Shadowlands is a 1993 British biographical film directed by Richard Attenborough. The screenplay by William Nicholson is based on his 1985 television production and 1989 stage adaptation of the same name. The original television film began life as a script entitled I Call it Joy written for Thames Television by Brian Sibley and Norman Stone. Sibley later wrote the book, Shadowlands: The True Story of C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman. Set in the 1950s, the film focuses on reserved, middle aged bachelor C. S. Lewis, an Oxford University academic at Magdalen College and author of The Chronicles of... Narnia series of children's books, and his relationship with divorced American poet Joy Gresham and her young son Douglas. What begins as a formal meeting of two very different minds slowly develops into an intense feeling of connection and love. Lewis finds his quiet life with his brother Warnie disrupted by the outspoken, feisty Gresham, whose uninhibited behavior offers a sharp contrast to the rigid sensibilities of the male-dominated university. Each provides the other with new ways of viewing the world.
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