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© St. Petersburg Times, published February 14, 2002
A portrait of unwavering love
Iris (R) (95 min.) -- Iris Murdoch was a great thinker, author of 26 books and explorer of countless avenues of philosophy with a command of the English language that was widely renowned. That is, until Alzheimer's disease ravaged her mind. Richard Eyre's delicately mounted biography of Murdoch weaves the two extremes of her life, youthful curiosity and aged dementia, into a heartbreaking testament to unwavering love.
Oscar winner Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love) plays Iris in her later years, from the first slippage of her intelligence to a doddering woman unable to express whatever thoughts circulated in her failing brain. Kate Winslet (Titanic) portrays the academic as a young woman, smart and sexually active, a contradiction to her times, experiencing life that would be channeled into lucid thoughts.
Together, although never in the same scene, the two actors create a fascinating look at intelligence rising, then falling like a stone dropped into a lake. Eyre constantly uses flashbacks to tie these periods nearly 50 years apart into a cohesive portrait. We sense that one performance is based on the other, yet the effect is so seamless that declaring which actor set the character's tone is difficult.
The same goes for Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville, playing professor John Bayley, Murdoch's husband, whose own intelligence compensated for his clumsiness as a lover. Bayley's two books on his life with Murdoch inspired the briskly erudite screenplay by Eyre and Charles Wood.
Iris certainly had her suitors and gave herself to more than a few, but Bayley is the man who never lost his grasp of her heart. Young Bayley (Bonneville) stays devoted despite competitors; old Bayley (Broadbent) remains steadfast in spite of Iris' deterioration. Broadbent and Bonneville share the same shy, stuttering mannerisms plus an extraordinary physical resemblance. Iris is essentially a two-character drama inhabited by four actors working at the top of their games.
Beyond the striking performances, however, Eyre's film has some minor problems. One is Eyre's time-shuffling technique, which sometimes can't make a sound connection between Iris' past and present. Some side characters aren't well-defined, and whatever attention that can be paid to Murdoch's philosophy is weighted toward Winslet. The film's conclusion is obvious after the first 30 minutes; all that's left is watching these superb actors play it out.
But, Iris is a classy production that, despite its lack of tension, can make viewers invest themselves in the lives of these people. Heading to the library is still the best place to learn about Murdoch's gift and the disease that stole it. Eyre's film is interesting enough to point us there. B+
No Man's Land (R) (98 min.) -- The follies of war are brilliantly skewered in a Bosnian trench by first-time director Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land. Tanovic takes a simple setup -- enemies trapped together -- and turns the situation into a Strangelovian satire. It doesn't matter whether Serbs or Croats were justified to fight; Tanovic's view is that things have spun out of control so long that mending barbed-wire fences now is impossible.
The film opens in 1993 when a Serb patrol gets lost in a fog, a clever piece of symbolism. The soldiers are ambushed, but one named Ciki (Branko Djuric) survives and tumbles into a battlefield trench. He watches as two Croats inspect the trench and install a land mine under a fallen comrade, an insidious booby trap that will mutilate anyone lifting the body. Ciki kills one soldier and wounds another named Nino (Rene Bitorajac). A stalemate develops until the rivals realize that the booby-trapped soldier Cera (Filip Sovagovic) isn't dead. But if Cera moves in the slightest way, they all will be.
News of the situation attracts United Nations peacekeepers (snidely referred to as Smurfs because of their powder-blue helmets). Tanovic saves his sharpest barbs for these referees, depicting them as well-intended posers without any genuine impact. Right behind the U.N. on Tanovic's hit list is the electronic media, represented by TV reporter Jane Livingstone (Katlin Cartridge), who knows the drama in that trench could earn big ratings.
No Man's Land never stoops to slapstick, but Tanovic's canny sense of the absurd makes everyone appear to be slipping on political banana peels. It's a film laden with wise metaphors and offhand gestures of incompetence when it's needed least. The movie becomes its own sly punch line. Previous knowledge of Bosnian War dynamics isn't necessary, since the human failings contributing to this mess are universal. The laughs catch in your throat with Tanovic's final image, a stunning symbol of a post-Sept. 11 world bracing for the next senseless explosion.
Shown with English subtitles, although much of the dialogue is spoken in English. A
-- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
The Son's Room (Not rated) (99 minutes) (Italian with English subtitles) -- Veteran Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti stars as a laid-back therapist and devoted husband and father in this prize-winning drama about one family's response to a sudden, devastating tragedy. It's a moving piece of work that's ultimately more optimistic than In the Bedroom, a similarly themed American film.
Moretti's story, rather conventional and overly cheery at first, gains emotional gravity and resonance as it goes along, carefully avoiding melodrama. Anyone who has experienced the untimely loss of a loved one will recognize the overwhelming anguish and confusion expressed by the major characters here. Denial turns into anger, despair and, eventually, in the most fortunate cases, a kind of reluctant acceptance.
The relationships among family members Giovanni (Moretti), his wife Paola (Laura Morante), sports-minded daughter Irene (Jasmine Trinca) and relatively passive son Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice) are at the center of the film.
Moretti also weaves in a series of meetings between Giovanni and his patients. Some provide comic relief, some offer bittersweet commentary on the psychiatrist's own woes. Toward the end, Brian Eno's melancholy ballad By This River becomes a major component. B+
-- PHILIP BOOTH, Times staff writer