Starring: Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Bonneville
Director: Richard Eyre
Rated: M15+
DAME Iris Murdoch was an agnostic. Through terrible experiences of her local vicar as a child she came to believe in “God without religion”.
She was also one of Britain’s most powerful thinkers and writers in the 20th century. Her books could be, in part, what the Pope calls, ‘implicit proclamations of the Gospel’. She may not have held a confessional faith, but she almost always wrote about love, truth, beauty and justice.
Her other big topic was freedom. She wasn’t self-control’s greatest admirer.
In Iris, the brilliant and free spirited Iris (Kate Winslet) arrives at Oxford and soon takes her college by storm. The shy and eccentric Professor John Bayley (Hugh Bonneville) falls hopelessly in love with her mind and passion for life.
He puts up with a lot. Iris experiments with just about everything before marrying him. Then in her late middle age, Dame Iris (Judi Dench) gets Alzheimer’s disease and Prof Bayley (Jim Broadbent) must care for her.
Iris charts the heartbreak of losing someone we love while they are still alive. It is a warm and emotional film steeped in humanity. The acting by all four leads is stellar, but Jim Broadbent as the older Bayley is magnificent. His denial, desperation and anger are completely convincing.
As beautifully observed as Iris is, the constant cutting between the early and later stages of Iris and John’s lives blunts the emotional edge of the story on the screen.
Couples preparing for marriage might see Iris and begin to understand what can come from saying, “For better or worse … in sickness and in health … I will love you and honour you all the days of my life”.
