Performance Profile: Kate Winslet in Iris (2001)

Finishing up the year, comes one of the many nominated performances given by a special actress who has made a real name for herself as being one of the top performers of her generation. Ranging from sadly little love (Titanic) to widely admired praise (The Reader, Spotless Mind), there remains another that has gotten stuck in between that spectrum; the critically acclaimed work of....

....Kate Winslet in Iris (2001)

Kate Winslet plays Iris Murdoch, the younger version of Judi Dench's Iris who is suffering from Alzheimer's in the late stages of her life.

Based on true events, Winslet's Iris is a young British writer/philosopher who's starting out a strong career and having her works being admired by many for there unique, diverse quality that have a powerful, captivating hook, a special quality that the woman herself emanates towards others.

Iris mingles with all sorts of important, dignified people and its how she stumbles into the life of John Bayley, an awkward, bumbling young writer himself who becomes strangely fixated and attracted to Iris, for in her, he sees someone who he could for once possibly relate to. Iris' unusual personality welcomes knew ideas about the world through John, as both seem to have the same thoughts but just on different tracks.

She enjoys her life for the youth she embraces and takes advantage of; her sharp wit and intelligence anchor her wildest desires and feelings when they cease to remain in order of conduct for a woman who is no longer a child.

Though as far as her intelligence takes her, Iris still remains uneasy about herself and her thoughts as she seems to simply go with whatever comes her way. Within herself, she's almost lost and she doesn't have the compass to find her way clear of what right. She keeps secrets, has a whole bed-hopping past, and lives her life at a peculiar distance from those to which she does not relate.

The film's narrative constantly jumps back and forth between the past and present, and its this dominant facor that seriously brings down Winslet's performance.

It's more to fault Winslet, for she never seems to be fully "with" the character and her motivations. Watching the film jump back and forth, I couldn't help but notice the shocking distance between Winslet's Iris and Dench's Iris. Winslet's rarely understanding the complex and vibrant early years of Iris Murdoch and to be able to make that connection between how she has grown and changed. It's as if I was watching two different people with the same name at different times, and it's due to Winslet's inability to meld and comprehend a consistent path for this unique individual.

Instead of displaying Iris as a engaging, multi-faceted woman, Winslet plays her as really just a one-note, low-key free spirit that stunts any complex development. Where's the mystery, the vibrancy, the imagination, the spark, the captivation that young Iris should all have in spades? It's seems buried under Winslet's dull characterization and her lack of clarity that distances and disappoints.

Considering this could have been a true sparkler, especially in the hands of such a pro, it's sad to tell that Winslet's emotionally and intellectually vacuous performance lobs every which way without much thought or reason.