(rated R, 90 Mins.)
Based on John Bayley’s memoir “Elegy for Iris” about his marriage to novelist, philosopher, playwright and poet Iris Murdoch, the film covers their early years while teaching at Oxford together through her subsequent struggle with Alzheimer’s disease 40 years later. The story inter-cuts young Iris (Kate Winslet) with elder Iris (Judi Dench) and her young husband Bayley (Hugh Bonneville). But it’s older Bayley portrayed by Jim Broadbent, whose passion for bonding with his soulmate yet hating her for slipping away years later, that steals the movie and a recent Golden Globe. While one of the slowest pictures ever viewed, if I’m to see a movie about somebody famous that I don’t know, I want to know why I want to see this movie. This one never seems to answer that question, yet its sweet approach to coming to terms with the aging process is convincing. Like “Beautiful Mind”, brilliance can be tainted by life’s curveball illnesses.