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This movie is beautiful and has lovely acting and gorgeous sets and even terrific writing.The directing, as usual with Attenborough, is first-rate.But Lewis is an infuriating person.That's partly the movie's subject: Lewis is SO repressed, SO insulated, SO narcissistic, that it takes a very aggressive woman and a tragedy to (partly) penetrate his shell.He wrote a book called "Surprised by Joy." This is a reference to Wordsworth; but it seems perfectly apt--and horrifying.You get the sense from this movie that Lewis was so cut off from the emotions that anything--even pain--was better than the numbness in which he spent most of his life.It's sad, and it's pointless.Oddly--or perhaps not oddly at all--Lewis erects Pain into his First Principle of Theology: for Lewis, God does not want us to be happy, He wants us to Suffer, because by Suffering we learn to love.It is pitiful that Lewis had to suffer to learn love.Hard to know why Joy would love him.You don't know whether to laugh or scream at him.Great movie about a pitiable person. |