It was not all about trying relationships ... as Joy said several times in
the movie Lewis had his life all set up so that nothing can get to him.
Yes, I didn’t mean to limit the message in that way. I see this aspect as going hand in hand with the love aspect. Lewis has built an emotional wall around himself. Because of the experience of his mother’s death and perhaps other things not mentioned, he decided to try to protect himself from being hurt by carefully situating his life so that no one could hurt him. Joy sees that he’s doing this not only to her, but also to his friends and students. It was his love for her that broke through this wall and, shall we say, made him embrace life and its concomitant pains. So I suppose the message is not only “loving others is worth the pain and joys that it brings,” but also “living and opening yourself up to others in general and not constantly playing it safe is worth it too.”
Of course almost anything can be interpreted in a Freudian way, but I don’t think that’s what anyone making this film intended (and I think Lewis certainly wouldn’t like such an interpretation). However, I see no reason not to look at it in a Freudian way if you want to, I just don’t think that should be one’s primary interpretation of the film. I think you might find this book interesting: The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi Jr. (Of course, they didn’t actually debate in real life; the author merely compares and contrasts their writings.)
If you see the director, Richard Attenborough, talk about this film in interviews, I think you’d understand that he believed strongly in this project and was very moved by the story. I feel quite certain he was not out just to make a buck with this relatively small English film. The man who wrote the screenplay, William Nicholson, was also the author of the stage play. So the story was not written for the movies. It had a fair amount of success as a play with Nigel Hawthorne in the main role. It had been done as a television movie on the BBC too prior to this movie with the respected thespians, Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom in the leading roles. This is not typical Hollywood garbage. It had a different development as a play from most screenplays, and I think it has a different feel to it than anything I’ve seen Hollywood put out.
This is one of the few movies where someone actually is delivering a sermon
in the movie ... ie. Lewis about pain ... funny that he gave the sermon before
he learned the lesson ... or maybe that enabled him to see it when it
occurred in his life.
I think this is an interesting point you brought up. I think he definitely found it harder to live his sermon than to advise others to live by it (isn’t that always the case?). In the end though I do think his beliefs about pain helped him deal with his own pain, though he still had to struggle hard with it. I do like the way they juxtapose theoretical knowledge vs. personal experience in the film.
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jakob3
12 years ago
Lewis hints in his allegorical writings to an early loss of virginity,
perhaps with lower-class young women.
What he does not discuss is Mrs. Moore. My guess is that they were not lovers,
but that she manipulated Lewis' senses of frozen grief over his mother and
"survivor responsibility" for his fallen comrade. Hence he became a surrogate son for his comrade while she became a surrogate mother (and exploiter) of Lewis.
In "The Four Loves," Lewis does not sound like an ingenue at Eros.
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