Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 2001

The Contenders:

Renee Zellweger: Bridget Jones’s Diary
Sissy Spacek: In the Bedroom
Judi Dench: Iris
Halle Berry: Monster’s Ball (winner)
Nicole Kidman: Moulin Rouge!

It's Better to Burn Out than to Fade Away

Film: Iris
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.

A film like Iris is one where I understand all of the nominations, wonder why there weren’t more nominations, and even understand the importance of the film. What I don’t understand is why someone would see a film like this in the theater. Iris is an astonishingly intimate film; I can’t imagine that it would be better seeing these characters blown up to gigantic proportions on the screen. Admittedly, when I pay for a movie, I want to see explosions and special effects, so I may be biased. There is a part of me that thinks a film like Iris only improves the smaller the screen gets.

This is the story of Iris Murdoch (played in the present by Judi Dench and in flashback by Kate Winslet). Iris is a renowned novelist, speaker, and philosopher who, as the film begins in the present, is succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. Yes, this is going to be that kind of movie. We spend time equally in Iris’s increasingly murky and muddy present and her vibrant and exotic past. In both places, much of the story revolves around her romance with John Bayley (Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville) and the contrast between those two different times in Iris’s life.