‘Shadowlands’

This 1993 Richard Attenborough-directed film from the William Nicholson play is about the romance between C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) and Joy Gresham (Debra Winger). It is the kind of high-class weepie that elicits tears one by one. Nothing happens in this film that isn’t prepared for, and that’s part of its plodding power. Lewis, a lifelong bachelor, is presented as an archetypal Oxford don who delivers popular lectures on Christianity with a self-assured swagger. Joy, a devoted American reader of his, begins a tentative friendship with him, becoming his spiritual guardian. She implores him to open up and experience the pain of life in order to know its joys. The film’s biggest success is that it delineates Lewis’ odyssey with care and precision. Although a movie about opening yourself up to passion probably shouldn’t be this calibrated and serene, it finds Hopkins in his element: He does repression better than just about anybody. Winger is strong despite her role’s built-in limits, her deteriorating health seeming to exist primarily to point out Lewis’ spiritual awakening (Cinemax Friday at 8 p.m.).