Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
'Good' Grief, 2 Jan 2009
This BBC film, based on the book 'A Grief Observed' by C S Lewis, was later adapted as a stage play and then screenplay with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
It begins with Lewis the Oxord Academic, writer and Christian apologist, in his comfort zone. He is a popular success in all of the above. His is a protected world of an elite academic circle. Lewis believes that his faith has liberated him from a fear of risks and challenge. He considers himself, since his conversion to the Christian faith, as a 'diver,' able to dive into faith without fear of a loss of pride or challenge. Importantly, at this stage, the liberation is mainly at the level of intellect and reason. The fundamental transormation of the soul and heart has only just begun, and is about to leap forward in a wonderful but then shattering and terrible way that Lewis could never have foreseen.
This begins with the correspondence of Joy Gresham, an American woman in an abusive marriage who engages with Lewis intellectually through her letters. They enjoy their correspondence, then Joy suugests that they meet. And slowly, but surely, she begins to lay siege to the walls around his emotional life and heart. The diver is about to dive.
Events progress. Joy's children visit,two lads who put you in mind of the boys in the Narnia stories. Lewis proposes a marriage of convenience, to ensure Joy's citizenship, in a civil ceremony that Lewis is at pains to remove of any emotional conent or significance. In his mind, and to protect his fast crumbling defences, he's helping a friend with a business transaction.
And then, the defences come under nuclear assault when Joy is diagnosed with cancer. Lewis's comforatble world starts to change to one of emotional extremes. Rage, intense love and a feeling of powerlessness break in.
And when Joy dies a painful death, the bereavement tears up the rule book. To say his faith becomes more profound is too pat and insulting to Lewis and his journey. What happens is, after and through his Golgotha experience, God, and the Kingdom, come to his heart in a new way.
This magisterial, profound film cpatures so much of the human experience, in our struggles with faith, our addictions to our comfort zones, and being led through the fire to a new place. Claire Bloom as Joy, and Jos Ackland as Lewis give unforgettable and towering performancs. Ackland's final articulation of his grief to Joy's young son, and his in turn giving in to his loss, is a scene of terrible intensity that will give your own heart a good kicking.
See this. And please someone give it the dvd release it so richly deserves.
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by C. S. Lewis
by Brian Sibley
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DVD ~ Anthony Hopkins
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