Arianna Moses
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Erica Derrick
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Karen Jensen
The movie was a little long range, with many flashback in to Iris past. It was nice to have see how her life was when she was younger, where she writing and was a person who lived a very free life, without depending on any one. In the movie, are there were many collections from before she was ill, which she was known, had very different for large vocabulary, but also that she loved to write. After she became ill with Alzheimer's she knew not how she was going to write. One of the flashback, are shown many times in the film is when they ate out and cycling, where John, Iris husband, yells after her that she needs to slow down because he cant keep up with her. I think that the flashback describes much of the films idea about how that relationship is. Because he constantly, is after her, and falls just into her lifestyle. If one thinks of when she is healthy, he does what she says and does to adapt into her everyday life, even when she gets sick. It is also him who suits her, and his everyday life is going to fit into how she did it. The movie describes well have it is to have the Alzheimer disease.
mine_jan
Iris is a movie that is about romance and illness Alzheimer, the movie takes place over a longer period, where we follow the character Iris Murdoch which was a great British novelist and her husband John Bayley which is her last love. The movie has many good qualities, but one of the most important is that the movie is based on a true story, which gives a different experience to see the film. You find it easier to empathize with the movie, which also makes the film more interested, since it is actually something that can happen to anyone. The movie takes place two different places, one place is real life, and the second place is back in time, where we are in the woman's thoughts. It can be a weakness for the movie, as the movie constantly jumps back and forth between the years, and it can quickly become confused. I think it has been a good movie, which shows an older woman's love life and career. The movie structure is confusing because it constantly jumps in time. I will evaluate the movie 4 out of 5 star.
Douglas Skinner
Well, as of my submission there will be 136 reviews of this movie. Which just goes to show that in our time of semi-education, where millions have gone to college to little effect except to have the concept of celebrity imposed on supposed intellectuals; it is preferable to the masses to watch a movie about Iris Murdoch rather than read or--what is more likely--dabble in her while sipping lattes at the Barnes and Noble. That is to say, I understand why this depressing and incoherent movie has gotten so much attention! But I couldn't finish it! (And I like Judi Dench.) John Bayley was portrayed as a male bimbo--a scholarly and compliant cuckold, so silly in his puppy dog willingness to accept her infidelities, that one wonders how he could have become a don. (Were they all so weak and ineffectual at that time?) What Iron-maiden Murdoch saw in him is beyond me; yet, on second thought, he is probably the sort of, what we would call, metro-sexual figure that might fit in quite well with her self-consciously styled alpha-female personality. Somewhat pedestrian for the learned and profound Iris, if you ask me.In that vein I think that all of Iris' years were years of decline. She just had to be sexually promiscuous and something of an exhibitionist. Ditto the communism. And the Sartre too! And her assaults on bourgeois traditions and morality. All the trendy intellectual thumb twiddling of the post-war era. In any period, I just do not like people of her genre. if she had been born 25 years earlier she would have been a Vita Sackville-West or, worse, a Virginia Woolf. The traction these writers have retained is almost wholly due to modern feminism. Ditto Murdoch. That the reader may gauge my reference point, I find Dorothy Sayers to be incomparably better as well as more friendly and reassuring. Sayers learned from her mistakes and was comfortable with her sex. Murdoch was a woman who was not happy with her lot--being a woman, that is.So to endure to the end a movie whose end was an ending from the very beginning and to focus on the dregs of the end of the end as does this movie; the bitter, slobbering attempts of a miserable creature--unaware of herself in so many ways and unable to retain enough memory to put together the lessons she should have learned--to hold together her human identity; all the while clawing and resisting the booby of a man who shared her bed for over 40 year--well, I could see the finale.
Dale Haufrect
"Iris" is a beautiful film from 2001. It is currently available on NetFlix Instant Download Streaming. The director is Richard Eyre. The writers are John Bayley and Richard Eyre. Actors include Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville, Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent. This film succeeds where the overrated "A Beautiful Mind" fell short. It puts its subject's life into perspective and gives a sense of her worldview and, needs, and desires--as opposed to just focusing on the illness. I think it is also more effective in its use of different actors to portray the main characters at different ages, rather than using distracting age makeup, like in ABM. I came away from this with a profound admiration for Iris Murdock, whereas I felt like I hardly got to know John Nash at all. But enough with the comparisons. This film stands well on its own as a tribute to the companionship shared by Iris and her husband John Bayley throughout their long, complex, relationship. Broadbent deserved that Academy Award, although I would say he plays more of a lead character than supporting. Seeing Iris through Bayley's loving eyes is what makes the film an enriching experience. He is the one who must adapt to her unconventional lifestyle, and their journey together is a rewarding one. I gave the film 8 stars. Dale Haufrect
