BEFORE: As I said when I started this crazy month, there were probably a few hundred ways to put this chain together - but when I re-worked it, I needed to come up with something that removed the films that were currently unavailable, and still ended where I needed it to end. So this means that even though I've got a few choices coming out of Valentine's Day, I'm going to follow one particular thread - Kate Winslet carries over from "Romance & Cigarettes" - and I have to ignore the others. So I'll get back to Susan Sarandon and Bobby Cannavale in about two weeks, if I were to follow that link now, I'd either get to the end of the chain too soon, or I wouldn't finish it where it needs to be finished, in order to put together the late March that I want to put together. Makes sense?
THE PLOT: True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease.
AFTER: I'm cutting Kate Winslet off after three films - it's not that I've seen every one of her films, there are a few from her early days that are still left unwatched, but I don't think those films could be called romances, and anyway, they're not currently on my watchlist, so I'm comfortable moving on. So far three films per linking actor seems to be the norm this year, and I'm OK with that, if no actor or actress dominates the genre the way that Bruce Willis kind of took over January. It's all bound to work out, provided I just keep my head down, watch a movie every night and resist the urge to keep changing the order around. The goal is to make it to June and start my documentary section, eyes on the prize, then I can start thinking about how I'm going to make it through the summer and get to horror films without breaking the chain.
I've got four or five days of period pieces, "corseted dramas", so to speak, starting tomorrow, maybe that can pull me out of my funk, because a lot of those tend to happier endings, they were sort of the rom-coms of their day. Wait, I forget, how does "Wuthering Heights" end, again, was that a comedy or a tragedy? No spoilers, I'll find out in a few days - another Oscar Wilde adaptation, too, those can be semi-comic, too, but therefore also semi-depressing, too. This "Iris" film today was another big downer, too, if you ask me. I need comedy right now, not drama with all its harsh realities, people growing old, getting senile and then dying. Not. What. I. Need.
My parents moved into assisted living last November, so all this just reminds me of them, tucked into a tiny apartment in suburban Massachusetts, I mean it's great that they don't have to cook for themselves any more, nor do they have to run around town getting take-out, they just have to walk down to the dining area. And they're content for the moment, they don't have to worry about the upkeep on a big house, but the house is still THERE, just without them in it. We're going to drive up in late March, probably, to stay at the house and visit them for a couple days, since we didn't see them at Christmas, but it's kind of sad to visit them now. My mother knows where she is, but she doesn't remember how she got there. I suppose it's only a matter of time before she starts forgetting people and things from the before-time. I've helped my father change some addresses for them and straighten out some accounts, and there's not much more that I can do for them at this time. I wish she could watch all her favorite movies again and listen to more classical music, I think all that's not really being provided for her right now. It's sad that this kind of waits for us all at the end of life, being placed in a smaller and smaller box under more supervision as the clock winds down.
I've never heard of Iris Murdoch until now, but she's apparently on some list of the top British novelists of all time - and as the film points out, she was also a teacher and philosopher who re-interpreted the works of Aristotle and Plato, wrote about moral psychology and anti-scientism, and championed a moral transition from illusion to reality, whatever that means. Why do I get the feeling that if she were alive today she'd be protesting mask mandates and vaccines? She was also a member of the U.K. Communist Party for several years starting in 1938, which made it difficult for her to visit the U.S. to give lectures. Then once I dig a little deeper into her personal life, I'm starting to wonder why this film is considered a romance, because it turns out she had quite a few affairs with men and women over the years, so maybe there were special circumstances, but this counts as being unfaithful to her husband, doesn't it? OK, maybe she believed in "free love" long before it was cool in the 1960's, but cheating is cheating, isn't it?
Her husband here, by contrast, was a "slow-starter", he was a virgin when he met Iris, and I guess he looked the other way, time and time again, or maybe he didn't, maybe he liked to watch, I have no idea - to each his own, I guess, but I'm still having a hard time justifying somebody preaching about morality while basically making up her own rules regarding morality where her own personal life was concerned. Is history going to regard her as a proponent of free love or just a loose slut? I'm thinking back to those documentaries I watched last year about Pavarotti and Frank Zappa, who during the last years of their lives both wished that they had been more faithful husbands and better fathers - OK, so then why didn't they just DO that? Why does it take getting sick in order to have these regrets? Then the poster for "Iris" has that big tagline "Her greatest talent was for life." You mean, for screwing it up? I don't get it.
Then, once she got Alzheimer's, her husband became her caregiver, like the guy hasn't been put through enough already, watching his wife screw around with any number of college professors, just because she'd deemed them "good people", according to her rules. Right, good people who were also cheating on THEIR spouses, so can somebody explain these rules to me, please? Maybe I'm the naive one, is that possible? I became an adult during the age of AIDS and herpes and any number of other STDs out there, plus I was raised not to stick it all over town - high school and college pretty much taught me how pointless it was to date, so I just did an end run around the whole process and got married, twice. Was that wrong? Again, to each his own, but perhaps John Bayley was just a poor judge of character. It reminds me of what Ferris Bueller said about his friend Cameron - "He's going to marry the first girl he lays, and she's going to treat him like shit." Amen, Ferris.
This film was made at the height of the "toggling" editing trend, where the film bounces back and forth between two timelines, the past one and the present one. Ideally, this should create a greater understanding about the meaning of the events portrayed, in a perfect set-up the slowly-revealed past should cast more meaning on the present, and perhaps even vice versa, but I'm not sure that's really what's at work here. There are a few scenes where it appears that the younger versions of Iris and John are interacting with the older versions, or at least they come very close to it. Since older Iris has Alzheimer's, we're supposed to forgive the fact that she goes swimming in a river and somehow sees the older version of herself skinny-dipping in the same river. Or young John entering their London flat, where he sees older Iris sitting at the table, writing. These things shouldn't be possible, even with distorted memories, unless they're dreams or visions or this is really "Cloud Atlas" after all. But during this "toggling" trend this technique was perhaps viewed as rather innovative and insightful, I just see a distorted mess that's trying to make up for the fact that neither timeline is all that interesting by itself.
I guess this couple never got around to having kids - who has time, what with teaching class, writing books and having so many affairs? Ah, but then there's nobody around to take care of them when they get old, so they have to rely on each other. How's that working out, with Iris walking out the door and wandering into traffic, while John doesn't even notice that she's left? Whoopsie!
I will say that some of the casting is quite genius - though I don't really see any resemblance between Kate Winslet and Judi Dench, plus it's a bit odd that there's no transitional phase, so I guess one day Iris just stopped looking one way and started looking like somebody else? Ah, they skipped a few years in between, is that it? But I really thought for a while that they somehow made Jim Broadbent look younger, and he was playing the same man at two different ages. No, they made Hugh Bonneville look like the younger version of Broadbent, and that was really well done. In another instance, they cast two actors, a father and a son, to play their friend Maurice in the two timelines. I couldn't really get a read on Maurice, though, was he another guy trying to sleep with Iris who was unsuccessful? I guess he heard that she was a player, but he wasn't "good" enough to be one of the chosen? What parameters did she use, anyway?
Look, two people can have a relationship and not be on the same page, romantically speaking, I get that. But the too-obvious metaphor here is the young couple riding bikes together, and he can't keep up with her, he can't "catch" her because she's riding too fast. Talk about hitting the audience over the head with the symbolism, right? Only nobody says that out loud, because that's not the point of riding bicycles together, is it - one person rides away and the other person tries to catch them? Nope, it doesn't work that way. Why can't they just ride two bicycles together, side by side, and just enjoy the journey? Because essentially that's how it was with Iris, she kept riding away and he kept riding after her, but was never able to catch up with her. Maybe there are relationships out there like that, but I've never heard of one lasting 45 years, who the hell would put up with all that? Or, I don't know, maybe buy a tandem bike?
There must have been a better way to tell this story, though - after watching it, I still don't know one little thing about Iris Murdoch's novels, or why they were so good, because she spends almost the whole movie not letting anybody read them. So really, I'm just left with the dementia and the cheating, and that's not really what I'm looking for in a romantic film, sorry.
Also starring Judi Dench (last seen in "Cats"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Filth"), Hugh Bonneville (last seen in "Paddington 2"), Penelope Wilton (last seen in "The BFG"), Timothy West (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), Juliet Aubrey (last seen in "The Constant Gardener"), Samuel West (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Siobhan Hayes, Kris Marshall (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Eleanor Bron (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Saira Todd, Juliet Howland, Stephen Marcus (last seen in "The Greatest Game Ever Played"), Pauline McLynn (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), with archive footage of Tony Blair.
RATING: 4 out of 10 suggestions from the Teletubbies
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