Dramatization of John Bayley's two tributes to his novelist wife, Iris Murdoch: Iris: A Memoir and Elegy for Iris. The back-and-forth between early Iris (Kate Winslet) and Alzheimer's Iris (Judi Dench) keeps the film from ever quite getting going, though there's an undeniable poignancy in the spectacle of a meticulous wordsmith losing her connection to words and meanings. (Regardless of how little an idea we're given of her actual work.) Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville are an excellent match for the two ages of the unworldly, academic, stammering Bayley. Directed by Richard Eyre. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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