By Charles Dodgson | 5 Comments | 
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Shadowlands
Brass meets Gold
This one flew under the radar when it was first released in 1993.
The plot can be summarized thus. A Jewish-American divorcee—Debra Winger as Joy Gresham—enters the life of an Oxford don—Anthony Hopkins as C. S. Lewis. Lewis wrote the iconic children’s fantasy Narnia. He is shown as the brilliant literary analyst in the role of teacher as well as in social exchanges with colleagues—all middle aged or older Anglo-Saxon males.
Gresham sees through the famous professor’s intellectual mastery to perceive a vulnerable, repressed man. She first matches him intellectually then subjects his emotional life to cutting critique. Lewis first resists this criticism but is drawn to the American’s honesty and intelligence. His resistance crumbles and before long he is breaking out of his cold persona.
The lessons all flow in one direction, from the Bronx to England. Lewis changes his ways, becomes more honest, more humble, more human. Gresham remains unchanged, as oracles do. What needs changing?
The two protagonists’ bond despite pronounced differences. Lewis was deeply religious and belonged to a Christian milieu. Oxford had all the trappings of a Christian institution. The film opens to the angelic harmonies of a hymn sung by the Magdalen College boys’ choir. Dinner is opened with a Latin grace. Lewis was also an anti-communist. He had conservative social views. In 1934 he famously remarked that “Any large number of free-thinking Jews” is incompatible with the flourishing of a Christian tradition. Gresham was a self-declared atheist who announces early in the film that in the 1930s one was either a fascist or a communist. But arguments never develop over these differences, despite her knowing Lewis’s writings by heart. She never ridicules Christianity by word or gesture. Her only differences with Lewis concern his alleged emotional dishonesty.
The story has two climaxes. In the first Gresham delivers a devastating or perhaps merely a vicious critique, seemingly out of the blue. Lewis has married her to circumvent British visa regulations and allow her to remain in London. The marriage remains unconsummated. The relationship is ostensibly one of friendship. Lewis invites Gresham to a social function at his Oxford college, Magdalen, and the two retire to his rooms for tea. As Lewis puts on the kettle, Gresham begins to work herself up to critical pitch:
Gresham: “So what do you do here? Think great thoughts?”
Lewis: “Teach, mainly.”
Gresham: “What do they do, sit at your feat and gaze up at you in awe?
Lewis: “No, not at all.”
Gresham: “I bet they do.”
Lewis: “We have fine old battles here, I can tell you that.”
Gresham: “Which you win. It must be quite a boost for you being older and wiser than all of them. Not to mention your readers [colleagues].”
Lewis: “What?” [from the next room.]
Gresham: “Your readers; that gang of friends of yours. All very well trained not to play out of bounds.”
Lewis: “What are you talking about?”
Gresham: “Of course this morning, not much competition there!”
Lewis: “That’s nonsense. What about Christopher Riley. He never lets me get away with anything. You know that.”
Gresham: “Except doubt, and fear, and pain, and terror.”
Lewis: “Where did all that come from?”
Gresham: “I’ve only now just seen it. How you’ve arranged a life for yourself where no-one can touch you. Everyone that’s close to you is either younger than you, or weaker than you, or under your control.”
Lewis: “Why are you getting at me. I thought we were friends.”
Gresham: “I don’t know that we are friends. Not the way you have friends anyway. Sorry Jack.”
Lewis: “I don’t understand.”
Gresham: “Oh, I think you do. You just don’t like it. Nor do I.” She exits.
As Lewis says, Gresham is getting at him in a decidedly unfriendly manner. But he comes to agree with her, in practice if not in abstract. Surrender is eased by the crisis of her fatal illness and Lewis’s realization of how precious she has become. He loves her honesty.
In the second climax, Lewis finally completes his treatment by sobbing uncontrollably with grief following Gresham’s death. Gone is his reserve. Gone is his stoicism. He is delivered from Englishness.
This is an allegory of ethnic contest and dominance that plays on stereotypes. How different the plot would be if written to reaffirm European confidence in its traditions and culture. The visitor would have striven to conform to high-culture Englishness with its politeness and restraint. She would soon learn that in Britain overt verbal aggression is considered transparent one-upmanship—simply not cricket. She would be offered the example of one or two Anglo-Jewish dons who are assimilated to English ways. She would be taught that true friendship does not admit the relentless subversion of others’ self-confidence; and that tolerance is a form of civility which entails reciprocating others’ suspension of tribalism. And she would quickly learn to judge Bolshevism from the perspective of its victims as well as its beneficiaries.
Such a plot would also be flawed by simplistic ethnic stereotypes, though with Britain on top—a sort of ethnic missionary position that I suppose is also out of date. A balanced story would have shown some give and take. An outgoing, intelligent, and unpretentious lady from the Bronx blows some fresh air into stuffy Oxford and brings companionship to a lonely bachelor. In return she comes to perceive her own aggression and ethnocentrism and learns some social graces.
It would have been great if Anthony Hopkins broke character after her diatribe long enough to say, “Look honey, ridicule isn’t an argument, it’s an attitude. And exactly how long have you been under the delusion that I need your approval?”
They could have ended it with that line and then rolled the credits.
I have to say though, that I saw some of this movie with a lady friend while on a long distance bus ride. We couldn’t get through the whole thing because for me it was upsetting and for her it was just boring.
When I explained to her why it was upsetting she could see my point. I then asked her what she thought, and she said, “I thought the point of the movie was to make the girl look like an obnoxious idiot. He was polite and she was annoying.”
I wanted to hug her.
The point is, most people don’t look into things the way we do and it’s sometimes refreshing to hear their reactions. They might not be able to analyze it from the perspective of Jewish mind-control, etc. but their, as Hemingway may have put it, “Built-in shit detector” works just fine. Their intuition tells them “I am being preached at, and I don’t like it.”
When I meet people like that they seem to appreciate the analysis, and I am grateful for their gut response. This could very well be the model for how we communicate to, and with, a larger group.
I thought it was interesting she immediately saw emotional and power structure as important, as if looking through the world with a different set of glasses. We tend to see people as conduits of objective information, or combatants for it — all on the same team though. We need to keep in mind as the Jews maneuver for world hegemony that this is how they see the world, and project this raw skeleton of power relationships on everything. We definitely do not tend to see it that way. Truth matters more than position or power. Power is not an end to us, but rather a means and scaffolding to other things (like even more powerful and sustaining objective truth) when the right people have power. We don’t even think about the power aspects, or even LIKE it if they are demonstrably superior.
Of course, other races see differently too. With blacks, they tend to see everything much more materialistically. they love signs of wealth and status above all. They will get into deadly conflicts over things we would not think of doing so over.
One of the most interesting things about different ethnic groups is how differently they see or interpret social situations or even facial expressions — as recent research shows oriental people do. I think that if you accumulate enough research in this regard, and collect what is out there into a whole, we should see reflections of each groups dominant pattern of social and philosophical coping with the world. Each little difference in view, the shape of the bell curve — ours being more spread out, etc. alone does not tell us that much but combined with other differences can tell us a lot more.
I think this movie, and the review, points up the importance of seeing the differences in patterns between peoples that indicate our “invisible phenotype” which stretches through time and is a sort of racial personality which gives rise to many different aspects of our particular cultures.
“In 1934 he famously remarked that “Any large number of free-thinking Jews” is incompatible with the flourishing of a Christian tradition.”
I would like some citation here–I believe in this instance you are confusing Lewis with another notable Anglo-Catholic conservative genius, T. S. Eliot, who made such a remark (for which the Commentary crowd never forgave him) in the ’30′s.
“Brass meets gold.” This hits the nail on the head.
I believe Spectator is correct: “…and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.” T. S. Eliot, After Strange Gods (1934). Eliot was speaking of the cultural benefits of social homogeneity.
Steven Romer wrote: “I thought it was interesting she immediately saw emotional and power structure as important, as if looking through the world with a different set of glasses. We tend to see people as conduits of objective information, or combatants for it all on the same team though. We need to keep in mind as the Jews maneuver for world hegemony that this is how they see the world, and project this raw skeleton of power relationships on everything. We definitely do not tend to see it that way. Truth matters more than position or power. Power is not an end to us, but rather a means and scaffolding to other things (like even more powerful and sustaining objective truth) when the right people have power. We don’t even think about the power aspects, or even LIKE it if they are demonstrably superior. ”
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I would have to be excluded from the “we” as described above. I very definitely see emotional and power structure and process within all social relationships and entities. I also would dismiss the idea that truth matters more than position or power; I would see power as the goal and “truth” and means as the particular interpretations and behaviors selected, sometimes consciously but more frequently so automatic as to be unconscious, in accordance with invisible operating systems with unwritten, unacknowledged rules that are nevertheless clearly understood by all within that system. I have gone so far as to consider that all social transactions could possibly be expressed mathematically.