The Golden Age of British
cinema is over. It’s true. If you can keep your eyes open for 126 minutes
you’ll see that I’m right. Lord Attenborough, you see, must have known
it when he cast Anthony Hopkins, (at the height of his powers), alongside
Debra Winger. She must have known it too. Like her character - Joy Gresham,
a sassy, bright, American divorcee - she seems at home in heady company.
Hopkins plays C.S. Lewis, an Oxford Don so entrenched in dreaming spires
it takes the wondrous Gresham’s love and death to give him life. The economy
and wisdom of William Nicholson’s script never lets the towering performances
overshadow it; the performances are never self indulgent enough to let
the words seem loud. Indeed, if we can hear anything, it’s the beating
of our own hearts. The tiny brush strokes are as poignant (and significant)
as the large. Can this be cinema? Clearly not: cinema is a shoot-em-up,
take-em-down medium; it’s middlebrow, made for us dunces by Clever People:
the Loveys stoop for Plonkers.
If
there is a complaint (and there isn’t), it’s that there doesn’t seem a
need for Gresham to gatecrash Lewis’ ivory tower; he leads a simple life
untrammelled by the slings and arrows that beset the likes of you and me.
But Lewis loves one thing more than anything: the truth. Attenborough and
Nicholson knew that (and Hopkins, it seems when watching him, has always
known that), and the majesty of this masterpiece is that truth is mortal,
and truth is sweat; truth is, indeed, a woman. And should we dare to truly
love, perhaps we’ll feel the heat of it - all that reality.
At least we would, if
the Golden Age of British cinema wasn’t over, and this film had been released
in 1952, when it was set, not 1993, like it says on the box. Phew. . .relief.
If this had been a modern film we’d be forced to think that we Brits did
this kind of thing better than anyone. And we can’t have that.
If
there is a complaint (and there isn’t), it’s that there doesn’t seem a
need for Gresham to gatecrash Lewis’ ivory tower; he leads a simple life
untrammelled by the slings and arrows that beset the likes of you and me.
But Lewis loves one thing more than anything: the truth. Attenborough and
Nicholson knew that (and Hopkins, it seems when watching him, has always
known that), and the majesty of this masterpiece is that truth is mortal,
and truth is sweat; truth is, indeed, a woman. And should we dare to truly
love, perhaps we’ll feel the heat of it - all that reality.