MAGIC NEVER ENDS, THE: THE LIFE & FAITH OF C.S. LEWIS - DVD review

Timing is everything, and Questar is re-releasing this 2002 PBS biography just as interest in C.S. Lewis is peaking again. Last week Disney released the Blu-ray and DVD of "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian." Now we get this biography of the author, and while it isn't the kind that wows you with vintage clips or astounds you with one insight after the next, it's still a nice overview of one of the most commercially successful writers of the modern era. Not one of the 38 books written by Lewis has ever gone out of print, and "The Chronicles of Narnia" volumes continue to sell at the rate of more than a million copies per year.

Sir Ben Kinglsey narrates this documentary, which interweaves present-day color footage of Ireland, the Cotswolds, Oxford University, The Kilns (Lewis's house), and Cambridge University with some vintage footage/photos and on-camera discussions provided by Lewis scholars, family members, friends, and Debra Winger, the actress who played his wife in "Shadowlands."

Lewis is perhaps best known as a Christian apologist, an academic whose scholarly treatment of Christianity as truth rather than myth placed him in the company of theologians and philosophers, though Lewis himself was a professor of medieval literature. But two things I find most fascinating: Lewis's friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien ("The Lord of the Rings"), and his conversion from atheist to deist and, finally, Christian. Here's where ideas intersect with art, where one can begin to understand what was transpiring in the mind of this brilliant man as he wrestled with universal questions of morality and mortality. That's why I personally would have preferred that more time had been spent on these areas. Other than seeing the exterior of The Eagle and Child pub where Lewis, Tolkien and the rest of the Inklings met over pints to talk about philosophy and aesthetics and read their work to each other to get honest criticism, there's not much here that details the support that each man gave the other. The summary was here, but I wanted more depth. Ironically, though Tolkien's Middle Kingdom bears far less resemblance to anything Christian, that author was one of a circle of friends who was responsible for Lewis embracing Christianity. We're told that discussions with his friends led Lewis to understand that myth became fact, and it was like a revelation to him. Yes, go on . . ., I found myself thinking, hoping for more narrative depth for a fulcrum moment like this. Same with the story of how his faith evolved. Deism is absolutely glossed over as a stage, without even a serviceable definition offered. There's nothing in the narrative beyond the "myth became fact" shorthand explanation we get. I suppose critics would be complaining how dry it would have been to hear more of Lewis's actual writing about faith and Christianity, but I frankly would have welcomed it.

TV biography is a hard master, and documentary director Chip Duncan made the decision to cover more ground in less detail and keep it moving. So this biography covers everything uniformly but pretty superficially, moving deftly from Lewis's childhood in Belfast, Ireland, through the early death of his mother, the impact that WWI had on Lewis and a generation of artists who would become modernists and a "Lost Generation," his friendship with Tolkien, and his career as an academic. The biography finally slows down and starts to cover his life with more depth when Lewis meets a woman named Joy through fan-mail correspondence and eventually marries her, falls in love with her (yes, in that order), and takes care of her as she battles with cancer.

Here is where we see the most vintage footage and photographs, and perhaps it has more to do with permissions than with editorial vision. I know about such things, having had two book projects come to screeching halts because of screeching relatives of the writers I was researching. But the relationship with Joy Gresham ends up being the primary focus of this documentary, at least if amount of airtime is any indication. And in truth, it's a pretty fascinating story--one which includes a miracle for the staunchly Christian Lewis. That makes for a good story, as anyone who saw "Shadowlands" knows. But I was even more fascinated by the man who was like the Centurion in the Bible, the one who said, "Lord I believe, please help my unbelief." That conflicted faith, much more so than pure faith, seems to me a common thread that binds many of us. Lewis's own version went something like this: "I maintained that God did not exist," he says, adding that he was also "angry at God for not existing." That's the kind of ontological contradiction that to me is even more interesting than Lewis's love story, because it speaks to so many disbelieving believers and half-believing non-believers. And my guess is that there's a whole lot more of them than there are people who are blessed to find someone to love late in life. We're told that Lewis died the same hour as John F. Kennedy, and I suppose I also wanted more speculation from the director on the significance of that apparent coincidence.

Those are my main quarrels with "The Magic Never Ends: The Life & Faith of C.S. Lewis," and as you can see they may well be matters of personal taste. What's here, while pretty standard in its content and editing, is a decent biography that offers wonderful footage of the landscapes that inspired Lewis as a writer. The talking heads are pretty average in terms of their insights or even their ability to articulate their positions, and Winger is so casual in her appearance and so focused on Lewis himself that you could easily mistake her for a relative or former student. And the relative who does appear, Joy Gresham's son, Douglas, who also steers clear of Hollywood for the most part, except to talk about how embarrassed Lewis would have been by all the fanfare. That's another surprise, since Gresham was brought onboard as co-producer for the Disney "Chronicles of Narnia" films. The focus in this biography is on Lewis as scholar and Lewis as writer. For many, that will be enough.

Video:
When we zoom in on close-ups in nature, you can see that the level of detail is quite good for a DVD, and even better when you consider this is a made-for-TV (1.33:1 aspect ratio) documentary. The color exterior color footage is striking, with only the slightest grain--again, for a DVD.

Audio:
The audio appears to be a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, though it could also be a Mono that's split into two channels. It's hard to tell, since it's mostly voiceover.

Extras:
What appear to be bonus features are really sections of the documentary that are playable according to topic. There's the bio basics on Lewis, with voiceover as in the film, along with footage of the Cotswolds and Oxford University and The Kilns which have no voiceover at all, just music playing while the camera scans and pans the scenery. So unless you're paying attention during the documentary you really have no frame of reference. A final extra comes closer to being a bonus feature--an interview with Duncan--but even that has considerable overlapping, and what's more curious is that Duncan says things that are at odds with what the scholars had said in the film. I'm not sure how reliable it is.

Bottom Line:
This biography of Lewis focuses mainly on his scholarship and academic career, with an added emphasis on the author's late-in-life love affair with Joy Gresham. If you care about Lewis as an author, this is a pretty solid documentary; if you're wanting it as a companion to the films, I'm not sure how useful you'll find it.