The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: Shadowlands (1993) Run Time: 2H 11M

Greetings gentle readers, welcome back to the Sunday Morning Movie. I want to start by thanking everyone who has been commenting, I really appreciate your input and references. Today’s movie is a bittersweet one: Shadowlands. It’s based on the life and love of C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors from my childhood. It’s a tear-jerker but it’s beautiful and kind as well.

Reviews:

Roger Ebert says:

“Shadowlands,” directed by Richard Attenborough, based on the stage play by William Nicholson, is intelligent, moving and beautifully acted. It understands that not everyone falls into love through the avenue of physical desire; that for some, the lust may be for another’s mind, for inner beauty. Anthony Hopkins, who last year in “Remains of the Day” gave a brilliant performance as a closed-off English butler who was afraid to love, here provides a companion performance, of a buttoned-down English intellectual who surprises himself by finding the courage to love.

Debra Winger, not afraid to look less than her best in early scenes (although her beauty glows later on in the film), is no less extraordinary: She projects a quiet empathy in creating Joy Gresham, a woman who has fallen in love with Lewis through his writings. Her character goes through a series of delicate adjustments as she meets him and realizes he is not as contented as he thinks. She believes that making one another happier is one of their purposes on earth.

Into the Wardrobe says:

Let it be said at the outset that the movie is thoroughly enjoyable. I cheered with most others when Joy came “bounding” (almost literally) into Lewis’s life, interrupting his confirmed bachelorhood, and violating the decorum of stiff-upper-lip British masculine society with her exuberant, feminine quest for knowledge, and her brash American sense of humor. And I found myself teary-eyed and sniffling through the last third of the movie as Jack’s valiant wife first rallies against, then succumbs to bone cancer. Further, the movie well depicts the vagaries and eccentricities of academic life in Britain and I found several classroom scenes exceptionally good in the way they depicted Lewis as formidable teacher/interrogator. All in all, both Anthony Hopkins as Jack and Debra Winger as Joy are wonderfully evocative of the spirit if not the presence of this unusual and unlikely coupling; I can’t imagine two more capable actors more authentically capturing the sparks and energy, the emotion and keen intellectuality of the relationship between these two gifted children of God. What I can imagine is a script that would more carefully respect the biographical facts of Joy and Jack’s life together – which are certainly as dramatic if not more so than those fictionalized ones that primarily comprise the movie. My frequent quip to those who have asked me about the movie has been, “I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just wish it had been about C. S. Lewis.”

The NYT says:

“Shadowlands” is the most soothing film of the Christmas season, even though it happens to be about tragic loss. That’s because it has been directed, in ripely sentimental fashion, by Richard Attenborough, an uncommonly reliable film maker on subjects both large and small. Most of Mr. Attenborough’s subjects (“Gandhi,” “Chaplin,” “Young Winston”) are more grandiose than this one, yet all of his films can be counted on for the same homey predictability. When a painting of an English valley is revealed in “Shadowlands” to be a relic left over from a lonely boyhood, rest easy: of course the real valley will be visited before the film is over.

A long, beautiful movie that will tug at your heartstrings. I was first attracted to Shadowlands because it was about C.S. Lewis, although as some have pointed out it was perhaps more in the spirit of his life rather than an exact accounting. It’s a movie about the strength of love but also the price of love, the pain that it can exact.

Director: Richard Attenborough

Notable Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Edward Hardwicke

Spoiler alert!

Set in Oxford University in the 1950s, the story begins by examining the placid life of C.S. Lewis who is a lecturer and a confirmed bachelor. The highlight of his day is a quiet evening at the home which he shares with his brother Warnie (Hardwicke). Things are about to change, however. At a speaking event, he is approached by an American women Joy Gresham and her son, both of whom are avid fans of his writing. The three quickly become friends.

Gresham is an outspoken and intelligent woman and is a breath of fresh air compared to the staid and masculine world of an Oxford academic in those years. She is married to an alcoholic man in the States who is abusive. When she leaves him, Lewis and Gresham decide to enter into a Platonic marriage in order to allow her to stay in England.

As they say, opposites attract. The friendship between the adults begins to blossom into a romantic connection. Lewis and his brother enjoy having her and her son in their lives. For a while, life is joyful.

Then Gresham is diagnosed with a serious case of cancer. The pain of this fact is counterbalanced by the wonderful relationship between her and Lewis. They get married for real this time and strive to live their best lives together despite the shadow of her disease.

The cancer advances steadily. It becomes clear to the couple that their time together is limited but they resolve to enjoy every second they have left. When the fateful day comes, Lewis and the young Gresham boy find that they must turn to one another in their grief.