ROMAN A CLEF: SHADOWLANDS, WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT
We're told nowadays that we live in an age of celebrity, where not only do you not have to have necessarily done anything to become famous, but we also are more interested in the "rich and famous" then in the real problems facing our world today. The problem with that argument is we've been interested in celebrities since Hollywood first started up (we may not have had the mass communication to hear about it then, but radio was no shrinking violet, and nor were fan magazines). Hollywood has also been interested in telling tales of famous people and their lives outside of what made them famous. The difference is, of course, that early on, because of the Code, and a whole host of reasons, Hollywood's tales about famous people were normally well-meaning biopics about people who had done good. Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE may not have been the first to change that, but its skewed take on Hearst led to movies that may not have been so flattering. The problem with these films is while the lives may have been interesting, that doesn't always make for an interesting film. Richard Attenborough's SHADOWLANDS, about C.S. Lewis, is an old-style biopic, while Brian Gibson's WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT, about Ike and Tina Turner, is the newer type, but both suffer from this problem.
Lewis, a writer and professor (at Oxford) is most famous, of course, for his beloved children's books "The Chronicles of Narnia," as well as science fiction novels and writings on Christianity ("The Screwtape Letters"). Attenborough and writer William Nicholson, adapting his play, have chosen, however, to tell the story of his relationship with poet Joy Gresham, which ended with her death. This doesn't feel crammed in like Attenborough's previous biopic, CHAPLIN, but it has its own problems.
We first meet Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) at Oxford in 1952, where he's settled in a comfortable life, living with his brother Warnie (Edward Hardwicke), teaching his classes, giving lectures, suffering the amused barbs of his colleagues over the success of his children's books, and sparring or lecturing (with Lewis, it's the same thing) about intellectual subjects, most notably grief. "Pain is God's megaphone to the world," Jack (as he's known to his friends; he's never liked his first name, Clive) often says. That gets put to the test by Joy Gresham (Debra Winger), a New York poet. Initially, she just communicates with Lewis through letters, and then comes to visit him with her son Douglas (Joseph Mazzello). He's bemused but charmed by her brashness and directness (when she comments on his intellectual argumentative style, she asks if he's ever lost). It turns out that she's leaving an abusive husband, and after a couple of trips to England, she and Douglas stay for good, and Jack offers to put them up. They also get married in name only so that she can stay. Problem is, she gets terminal cancer. Problem with that is, Lewis has fallen in love with her, and been touched by her as nothing else has touched him before.
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