Shadowlands (1993)

Among his works was a treatise on The Problem of Pain, a work of “theodicy” (i.e., an attempt to explain how evil can exist in a world created and ruled by an all-good and all-powerful God). Although he professed himself a coward with no illusions of fortitude, Lewis proclaimed the difficult truth that God uses even pain for our own benefit — that He “whispers to us in our pleasures but shouts in our pains.”

These words came back to haunt Lewis toward the end of his life, when, having first unexpectedly found love with an American divorceé named Helen Joy Gresham, whom he married, Lewis was shattered by her death from cancer. The journal he kept during these dark days, A Grief Observed, reveals a soul suffering through the process that Lewis had written about so glibly (though not without appropriate fear and trembling).

Anthony Hopkins plays “Jack” as a somewhat abstracted ivory-tower academic rather than the robust and jovial figure he actually was. But Lewis’s penetrating intellect and faith are here, as is his love for Joy (Winger), and the crippling grief that came afterwards. A challenging and inspiring film.

There is also a 1985 made-for-TV version directed by Norman Stone and starring Joss Ackland as Lewis. I haven’t seen it, but some report that it is more overtly spiritual than the big-screen version.)