SHADOWLANDS, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger and Joseph Mazzello. Directed by Richard Attenborough. Category II. Now showing at the Palace.
OF ALL this year's potential Academy Award winners currently or about to be jostling for position at the Hong Kong box office, this moving drama seems the most likely candidate to fall victim to overkill.
One reason is that anybody wishing to catch one of those very British period pieces starring Sir Anthony Hopkins is far likelier to opt for The Remains Of The Day. Another is that the subject matter - the 1950s romance of divorced New York poet Joy Gresham with Oxford don and theologian C.S. Lewis (best remembered as author of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and other Narnia chronicles for children) - is hardly likely to pull in the crowds in these parts.
How many local viewers know the significance of the scene when eight-year-old Douglas Gresham tries to find a way out through the back of the wardrobe in Lewis' attic? Lewis' notion of Narnia (tying in as it does with his childlike faith in a radiant heaven lying 'just around the next bend' beyond the gloom of his earthly 'shadowlands') is taken a bit too much for granted as read, so to speak.
Still, the universality of Shadowlands as a love story should win out in the end even if people do not know much about C.S. Lewis himself.
A circuitous route to the big screen, via a 1985 BBC television play and a highly successful stage adaptation, has given writer William Nicholson plenty of opportunity to hone his piece to near perfection. With full movie status come also the considerabletalents of Hopkins and Debra Winger, perfect as the gently arrogant Lewis and the liberated, no-nonsense Gresham. Child actor Joseph Mazzello (Jurassic Park) is also impressive as Douglas.
