Sailing Into Darkness (With Lots of Theme Music)
It is always a shame when a director doesn't trust an audience to know how to feel. Richard Eyre should be tried and condemned for this offense. The descent of a superior mind into the fog of Alzheimer's is painful, heart wrenching material. Dame Judi Dench turns in a subtle, touching performance as writer Iris Murdoch, who realizes she is losing an unwinnable fight before her husband and her doctors confront the truth. Kate Winslet as a younger Murdoch positively glows. But "Iris" is overloaded with heavy theme music and manipulative editing. Richard Eyre ruins a potentially powerful film with sentimentality.

The film recounts the forty year relationship between Irish Murdoch and John Baily from the romance of their early days at Oxford in the 1950s to her untimely death in 1999. The resemblance between the young couple and the old is uncanny. The early scenes at Oxford ring light and true; perhaps it is impossible to go wrong with Kate Winslet in a red dress or skinny dipping in a pond. The heart of the film, unfortunately, is centered around the older couple. Actor Jim Broadbent was faced with the difficult challenge of portraying the still living John Baily. Perhaps the stuttering, doddering mannerisms are true to the real man's character, but as a signifigant half of an enduring love story, he seems an undesirable long term partner. It is hard to believe that their marriage was based on mutual affection and admiration instead of twisted co-dependence.