Released in 1993 and directed by Richard Attenborough, Shadowlands features astonishing performances by Anthony
Hopkins and Debra Winger and is the true story of CS Lewis and H. Joy Davidman Gresham. With reasonable (for Hollywood)
accuracy, and unusual (for Hollywood) sensitivity to Christian issues, “Shadowlands” tells of Lewis and Gresham’s love, happiness and suffering. But it majors on Lewis’ lifelong search for the answer to THE QUESTION:
“Does pain, (and therefore – LIFE), make sense?”
The story is simple enough and one gives nothing away by telling the details. Lewis, the celebrated Oxford don, Christian apologist, children’s author, and emotionally detached bachelor, meets Gresham, American divorcee, poetess, mother, and reader. She comes to England as a fan, seeking out the admired author. He is intrigued by the bright and brash American. They become friends and they have a “technical” marriage before a judge to satisfy some immigration difficulties for her. But she becomes ill with cancer and Lewis, realizing his love for her, marries her again, this time in a religious ceremony. They enjoy a couple of years of happiness and then she dies. Before he has to suffer her loss, Lewis frequently lectures and writes about suffering.
“Why? [do we suffer?] Isn’t God supposed to be good? … I’m not so sure God wants us to be happy. He wants us to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. Suffering is his gift …. Suffering is the something that drives us out of the nursery to help others.”
During Joy’s sickness and during the agonizing months after her death, the academic Lewis, who has studied and analyzed suffering, comes to experience it to the hilt. His Christian faith, always the main engine in his life, is sorely tested. He cries out, he rages, he doubts, he prays and at last he returns to where he started — faith — but now chastened his answers no longer self-assured or glib. His theology was always Biblical and confessional but now it is tested and proved in the hot-box of experience. He says to Joy as she writhes in pain on her death bed, “When it gets close, you find out if you really believe it.”
Remarkably, unlike the way religiously motivated people are usually treated in the movies, this film watches his agony with respect. And, in the end, when he walks through a golden valley, (the main image in the movie for elusive joy), the movie lets us share his peace. Lewis had been right all along. It took the major tragedy of his life for the truth to become more than an academic exercise for him.
“Shadowlands” is a rare and precious thing: a well- made major motion picture that deals honestly with people whose driving force in life is faith.
Here’s a prezi – as always a work in progress – that looks at some of the issues raised by the film:
Shadowlands on Prezi
Thanks for this post. I love using Shadowlands with senior Religion classes. Great class discussions.
Shadow lands was a deep movie with a lot of hidden meanings, the story was realistic so made it more interesting to watch. It shows the real power of love and how it can affect someone’s life
I really ejoyed the movie “shadowlands” because i think it was very good and they speak in a very clever way that make much more interesting
I really enjoyed ShadowLands. I thought the love story between Joy and Jack was lovely even though not conventional and not typical,still had a fairy tale aspect to. Seeing Jacks walls break down during the film was endearing. There was some really good quotes in the film that really made you think.
I really like the film! Very good.
This is a good film. It is a good example of a C.S. Louis’s life empowered by religion, used as a sign of hope in the middle of a life full of pain. Also how the choice to be adventurous and to make yourself vulnerable by falling in love. “the happiness now is part of the pain then”. Also the way C.S. Louis, the sheltered life of a person who surrounds himself with sheep, only realises he is in love when he’s about to lose her “Pain is god’s megaphone to rouse the deaf world”
I thought the adult life of CS Lewis was both a very educational film and a very slow movie at the same time. I thought the actor playing CS Lewis was a very professional actor. At times i lost interest but at some times it was upsetting , for example when Joy got cancer the whole plot of the story revolved around her, overall i thought it was a good movie , alot to talk about after the movie.
I really enjoyed the movie “shadow lands” its shows us of how Jacks life had no thrills or expectations as he wanted to exclude himself emotionally from people he knew as he did not want to get hurt. He thought that nothing would change his ways that is until Joy comes into his life. Through out their time together he starts to experiance emotions for Joy which was againest his way of life. He begins to fall in love . And in doing so he says that he has never felt so happy then he has with Joy even if were only a short period of time. The story of jack illustrates that we only live once , we are going to get hurt, it’s a part of living, but if we don’t try to search for someone to love then thats is an aspect of life that won’t be experiencedand, our life wont be lived to its full potential.
Shadowlands is the story of CS Lewis, an aging lecturer in Oxford about the 1950’s. He is known in the story simply as Jack. Jack excludes himself from other people around him because he is afraid of getting hurt. He has professional relations with his students and fellow lecturers, but is not close to anyone except his brother Warny. He is afraid that if he gets to emotionally attached to someone he will get hurt. Then an American woman enters his life by the name of Joy. This woman changes his life, because he lets himself fall in love with her. Joy and Jack build a friendship and get married so Joy can live in England. However after their marriage Jack does fall in love with her, and is happy… until Joy is diagnosed with cancer. Jacks worst fears have come true, he fell in love with a woman who will soon pass away. Jack however realises that the happiness he felt while with Joy was worth the pain he felt when she passed away. Shadowlands shows us that you can’t go through life without feeling pain at some point. You have to take the good with the bad, afterall ‘Pain is Gods megaphone to wake a deaf world’.
I really enjoyed the movie shadowlands. My favourite part of the movie was when C.S Lewis was in the hospital with Joy, this was my favourite part of the movie because this is where we see Jack show his feeling for Joy. This is ironic because as the famous quote says you only now you love something when it’s gone.
This was my first time watching the movie shadowlands and I haven’t enjoyed a movie so much in a very long time. Thank you miss Ryan.
Although I didn’t get to see the end of this movie I enjoyed it. I thought Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of C.S.Lewis was very good and it gave a good insight to the later years of Lewis’ life.
In my opinion Shadowlands was a great film. Although it didn’t go into a great amount of detail when it came to his teenage years (when he was an atheist) which I would have found quite interesting as I wasn’t entirely sure how and why he drastically changed his view on religion.
The film focussed on Clive’s (A.K.A. Jack’s) later life, his introduction to love and his dreaded encounter to loss. He was known to not get close to others as he was a keen believer in “Why love, if losing hurts so much?”. However everything changed when he was introduced to Joy Gresham, a divorced American poet who’s personality contrasted somewhat to Jack’s. She met with Jack as a fan, but soon fought her way into Jack’s heart.
Jack was left devastated when Joy died.
I really enjoyed the film, thought it had very interesting points about faith and how to live, a perfect example of why you should be yourself and not hide your personality away from people.
My opinion of shadowlands is good. I found it very interesting how Jack had not loved anyone before he met joy and then you feel bad for him because after he does find love joy starts to die. I think jack learns a lot about life from joy.
In my opinion , the “shadowland” was quite a slow moving , yet deep and interesting movie.
I really enjoyed it , although i would have like to have seen jack as a boy or even as a young man as it would have shed alot more light on some of his statements throughout the film.
It also shows that no matter how dark ,dull or pesimistic a man is , he can still find his one true love and also that life is nothing but pain but to enjoy the fun times , you must be able to persevere through the painful times.
it also shows that a man can still learn what he didn’t learn as a boy , this is shown when jack excepts joy’s death very maturely in comparison to the time when his mother passed.
I also like how a single woman can change a man’s views towards life and it’s meaning. she did this in such a way that jack was no longer afraid to lose a fight and came out of his comfort zone for the first time.
it also shows that you may not know you love someone until the threat of losing them forever..
Love,
Matthew Moore
I think that “Shadowlands” was a good movie, even though it was quite slow moving. I liked the charachters of C.S Lewis and Joy. They were very simaler to eachother besides the fact that Joy was more open and confident than Lewis. The development of C.S Lewis’ charachter was also very interesting and seeing the way that Joy changed him so quickly. At first he was a very enclosed person that wouldn’t let anyone close to him to by the end of the film he was very open with his emotions and became attached to people. When he does open up at the end you could tell that he has always wanted to and that now he feels like he has almost wasted a huge portion of his life being enclosed and pessimistic. When we saw towards the end of the movie that C.S Lewis was crying with Joys son in the attic we could see the full change of his personality in affect because he would have not been this comfortable showing emotions at the start of the movie, we know this because he took his mothers death much worse. Joys charachter was much deeper than C.S lewis’ because we never fully understood her, there was something new about her discovered almost every scene. We saw her as a strong woman who could deal with conflict pretty well, but then we found out that she ran away from her marriage which made her seem more human and easier to connect with.
The only thing i wish they added to his movie is one i know most agree with, i wish they showed his younger life also so we could have a good contrast between his younger self and his charachter at the end.
In my opinion, Shadowlands was a very good film. It followed the path of C.S Lewis’ life, from being an Atheist in his youth, to being a devout Christian.
One of the things that I thought that was portrayed well was the emotion that Jack (C.S Lewis) went through during his life. Also shown well in this film, is how Jack transforms from being a dominant person who did not like to get close to people, to being someone who is able to show his emotions and find love. My favourite quote is “Why love, if losing hurts so much?” I chose this quote because it bears witness to the fact that, although Jack knows that loving somebody hurts, he is still willing to suffer this pain for Joy.
I thought that this film was very good and I would recommend it highly to all of my peers and family.
the movie is great and the acting superb – recommend it highly – my only thought and this movie leaves a lot of room for thought – at 80 i find that its the choices you make that haunt you negatively not the things you did not do – this if you love too deeply and lose it not by death – i would rather have not loved at all as the pain never leaves and religion or cliches do not change the hurt one bit