Cast: Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Bonneville

Director: Richard Eyre

Screenplay: Charles Wood, Richard Eyre

Genre: Drama/Biopic

Running time: 1 hr 30 mins



CRITIQUE:


For biography pictures, the more compelling the tale, the more likely it could become Oscar bait. IRIS is without exception. Pummelled ever more forcefully to the podium by the film’s four superb performances, it seemed like an unwritten prophecy that in making biopics, seize big names and talents, and you’ll get quite the catch. Dame Judi Dench playing the mentally-distressed novelist Dame Iris Murdoch in her later years is terrific, drawing a psychologically complex character suffering the bouts of memory lapses. Kate Winslet is the younger Iris Murdoch in her Oxford years, sizzled with vitality, sexuality and philosophical instincts. Jim Broadbent should also deserve a generous applause as Iris’s husband John Bayley, and so does his younger counterpart, Hugh Bonneville.


But that’s what makes this film an elevation from your mediocre biopics, because of the brilliant performances. Shun them out of the picture and what you get is a tale of an Alzheimer’s patient, particularly a novelist, whose main waking life is all about words – and when memory is taken away from her, along with her words, there’s nothing left but an empty space, and madness. It goes backwards and forwards against time that sometimes it’s jarring to watch for its inconsistent editing. Richard Eyre proved some efforts in his direction, but it feels more like a TV-drama than a fully-pledged cinematic rendition of this troubled British novelist-philosopher.


VERDICT:

Works largely as an affecting Alzheimer’s tale touched with first-class performances, but a truly riveting drama, inferior it is.


RATING: B