Mar. 7, 2002
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