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Shadowlands: Will the Real C.S. Lewis Please Stand

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Shadowlands: Will the Real C.S. Lewis Please Stand A review by David Kettle F Ollowing the television pro- have known before, Lewis has noth- real point? Could it really be just an gramme and the stage play ing to say about grief and pain. Now, attempt to pre-empt others from about C.S. Lewis's relationship unlike before, he is truly in touch with charging him with self-deception- with Joy Gresham, we now have his experience-and he can find noth- another part of a stratagem to main- Richard Attenborough's film. It is a ing to say except 'It's a mess!' The tain his illusion of being in control. moving account, superbly acted. Be- closing scene of the film fails to take In pursuing this we might con- neath the sentiment runs a bold story us beyond this, and, given his plot, sider Lewis's words specifically line of, in the words of a critic, 'the surely Attenborough shouldn't have about grief. Take for example the pas- breakdown (for Lewis) of repression tried. sage in The Lion, the Witch and the and inhibition, and then the terror of This film is one of many portray- Wardrobe when Susan and Lucy losing the person who has forced un- als of Lewis since his death, varying crouch all night beside the dead conditional love out of him.' 1 It is a poignant story. For those of us who come to it with a debt of gratitude to Lewis for having enli- vened our faith, however-and we I are many-the film's story line raises questions. Not about the tale itself as a piece of cinema: on that level it is delightful. The questions that arise are about the truthfulness of this por- trayal of Lewis' faith, and of Chris- tian faith in general. The film has quite definite things to say about this. ExDerience or denial? Let us look at the story line. Lewis, we discover, has been accustomed to -. say much on the topic of grief and @ pain. "We are made not to be happy, Anthony Hopkins plays (~.s Lewis in Shadowlands but that we may learn to love and to be loved," he lectures his audiences. in tone from uncritical adulation to Asian. Lewis writes, "God's hammer-blows are what the psycho-analytic demolition job in I hope no one who reads this makes us perfect." Such sentiments David Holbrook's The Skeleton in the book has been quite as miser- are repeated, themselves like ham- Wardrobe. How truthful is this par- able as Susan and Lucy were mer-blows, in the course of the film. ticular presentation of Lewis? In par- that night; but if you have Are these words of honest wisdom ticular, how truthful is it concerning been-if you've been up all from one who has entered deeply into Lewis's faith? night and cried till you have no the experience of pain? The answer Let us ask firstly about Lewis's more tears left in you-you will this film offers is 'No'. Lewis speaks many words about a loving purpose know that there comes in the out of denial ofhis unresolved grief at behind pain. Were these spoken in end a sort of quietness. You feel the loss of his mother in childhood. authentic faith, or were they really as if nothing was ever going to The magic ofNarnia (and presumably driven by denial? The question is a happen again ... of Christianity's heaven) is fed for crucial one for those of us who are him by the same impulse of denial. Are these the words of one open to his grateful to Lewis for helping us see Lewis deserves well the amusement own grief or not? God for ourselves. To put it bluntly, of his pub friends, and that of Joy, Shadowlands presents Lewis' s who gently teases his self-deception. either Lewis saw the truth and has intellectualising as a denial strategy, a helped us to see it too, or he was The final conversion (if I can way for him to establish a private dare to call it that) for Lewis comes driven by denial and our response to world over which he has control, and when Joy, after their few short years what he says simply reinforces our to keep at bay the real world and his of marriage, dies of cancer. Having own similar denial. vulnerability within it. Now certainly brought Lewis home, so to speak- Lewis comes across in his writ- ideas can be used to shut out the real "You have made me happy," he tells ings as ruthlessly honest with his world-to hide from the demand to her radiantly-she is taken from him. wayward heart. Is this really honesty , let go and let be. But did they have no Now, unlike the confident orator we though, or is self-dramatisation the other meaning in Lewis' life? Wasn't Winter 1994 AFFIRM 27 intellectual struggle for Lewis rather creative tension found here at the than denial will have the last word, the means of staying responsibly heart of our faith. for Lewis and for us. Lewis's Chris- open to reality instead of being se- One thing is clear. If Lewis's in- tian conversion was his real conver- duced and paralysed by private fears tellectual activity was the kind of ex- sion. Lewis's love for Joy and his and fantasies? Do ideas necessarily stand (as in the common myth) for an attempt at cold control over reality, in opposi- tion to honest feeling? This is an im- portant issue, not least for Christians. What about our attempts to speak of God's purposes in the crucifixion of Jesus, to take the fundamental exam- "iU pie? Are these driven by denial? 0: .2 Again of course they can be; they can 10 8::!11 be an attempt to push away the fact ~ ,'t .;;.~ :;;;;:... "E that Jesus' death was more shock- In ingly, finally senseless than we dare ~ iL to admit. But it is equally necessary 01 that we, like the two on the Emmaus ~ t ~ Road, be awakened from the derelic- ,-" jilt c,- (/) tion of grief as our hearts catch fire in @ a rebirth of hope and rediscovery of Christmas a t The Kilns purpose. ercise in denial and illusory control grief in her death were all part of the To come alive in this way is not which the film portrays it as being, journey of faith which he followed the same as rationalising away unwel- Joy's death left him unconverted. His from then onwards. come truth. To assume that it is, is a journal entries at the time (published To stand by Lewis rather than kind of ideological bigotry .Openness later as A Grif!f Observed) stand in Attenboroughis, however, to reject as clear continuity with all that he has to the real world demands from us blind the latter's assumption that Le- written before. He even speaks of the new acceptance of loss, indeed-but wis' s faith and Christian faith in gen- intellect with new warmth, for that equally, new beginning in responsible eral express denial of the real world. hope. Both are necessary if we are to matter. That particular entry follows Attenborough's view reflects a wide- be true to what really is. What matters an incident when he had a fleeting im- spread but false ideological assump- pression of Joy's presence with him. tion that truth is reliably found by Lewis describes this encounter as in- volving intelligence and attention, but doubting ideas-resisting truth not emotion. He muses on the dead as claims-in the name of honesty, sheer intellects, living, as he now con- openness and tolerance. The one and templates them, in a communion not only enemy of truth now becomes the cold, drab and comfortless but-how person committed unquestioningly to should he describe it? ' Brisk? Cheer- a truth claim. There is another and ful? Keen? Alert? Wide awake? equally formidable enemy of truth, Above all, solid. Utterly reliable. however, and that is irresponsibility. Firm. There is no nonsense about the Truth-and above all spiritual and dead.' moral truth-requires that we take re- A Grief Observed shows also sponsibility for it, if it is not to dis- that for Lewis there remained a con- solve into subjective feeling and fan- tinuing tension between his love for tasy. We are to be intelligent, trust- God and his love for Joy, and there- worthy stewards of the truth. We are fore a tension towards his own grief. to live by it, stand up for it, stake our Would that tension have been re- lives upon it. It is this responsibility solved had he simply accepted, and which C. S. Lewis teaches us so well. not resisted, his feelings for her? The story line in the film suggests this. Rev David Would this not however have been is not that we finally fathom the Kettle is depths of either of these demands just as false and premature a 'resolu- Manawatu upon us-that would be impossible in tion' as the outright denial of those Anglican this life-but that we live responsive feelings? Tertiary to each as they meet us anew in each To stand by Lewis rather than Chaplain, situation we encounter. As Austin Attenborough as a guide to truth is and Minister Farrer wrote, 'The cross defeats our not to deny there were ambiguities --~- of Milson hope; the resurrection terrifies our de- about Lewis's faith. But it is to be- Combined Church, Palmerston spair.
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