Norman Stone: Beyond Shadowlands

Award-winning writer-director Norman Stone has lived with the legacy of C. S. Lewis for a very long time. In 1983, he first conceived a television dramatization based on the work of Lewis biographer Brian Sibley (who, in recent years, has been very visible as a key commentator for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films). Though the Sibley collaboration faltered, Stone jump-started the project with writer William Nicholson, and the result was the acclaimed 1985 BBC production of Shadowlands, starring Joss Acklund as Lewis and Claire Bloom as Joy Davidman Gresham.

Shadowlands, of course, became insanely popular. Nicholson rewrote Shadowlands as a stageplay, then later teamed with director Richard Attenborough to bring the story to the big screen, with Anthony Hopkins as Lewis and Debra Winger as Gresham.

All three works, directly or indirectly the result of Stone’s initial vision, have been wildly successful in their own way. Douglas Gresham, C. S. Lewis’ stepson, calls Acklund’s performance as Lewis “spot-on,” while preferring Winger’s performance as his mother. He considers the stage play the ideal retelling of the story.

Now, after twenty years have passed, Stone has taken time out from his other work to bring a broader version of Lewis’ biographical story once again to the small screen. Similar versions of the docudrama C. S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia will air this month on Hallmark Channel and on the BBC to coincide with the release of the Disney / Walden Media production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Why has Stone gone back to the well? Can lightning strike twice?

Obviously, the enormous media circus that the upcoming Narnia movie has become justifies another look at C. S. Lewis, and Stone, along with production company Faith and Values Media, believe that Lewis, through his life, “earned the right to be heard.” So they’ve put together a program that dramatizes the whole arc of Lewis’ spiritual development, while highlighting the origins and impact of The Chronicles of Narnia. And if any TV program about Lewis and Narnia deserves to be watched this holiday season, Beyond Narnia is it.

Part of the reason that Stone’s docudrama succeeds is his recognition that Lewis was perhaps the epitome of a Christian man who saw the need to be “the salt of the earth, not the sugar of the church.” Stone will have no part of historic revisionism that paints Lewis as some whitewashed saint or merely churchy academic. Anyone looking for “sunshine and roses” in this production, says the director, should be sorely disappointed.

But those who believe, as Stone does, that “honesty and truth are at the top of God’s shopping list” will be mightily pleased. In bringing a bigger picture of Lewis to the public than that presented in Shadowlands, Stone felt that “the truth was paramount”—and that, if his depiction of Lewis' one-time atheism or the depth of a widower’s grief offends Lewis idolizers, at least he will “offend fairly.” After all, the bulk of the words that Lewis speaks in the docudrama come straight from Lewis’ own works.

Stone’s depiction of Lewis is palpable. Murray Watts, an associate of Stone’s, has said that the power of TV and film lies in their ability to “make an audience feel so much that they can’t help but think.” Stone hopes that audiences watching his docudrama “cannot help but be moved.” He’s not likely to be disappointed. Audiences will also be left thinking—thinking of the astounding faith of the man behind Narnia.

Maybe, just maybe, they’ll take some time to reflect about the drive of the director, too. We’re fortunate that Norman Stone was the man behind the camera.

(One footnote: Early press about this production promised that it would blow the lid off of long-surpressed facts about the meltdown of the friendship between Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Mr. Stone told me that the paper which broke the story took egregious liberties, and later published a formal apology and retraction. While Stone accurately portrays the creative and personal tension between the two men, his docudrama takes no liberties in adding to the canon of Inklings lore.)

Yours, Mine & Ours

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Entertainment Weekly’s review of Chicken Little criticized the movie for a lack of originality. Sure, the animation was terrific, the review said; but gosh, haven’t we heard this story before? When I read the review, I thought: Gee, who do they think this movie is for? Jaded 45-year olds? I seriously doubt many first graders will react to Chicken Little in the way that I might.

Similarly, Yours, Mine & Ours is, of course, only the latest in a spate of family-movie remakes. And like the EW reviewer, we can carp about Paramount’s lack of originality; or we can be grateful that kids today can relive some of the fun that we enjoyed when we were younger—in the theatre, not at home watching decades-old movies on DVD.

We can also be grateful for a gentle live-action holiday option for youngsters instead of the teen-oriented darkness of Harry Potter, the perhaps overly-intense epic battle over Narnia or the raunch of anti-holiday films like Just Friends.

Yours, Mine & Ours tells the oft-told blended-family tale of conflicting cultures. In this case, Helen’s ten free-spirited, artistic bohemian tots run headlong into Frank’s regimented eight when the two widowed adults rather spontaneously marry following a high school reunion.

The former teen sweethearts rather optimistically think that they’ll be able to pick up where they left off years before, and that their combined 1.5 dozen children will be on board with the family’s move into a long-disused lighthouse. They are wrong, of course. Helen’s lack of structure is out of synch with Frank’s hyper-structured style, and the discontented rabble that is their household soon plots to break the couple up.

Not surprisingly, in working together to destroy their parents marriage, the kids finally bond. Just when Frank and Helen are ready to throw in the towel, the family has finally started to jell. The rest is Hollywood hokum and fairy-tale happy endings.

But it’s enjoyable enough, and does manage to demonstrate one universal truth: if we were all the same, life would be pretty boring. In fact, diversity of thought and disposition is required for any group to function well. As ancient wisdom reminds us,

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" ... God has combined the members of the body ... so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. (I Corinthians 12:17-25)

Since the political climate in America makes it makes plain that we’ve generally forgotten this great truth—do we really think we’d like a “red” nation or a “blue” nation?—a gentle holiday retread like Yours, Mine & Ours might just be what the doctor ordered.

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