C. S. Lewis: A Most Reluctant Convert (the movie)
A review by Dwight A. Moody
I read no reviews and did no background check on this movie, but I will wager a full month’s social security check that the script of this movie is taken verbatim from the autobiography of Mr. Lewis himself, Surprised by Joy: the Shape of My Early Life. He published the book in 1955 (after he had met his future wife Joy Davidman) to describe his journey up to and including his conversion to Christianity in 1931, soon after he had turned 30 years old.
That means, of course, that the movie features beautiful prose, spoken exclusively by the actor Max McLean. He does a good job of representing the aging Lewis watching, even narrating the action of his own life: his childhood, the death of his mother, his service in World War I, his entry into Oxford University as, first, a student, and later, a professor, and the conversations that led him to faith.
The format is odd; and when I first sat down in the theater and began to watch I feared I had wandered into the wrong room or had a serious misunderstanding of what I had paid to see. The movie opens and closes with footage of the movie being made: cameras, lights, and scores of crew are seen busily preparing to shoot the film while Max McLean as Lewis is reciting his lines directly into the camera. It is clever, but it sure had me confused (and fearful that the entire movie would be the same!).
But it wasn’t; and I am glad: glad also that the steady monologue, however lovely and beautifully spoken in that wonderful British accent so reminiscent of Lewis (although not so fully from the lower register!), was interrupted now and then by carefully crafted vignettes. For instance, two boys ten and twelve watching by the bedside of their dying mother. And again, two young university students discussing the justification for theism. And between them, a squad of soldiers ambushed by German fire, later convalescing in a hospital.
These brief interludes are well done: lighting, costumes, dialogue, etc., but they lack what the entire movie lacks: the drama that makes a story interesting or compelling or watchable. Yes, I watch it because of my 50-year interest in Lewis, not because it is a powerful movie, one I might encourage you to see. If you are fascinated by Lewis or have been influenced by Lewis, you will appreciate the film, perhaps even enjoy it. A few might recommend it to friends.
The Lewis story is fascinating because of what Lewis became: a first-rate scholar, a fabulous writer of essays, novels, and autobiography, a chronicler of a converted life when so much of the movement is in the other direction—people surrendering their faith instead of embracing it.
The climax of the movie is a scene of communion, of Lewis receiving the Eucharist as a way of announcing his full conversion. Lewis started attending daily prayers when he became, as he tells it (and as the movie title commandeers it) “the most reluctant convert in all England”. He had been baptized as an infant, in the church of Ireland but denounced his faith at the age of 14. He worked his way back under the influence of such later luminaries as J. R. R. Tolkien, himself a devout Catholic. When his journey led him to believe in God and in Jesus as the son of God, he simply got up from his pew that Christmas season and made his way to the altar to receive the elements.
That’s the way the movie ends. I wondered if those in the theater unfamiliar with the story understood what was happening. But I didn’t pause to inquire. I hurried out, drove home, and put a sweet potato in the oven and turned on the television to watch a Kentucky basketball game.
Life goes on, as it did for Lewis, until his death in 1963. He was just shy of 65 years old but here we are, almost 60 years later, watching films and stage productions, reading books and scholarly articles, still celebrating the most reluctant convert of the 20th century.
(November 2021)
