Iris

Iris is just about the saddest film ever--I cried through at least half of the movie. The film juxtaposes the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch's youth and young love (when she's played by Kate Winslet) with her husband's care for her when she's battling Alzheimer's at the end of her life (when she's played by Judi Dench).

Iris Murdoch is portrayed as a willful, feisty woman who John Bayley, the man she later marries, adores so much that he sticks with her throughout her fairly free love. She keeps him on his toes both in her youth and in her old age, when she sometimes forgetfully wanders off.

It is incredibly sad to see a woman who loves words and ideas and loving as much as Iris Murdoch does lose her memory and her ability to speak and remember and recognize people. It is painful to see John Bayley's pain at the way that Iris changes, but beautiful to see the way that he continues to care for her. John sees the persistence of her personality in the midst of the erosion of her memory.

I thought that the portrayal of Alzheimer's was pretty good, although at times it was a little too overt, harping on each stage of the progression of the disease, rather than subtly letting it unfold. Of course, the film had to squeeze a lot of changes into a relatively short time.


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