+ extended intro by Sir Richard Eyre and Dame Judi Dench (8 December only)
‘Essentially, Iris is about forms of love and the way in which love changes and love endures,’ explains director Richard Eyre, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Wood. ‘Iris is first and foremost a love story and I make no bones about that. It is a story of enduring love, a story about love and old age which covers Iris’s whole life. In a sense it reflects on everyone, because in every relationship you have to accommodate the otherness of the other person and that’s very much what it’s about. It also explores how you can be separate beings in a marriage and yet the sum of the marriage is greater than the parts.’
The author and philosopher Iris Murdoch died on 8 February 1999. Shortly before her death her husband, author and academic John Bayley, wrote Iris: A Memoir (published as Elegy for Iris in the United States). It is a frank, moving and sometimes humorous account of his lite with the woman who was frequently described as ‘the most brilliant woman in England’. The latter part of the book dealt poignantly with the effect of Alzheimer’s on Iris as well as John’s selfless devotion to his wife of 43 years. He subsequently wrote a further book about their life, Iris and Her Friends. Both books were critically acclaimed on their publication and were at the top of the bestseller lists.
‘There’s no doubt in my mind that what John Bayley did in looking after Iris was an act of heroism,’ continues Eyre, ‘Precisely because he was obviously not terribly good at looking after himself. It was an act of love to continue to look after her and I found that tremendously moving. There was a major shift in their relationship – from Iris being the dominant partner, the person that John very much looked up to and deferred to – to her being completely dependent on him. One of the characteristics of the illness is that it peels away what is extraneous to reveal the essence of their relationship. That’s a fascinating journey, and it’s a journey that spans her whole life.’
Richard Eyre’s mother suffered from Alzheimer’s – an experience which he described in his autobiography, Utopia and Other Places. ‘The particular agony of Alzheimer’s is that it robs a person of their being and of their personality,’ explains Eyre. ‘Although in some ways they remain who they are, somehow they are constantly diminished and you just see the person they once were gradually disappear. It’s agonising. One of the things that I’ve tried to show in the film is that even though the person is disappearing in front of you, in some way there is a sense in which they remain. You can still love the person because their soul is still there until the end.’
Judi Dench was attached to star as Iris Murdoch from the very beginning – as far back as spring 1999. At that time, Richard Eyre was directing her in David Hare’s National Theatre production of Amy’s View in London’s West End (an acclaimed production which subsequently transferred to Broadway). ‘I’ve known Judi for 35 years and she’s a very good friend and simply the best,’ he says. ‘She is very, very subtle in the way she takes on a character’s physical attributes. Put on one side her skill as an actress, which is matchless. She has this humanity – her gift is to imagine other people’s lives and to not put herself in the way between the character she’s playing and the audience. So she is an absolutely transparent being who allows the character she is playing to breathe through her. And she has tremendous modesty about her, which is very attractive because you feel invited into the character’s world.
‘Jim Broadbent was an absolutely unanimous choice for the part of John Bayley. Once we’d thought of Jim it was impossible to think of anyone else playing the part. He is so idiosyncratic – there is no actor anywhere who is anything like him. He’s brilliant at observing behaviour and he has entered into the spirit of John Bayley in quite a remarkable way. And he’s managed to play someone who is actually 20 years his senior with an ease that alarms him.’
Eyre describes the casting of the young Iris and young John as essentially a young Judi Dench and a young Jim Broadbent. ‘It was an astonishing piece of good luck that Kate turned out to be free at the time that we were filming and was willing and enthusiastic to play the part,’ he says. ‘Judi in the film does have an extraordinary youth about her. The miracle was that Kate was in some way like a clone and an alter ego of Judi, and they have an identical spirit which harmonises perfectly. Kate’s a very mature and thoughtful woman and her greatest strength is similar to Judi Dench’s – her humanity.
‘There’s a historical Iris Murdoch and there’s an Iris Murdoch as embodied by Kate Winslet. I don’t think there’s a huge difference between them. Iris Murdoch was extraordinarily vigorous. She had a physical energy and an intellectual energy that was really charismatic. She was a star.’
‘What Kate and Judi brought to the film is this incandescent goodness and decency. They are both very warm-hearted people who don’t dissemble and in some ways that is terribly important to the film. Although Kate’s features are unlike Judi’s, there’s a correspondence of spirit between them, they kind of rhyme.’
Eyre sees similarities between Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville, who plays young John. ‘Like Jim, Hugh is a slightly offbeat actor in the sense that he isn’t an absolutely straight-down-the-middle romantic young lead, he’s a character actor,’ says Eyre. ‘Hugh is physically very similar to Jim and he has a remarkable ability to observe people’s behaviour and become a character without being a superficial mimic. In some way, a combination of Jim and the real John Bayley went into his characterisation. He has real wit and like Jim, he’s a very accessible and open person on screen.’
When it came to writing the screenplay Eyre turned to Charles Wood, with whom he had collaborated on the BBC television drama Tumbledown, about the 1982 Falklands War. ‘We started with the premise that it had to be a double narrative,’ explains Eyre. ‘The idea of someone losing their memory and losing the faculty of language was a very potent theme, and that was the spine of the story. The tension throughout the film was always to be driven by the youth of the young couple and the decay of the old couple – the young couple falling in love, and the old couple staying in love – and the two stories converging.’
Deciding on a structure for the film was an early source of difficulty. ‘One of the most difficult things about the writing was how to make a film that didn’t immediately plunge you into the misery of Iris’s illness,’ says Eyre. ‘In the final film, you don’t see the illness for quite a long time. That’s because we use the device of seeing John and Iris as young people, gloriously unaware of their fate. The strategy is to ambush the audience and to surprise the audience when you’re in one reality and you go back to another reality. It’s quite a simple structure. You’re not dealing with more tenses than past and present.’
Production notes
IRIS
Director: Richard Eyre
©: Fox Iris Productions, InterMedia Film Equities
©/Presented by: BBC Films
Presented by: InterMedia Films, Miramax Films
Production Companies: Mirage Enterprises, Robert Fox, Scott Rudin Productions
Executive Producers: Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Guy East, David M. Thompson, Tom Hedley, Harvey Weinstein
Producers: Robert Fox, Scott Rudin
Line Producer: Michael Dreyer
Production Executives for BBC Films: Joanie Blaikie, Jane Hawley
For Intermedia Films: Paul Davis, Nick Drake, Will Evans, Jere Hausfater
Production Manager: Tim Porter
Production Co-ordinator: Mel Claus
Location Manager: Tom Elgood
Location Finder: Adam Richards
Post-production Supervisor: Stephen Barker
Post-production Co-ordinator: Louise Seymour
1st Assistant Director: Martin Harrison
2nd Assistant Director: Finn McGrath
3rd Assistant Director: Chris Stoaling
Script Supervisor: Cathy Doubleday
Casting Director: Celestia Fox
Casting (ADR Voice): Louis Elman
Script Executives for BBC Films: Tracey Scoffield, Jamie Laurenson
Screenplay: Richard Eyre, Charles Wood
Based on ‘Iris: A Memoir’/‘Elegy for Iris’ by: John Bayley
Director of Photography: Roger Pratt
2nd Unit Director of Photography: Nick Schlesinger
Underwater Cameraman: Mark Silk
Camera Operator: Paul Bond
Special Effects Supervisor: Peter Notley
Special Effects: The Mill
Editor: Martin Walsh
Production Designer: Gemma Jackson
Art Director: David Warren
Set Decorator: Trisha Edwards
Scenic Artist: Howard Weaver
Storyboard Artists: Jane Clark, Pippa Marks
Costume Designer: Ruth Myers
Costume Supervisor: Michael Mooney
Hair/Make-up Designer: Lisa Westcott
Make-up/Hair Artist: Lesley Smith
Opticals/Titles: Cineimage
Music Composed and Conducted by: James Horner
Solo Violin: Joshua Bell
Synthesizer Programming: Ian Underwood, Randy Kerber
Concertmistress: Marcia Crayford
Orchestrations: James Horner, Randy Kerber, J.A.C. Redford
Music Supervisor: Julyce Monbleaux
Executive in Charge of Music: Randy Spendlove
Music Preparation: Vic Fraser
Supervising Music Editor: Jim Henrikson
Music Editor: Andy Glen
Music Recorded/Mixed by: Simon Rhodes
Music Recorded/Mixed at: London Air Lyndhurst
Choreography: Jane Gibson
Production Sound Mixer: Jim Greenhorn
Re-recording Mixers: Nic Lemessurier, Anthony Cleal, Mark Sheffield
Supervising Sound Editor: Glenn Freemantle
Sound Editor: Tom Sayers
Dialogue Editor: Gillian Dodders
ADR Mixer: Kevin Tayler
ADR Editor: Gillian Dodders
Foley Artists: Paula Boram, Felicity Cottrell
Foley Mixer: Kevin Tayler
Foley Editor: Matt Grime
Post-production Sound by: Reelsound Limited
Stunt Supervisor: Gary Powell
Stunts: Carly Harrop, Lee Millhan, David Ware
Special thanks to: John Bayley
Animal Handler: A1 Animals
Studio: Pinewood Studios
Cast
Judi Dench (Iris Murdoch)
Jim Broadbent (John Bayley)
Kate Winslet (young Iris Murdoch)
Hugh Bonneville (young John Bayley)
Penelope Wilton (Janet Stone)
Juliet Aubrey (young Janet Stone)
Eleanor Bron (principal)
Angela Morant (hostess)
Siobhan Hayes (checkout girl)
Joan Bakewell (BBC presenter)
Nancy Carroll (BBC PA)
Kris Marshall (Doctor Gudgeon)
Tom Mannion (neurologist)
Derek Hutchinson (postman)
Samuel West (young Maurice)
Saira Todd (Phillida Stone)
Juliet Howland (Emma Stone)
Charlotte Arkwright (young Phillida Stone)
Harriet Arkwright (young Emma Stone)
Matilda Allsopp (little Stone)
Steve Edis (pianist)
Emma Handy (policewoman)
Timothy West (older Maurice)
Stephen Marcus (taxi driver)
Pauline McLynn (Maureen)
Gabrielle Reidy (Tricia)
UK-USA 2001
91 mins
35mm
RICHARD EYRE: WEAPONS OF UNDERSTANDING
Play for Today: Comedians + intro by Sir Jonathan Pryce + Sir Richard Eyre
Sun 1 Dec 18:40
The Ploughman’s Lunch
Fri 6 Dec 18:10; Wed 18 Dec 20:50
Play for Today: Just a Boys’ Game + Screen Two: The Insurance Man
Sat 7 Dec 17:45
Iris + intro by Professor Lucy Bolton, Queen Mary University of London
Thu 12 Dec 18:10
Philosophical Screens: Iris
Thu 12 Dec 20:00 Blue Room
Play for Today: The Imitation Game
Fri 13 Dec 18:10
Notes on a Scandal
Sat 14 Dec 18:10; Sat 28 Dec 14:45
The Dresser
Sun 15 Dec 18:00
Stage Beauty
Thu 19 Dec 20:40; Sun 29 Dec 15:10
The Cherry Orchard
Sat 21 Dec 17:40
Sunday Premiere: Tumbledown
Tue 17 Dec 18:10
Performance: Suddenly Last Summer
Sun 22 Dec 15:10
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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