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Newest Reviews: New Movies - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Old Movies - Touki Bouki: The Journey of the Hyena The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry Archives - Recap: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 , 2005, 2006, 2007 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012
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Iris (Richard Eyre) 2001 The credits sequence of Iris
is promising. The film begins underwater as we see novelist Iris Murdoch, both
young (Kate Winslet) and old (Judi Dench) skinny-dipping with, John Bailey, her
husband. The film’s language seems to be in touch with the eventual subject
matter of the picture, which deals with Iris’ descent into Alzheimer’s
disease. Is there a more appropriate way to convey the fluid nature of memory
than though a dissolve? There seems to be a focus in these early moments on
sensual and immediate pleasures, which places the sequence in stark contrast to
the rest of the film, which occupies a more abstract, intellectual, and
unfortunately clunky, plane. Much of Iris
attempts to provide us with a vicarious thrill that we’re either seeing true
bohemians (the young couple) or eccentrics (the old one). It’s almost
pornographic the way that the film wants us to bathe in the free-spiritedness of
the promiscuous young Iris or the clutter of the older couple. There’s a
moment or two where a piece of trash becomes a fetish object for the heroine and
that suggestion feels like a good deal of rubbish. The problem with a lot of
these scenes is that the attempts to make us realize the visceral pleasures of
casual sex or detachment from the world, but then expects us to pity Iris for
liking such things. Her eventual slide into Alzheimer’s feels tragic because
the story is told from her husband’s point of view. One imagines that Iris
would be quite content to be oblivious to worldly concerns and live in the
moment. Judging from the sparse bit of her point of view that the
picture provides, however, one cannot imagine Ms. Murdoch approving of this
picture. She seems to have little regard for conventionality, and this is a
thoroughly conventional piece of work. The film’s rather trite sentimentality
mostly stems from it taking the husband’s point of view, but much of the stuff
that Iris herself says seems to be born out of a petulant antiestablishment
angst instead of some true degree of profundity. Perhaps the performances, which
feel merely adequate despite the cast, are to blame for the material’s
flatness, but I believe there’s little that could be done with this material.
For a script that’s always striving to make sure we understand how great a
mind Iris had, it surely doesn’t paint a flattering picture. All in all Iris
fails to enlighten us into either the tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease or the
woman that it strikes. ** 12 – 21 – 01 Jeremy Heilman
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