USA: FILM ABOUT THE 40 YEAR LOVE AFFAIR BETWEEN IRIS MURDOCH AND JOHN BAYLEY "IRIS" PREMIERES IN NEW YORK

Record ID: 392309

  • Title: USA: FILM ABOUT THE 40 YEAR LOVE AFFAIR BETWEEN IRIS MURDOCH AND JOHN BAYLEY "IRIS" PREMIERES IN NEW YORK
  • Date: 2nd December 2001
  • Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 2, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) ( ** BEWARE FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY **) WIDE OF PARIS THEATRE WITH "IRIS MARQUEE WIDE OF PRESS SV: KATE WINSLET AND JUDI DENCH ARRIVING; WINSLET WEARING BLACK COAT WITH RED DRESS UNDERNEATH; DENCH WEARING BLACK DRESS PHOTOGRAPHERS WINSLET TALKS TO PRESS SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (English) WINSLET SAYING: "
  • Embargoed: 17th December 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES AND UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA25NCTS3J9EIHU7SV7L60Y2AIW
  • Story Text: "Iris", a film starring Judy Dench and Kate Winslet is about the 40 year love affair between writer, Iris Murdoch and John Bayley. It premiered in New York on Sunday with all the stars of the film in attendance.
    A poignant and sad story of love between one of England's most respected authors and her literary critic husband has been adapted for the big screen in a film that premiered in New York city on Sunday (December 1) entitled, "Iris."
    "Iris" is the story of Iris Murdoch and John Bayley. Their more than forty year love affair is portrayed in two separate parts in the movie; the young Iris is played by two time Oscar nominated star, Kate Winslet, best remembered for her starring role in "Titanic" and most recently heralded for her performance in last year's highly acclaimed film, "Quills."
    Winslet said that she was attracted to the part of the young Iris Murdoch not just for the love story, but the chance to portray a great intellect as well, "Well it was just such a wonderful script and it's a great story about you know two people who absolutely adored each other and for years, they were married for over forty years and it's just a wonderful thing and she was a wonderful woman, Iris Murdoch. She was an incredibly astute, intellectual, human being who wrote incredible novels and was highly respected and loved by many and as a young woman she was dynamite and it was too much of a good opportunity to miss."
    The part of the older Iris Murdoch is portrayed by Oscar winner, Judi Dench. Dench was given the task of playing a woman who after years of adoration for her intellect, loses all sense of well being in her bout with Alzheimer's.
    For Dench, the hard part was not playing a woman who suffers from such a tragic disease, instead she was more concerned with playing a woman who she never met, yet so many people today, knew so well, "It's just trying to distill a person who is very recent in people's minds and who so many people knew so well and you know, I didn't know her and trying to be true, really true about a person is hard and is a huge responsibility, you know, you can do anything as 'Elizabeth the First,' because nobody remembers."
    Jim Broadbent plays the older John Bayley charged with taking care of Murdoch, a woman he is so madly in love with in her later years. He spoke of the ease of working with Judi Dench and how the film is a tender tale of an Alzheimer's victim that still has its bright moments, "And if you're working with Judi Dench and she's playing somebody who is dying from Alzheimer's, you don't have to work too hard to find a center of tragedy, but it's funny as well you know it's part of the Alzheimer's thing, it's not all bleak, it's not quite as relentlessly awful as it might be and it can't be because it's a long disease."
    Much of the film is written from John Bayley's own accounts of his life with Iris taken from two works of his ("Elgy for Iris"
    and "Iris and Her Friends").
    Some of the dialogue for the movie is taken directly from the books while some is purely invented. The actors studied real films of the Murdoch and Bayley as well as photographs and memoirs.
    Hugh Bonneville who plays a young John Bayley said that the script brought him almost immediately to tears, "It was just one those scripts that you read once in a blue moon and I was crying on page five but in a good way, I mean it's the most life affirming movie and the characters are so fascinating, it's a very eccentric love story and of course it's about the demise of someone's, you know, fantastic intellect as Alzheimer's takes it grip and it's a reminder to us all of the fragility of what we are on this planet doing."
    The highly respected director of the film, Richard Eyre spoke of the two female leads in the film with greatest of respect,
    "Well I've known Judi Dench for 30 odd years and she just is the best actress in the world so there is no why Judi Dench you just say thank God, Judi Dench and Kate, I think is her successor, she's a very, very fine actress and they both have a great, great deal of humanity and compassion and warmth."
    Iris Murdoch wrote 26 novels in all. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1997 and died in February of 1999. For Winslet, the film is a love story accented by her illness,
    "To me it's very much a love story and the deterioration of her health is I think a symbol to an audience of just how much love there was in her relationship with John Bayley because he supported her and looked after her until the very end and that's just a very moving beautiful thing."
    Some of Murdoch's best known novels include: "The Bell",
    "A Severed Head", "The Nice and The Good" and "The Italian Prince." Many of her stories are best described as psychological detective stories that portray sophisticated sexual relationships. Her last novel, "Jackson's Dilemma" was published in 1996.
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