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Epicurus.com - Shadowlands (1993)
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List Price: $9.94
Our Price: $12.90
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
Starring: Julian Fellowes, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Michael Denison, Andrew Seear, Tim McMullan
Directed By: Richard Attenborough
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303115450
Format: Closed-captioned
ISBN: 6303115454
Label: Hbo Home Video
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Release Date: 1995-01-31
Running Time: 133
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1994-01-14
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Editorial Reviews:
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This emotionally moving romantic drama was adapted by William Nicholson from his own acclaimed play, based upon the real-life romance (during the 1950s) between the British writer C.S. Lewis and a divorced American poet named Joy Gresham. Best known for writing The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) is living comfortably as a respected Oxford don, his academic lifestyle a kind of shell protecting him from the emotional risk of love. Joy Gresham (Debra Winger) arrives at Oxford as an avid admirer of Lewis's writing, and the safety of his collegiate routine is quickly disrupted when Lewis realizes that he's fallen deeply and unexpectedly in love. Their courtship is uniquely engaging; he's shy and uncertain, she's outspoken and bold. But when Joy is diagnosed with cancer, Lewis's Christian faith is put to the test--he cannot fathom why their happiness together would be so drastically challenged. Together, they find a way to accept and honor the time they have shared together, and under the sensitive direction of Richard Attenborough, Shadowlands arrives at a conclusion that is both heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. Hopkins and Winger are equally superb in this absorbing story of personal and spiritual transformation--a story previously filmed for British television in 1985, with Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom. --Jeff Shannon
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful and Infuriating
Comment: This movie is beautiful and has lovely acting and gorgeous sets and even terrific writing.
The directing, as usual with Attenborough, is first-rate.
But Lewis is an infuriating person.
That's partly the movie's subject: Lewis is SO repressed, SO insulated, SO narcissistic, that it takes a very aggressive woman and a tragedy to (partly) penetrate his shell.
He wrote a book called "Surprised by Joy." This is a reference to Wordsworth; but it seems perfectly apt--and horrifying.
You get the sense from this movie that Lewis was so cut off from the emotions that anything--even pain--was better than the numbness in which he spent most of his life.
It's sad, and it's pointless.
Oddly--or perhaps not oddly at all--Lewis erects Pain into his First Principle of Theology: for Lewis, God does not want us to be happy, He wants us to Suffer, because by Suffering we learn to love.
It is pitiful that Lewis had to suffer to learn love.
Hard to know why Joy would love him.
You don't know whether to laugh or scream at him.
Great movie about a pitiable person.
Customer Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece...
Comment: I can say unequivocally that this is my favorite movie of it's type. It is not a documentary nor is it intended to be. It is a drama loosely based (Douglas Grisham's words) on a small window of CS Lewis' life. Although CS Lewis was indeed a committed Christian, the film chose not focus on that very important aspect of his life. It is, rather, a story of two extraordinarily different people falling in love and the price that is almost always paid when hearts are completely opened. Whether you are a Christian or not, this movie will entertain and move you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not a Documentary but a Commentary
Comment: This movie fails to be the documentary based on "true story" but a commentary by the director and actors which fails to provide the essential Lewis story.
What is left out primarily is his faith life, which was vital to him, and he wrote about till the end. It is analogous to making film about Tiger Woods with golf as not being featured as central theme. It was not shaken nor destroyed as this movie makes out. The BBC film which proceeded this, thus is far more accurate than this. Hopkins' interpreation of Lewis as isolated in tower and afraid to take on debate is also inaccurate. His relationship with Joy is also inaccurate in many ways.
Three stars for with all this Hollywood inaccuracy, many are motivated to seek out real Lewis is his writings and thus discover this fine, intelligent Christian.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great movie...
Comment: Pass the popcorn around as you watch this movie. It is a sweet movie about finding love late in life and learning to live again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Anyone's Life Might Change
Comment: As I've written before, American audiences might disagree but I think Anthony Hopkins is far more effective in these sorts of productions than he is in the Hannibal series.
Shadowlands is a demanding story that says much in some very small ways that can easily be missed. Telling the (very) true to life tale of C.S. Lewis' marriage, late in his years, to an admiring American poet, Joy Gresham, who visited Lewis and his brother at Oxford, where Lewis, along with Tolkien and some others whose names we remember today, were comfortably ensconced as collegiate dons. While at first the cerebral and emotionally distant (and timid) Lewis is slightly repelled by the extroverted, Jewish Grisham, played here by Debra Winger, Lewis eventually awakens to the realization that a part of his nature theretofore unknown to him has come alive, and the bond he feels for this unexpectedly arrived woman is real and of great meaning to him.
While in the beginning Lewis maintains he has married Grisham strictly as a courtesy that allows her to remain in Britain, the amorously inexperienced theologian and fiction writer acknowledges his love, and for a time is the happiest he has ever been. But then a tragedy clouds Lewis' new identity as husband, and also stepfather to a worshipful teenaged boy, as Grisham's dormant cancer returns with fatal results. Lewis stays by his wife to the end, and claims that the lesson he learns from this chapter in his existence is that the sadness that ultimately visits him and all others who love another is part of the joy inherent in love itself, a separate hemisphere, a reaction to an action, the darkness inextricably wedded to love's light. Lewis survives Grisham and goes on to pen more books of a spiritual and ecumenical nature, but as all who have read him or who knew him note, he was a much changed person once Grisham had passed away.
Shadowlands somehow handles a dreary subject without losing itself to morosity or melodrama. It is both a movie with a message, and also a visit to the personal life of an intensely private man few who read the Narnia series truly know. It is evenly-paced, intellectually-demanding, and openly spiritual as well as biographical. What it lacks in broad appeal it makes up for in being deeply rewarding to those willing to respect (if not embrace) the lessons Lewis believed he absorbed during the time he was given to know Joy Grisham. Those who didn't find this playing at their local multiplex years ago will be pleased with the quality of this DVD release. I recommend it be viewed without distractions, because its message wilts quite easily.
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