Z/Web

This is a surprising film on several levels. The story’s about famous British writer Iris Murdoch, who was a brilliant novelist and intellectual, as she succumbs to Alzheimer’s disease. I expected this to be arty, pretentious, and tedious. Instead the movie’s entertaining, moves quickly, and is only 90 minutes long. The film switches back and forth between the young Iris, brilliant and daring and non-conventional, and the old Iris, bewildered by life as her brain erodes. The film’s not sad, for as we see one Iris die, we see the other living life to the fullest. There is some drama and emotion, of course, but it’s not overdone like a “disease of the week” TV movie. However, the one flaw I found is that the film’s surprisingly light on profundity. For instance, while we see glimpses of the young Iris’ brilliance, I never understood much about her politics or writing: she’s still a mystery to me. There are a few scenes where she lectures but they are too brief and don’t really explain her philosophies. In the end, the film’s too light and brief: there’s not much here that isn’t predictable (the woman inevitably dies), and because we don’t really learn much about the author, we don’t really learn much from the film. It’s a good but not great film. The performances by all are excellent, but I wanted more depth, more revealing. The movie ended without me knowing much more about Iris than I did before the movie started. I now know she existed and died of Alzheimer’s, but that’s about it.