Iris

Director Richard Eyre (who co-wrote the script with Charles Wood) examines the youth and late-life decline into Alzheimer’s of British writer Iris Murdoch, with Kate Winslet playing the young Murdoch, vivacious darling of British intellectual circles, and Judi Dench playing the revered Dame Iris, ebbing into dementia; Murdoch’s devoted husband John Bayley is played by Hugh Bonneville (young) and Jim Broadbent (old). Eyre’s chief achievement is the excellent acting of these four and the seamless match between the young couple and the old one—they really do seem the same people at different stages of life. Otherwise, the film is cursory and shallow; Eyre brushes the edges of Murdoch’s life like a man skimming stones over water, embalming her without explaining what made her so eminent in the first place.