Iris

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Cast:</span> Kate Winslet, Judi Dench, Hugh Bonneville and Jim Broadbent <span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Director:</span> Richard Eyre <span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Producers:</span> Robert Fox & Scott Rudin <span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Executive Producer:</span> Sydney Pollack <span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Director of Photography:</span> Roger Pratt<br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Story</span> The film is the real life story of Iris Murdoch, and is based on a biography titled ''Elegy for Iris'', by John Bayley.It spans her 40-year relationship with her husband John Bayley, and also courses through her career as a creative artist and teacher at Oxford, ending sadly with her death from Alzheimer''s Disease.<br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Analysis</span> The name Iris Murdoch brings to mind one of the most prolific and better known literary figures from England. So when you see Richard Eyre''s celluloid representation of the same Iris but bogged with Alzheimer''s, unable to string even simple sentences together, you, just like Iris, are lost for words. But Iris, Eyre''s Oscar nominee, not only represents the author in the autumn of her life, but vividly portrays the famous 40-year relationship in Oxford literary circles between Iris Murdoch and the much-older Professor John Bayley. The two distinct periods are adeptly interwoven in a series of flashbacks. Iris''s younger days in the 50s and life in the present trying to cope with the debilitating Alzheimer''s disease which culminates in her untimely death in 1999. Kate Winslet plays the younger Iris and Judi Dench''s role as the older, suffering Iris, is impressive. But Jim Broadbent''s performance (which won him the Oscar) as the older John Bayley is moving. The shuffling, stuttering young John, completely smitten by the strong-minded Iris, transforms himself into one who brings order into a life emptied of words and meanings. For Broadbent the task was doubly difficult, since the character he was playing is still alive. There are moments of pure psychological terror, too. Iris''s awareness that her mental faculties are being eaten away especially when she realises that she can no more write lucidly. Or the time when Iris whose love of water is taken over by an intense fear of the same. At another juncture, she can''t remember who the prime minister is and ripostes that it doesn''t matter-a statement that resounds with a warped and alarming truth Though there are similarities between Iris and the Beautiful Mind - Murdoch and Nash both brilliant minds suffering a debilating disease-Iris throws light not only on the literary genius but the relationship between the two and how love survives despite all odds. </div> </div>