Shadowlands
(1993)
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Set in England in 1952, Shadowlands is the tender and deeply moving true story of the love affair between CS Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) and Joy Gresham (Debra Winger). CS Lewis, a highly acclaimed writer (The Narnia Chronicles) lived a quiet and ordered life as a professor of English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. This solitude is shattered by the arrival of the outgoing American divorcee, Joy Gresham, who walks into his life with her young son Douglas (Joseph Mazzello). A deep friendship begins which turns into love when Joy is admitted to hospital with advanced bone cancer. Faced with the possibility of her death, Lewis allows himself for the first time in his life to be open to the joy of love even if it entails vulnerability and the pain of loss... |
Radio Times
After the sweeping, noble scale of Gandhi and Cry Freedom, Richard Attenborough directed this more intimate drama, set far from the world stage, which remains one of his best pictures to date. Based on William Nicholson's play, it charts the tragic love affair between the author CS Lewis, creator of the Narnia Chronicles, and Joy Gresham, an American poet. Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger give performances that you dream about but rarely see — in a word, perfection. The tone is set by Winger's entrance into Oxford's Randolph Hotel: “Anyone here named Loowis?” she rasps — upsetting the decorum of academe and rattling Hopkins's tea cup — and thereafter, Hopkins's life as an emotionally frigid bachelor is transformed. With its immaculate 1950s setting, the film creates a totally convincing world and Attenborough gets beneath the skin of his characters like never before. You'll be gripped, you'll laugh and, be warned — you'll cry.