"We read to know we're not alone." "Experience is a brutal teacher. But you learn-my God, you learn!" "I'm not particularly sure God wants us to be happy."
This is the homespun philosophy of "Shadowlands," a competent little love story crafted to wring tears from the stoniest of hearts. Though set in Oxford of the 1950s, these musings and maxims come not from the coldly intellectual life of author C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins), on whom the film is based, but from his private life, which is shaken up by the American poet Joy Gresham (Debra Winger).
Anthony Hopkins, particularly suited to playing uptight, reserved Englishmen, demonstrates a remarkable range as he sheds his buttoned-down, crisp demeanor and opens his life to love. Hopkins is unique in contemporary cinema for expressing a wide range of emotions with his ice-blue eyes.
Debra Winger as the impulsive and slightly crass Brooklynite who writes Lewis fan mail and eventually forces her way into his life, gets all the best comic lines and manages to save a struggle with cancer from sentimentality.
The film is best described as a middle-aged love story that brings Lewis out of his shell. The other story that works synergistically with the one of Lewis' love and loss is that of Joy's son Douglas. One of the film's better scenes is toward the end, with man and boy crying and clinging to one another as they face the wardrobe in Lewis' attic, which represents hard reality instead of the mythic world of Lewis' childrens' books.
"Shadowlands" is well-made and has a churning momentum to it that should keep theatergoers attentive as well as in tears. John Wood gives a comic performance as one of Lewis' crustier colleagues at the boys' club that is Oxford. Joseph Mazzello does well as Douglas, as does Edward Hardwicke as Lewis' benign brother Warnie.
See "Shadowlands" even if you don't want a good weep; it's a fine movie that never lapses into sentimentality and tells its stories with wit and well-paced style.
"Shadowlands," rated PG, running time 170 minutes, opened Friday at the Nugget; shows are at 7 and 9:15 nightly.
