ABSTRACT
The film Iris (2001) was directed by Richard Eyre and is based on the memoirs of Iris Murdoch’s husband, John Bayley, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch (1999) and Elegy for Iris (1999). It is a film about the endurance of the love between Murdoch and Bayley over forty years, from their meeting as young academics at Oxford University to their old age together, as she becomes more confused, forgetful, and unwell due to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The film is called Iris and so is ostensibly about Iris Murdoch, and it stars Dame Judi Dench as the older Iris and Kate Winslet as the younger. The iconographical attributes of Iris Murdoch’s star persona, consisting of intelligence, wildness, and Britishness, are essentially borrowed by Dench and Winslet. This intertextuality succeeds because the actors themselves stand for differing combinations of these attributes. In turn, as the two most well-known English actresses of the day personify Iris, they imbue her image with their sexuality, humor, vulnerability, and contemporary relevance. The film’s legacy, however, is that the name of Iris Murdoch has become inextricably linked with Alzheimer’s disease, and the image of the older, unwell, and no longer capable Murdoch is the prevalent persona that emerges from the film.
