Chronicles of Narnia: Lion Witch & Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis wrote this book first of the seven volumes of the Chronicles of Narnia, and many of my generation received the boxed set that had renumbered them so that this book was the first. My kindergarten teacher, Miss Connors, read us the first 2 or 3 books at nap time. Rereading them as an adult, that amazes, me, but any age can take away something from this story. The four children range in age from say, eight (she’s 10 now) to maybe fifteen (he’s 18 now), and you can connect with them at all their ages and in adulthood as well. Lewis meant for this book to come second, and the film alludes to that first book (The Prince’s Nephew) by giving us a wink from The Professor (the star of that book).
The books are also well-known as a fairly heavy-handed Christian allegory, and Buena Vista is courting that pool of ticket-buyers pretty strongly. For those resistant to such pageantry, rest assured that the story can be appreciated on its own merit. For those eager to see a strong Christian message in a movie, you’ll get it, but perhaps not in the way that you had hoped. I, a resistant one, still cry at the pivotal scene at the Stone Table, so take that as you will. There was only one cheesy nod to modern clichés of Christian symbolism, but thankfully it was brief. The story is well-distilled, seemingly taking its time but wasting nothing.
All the kids in this movie are incredible. It is a difficult task to carry a movie as a group of siblings, both with the earnestness of wartime Brits in difficult circumstances and with the large age disparity among them, and even more so when you are acting against nearly nothing sometimes. Three of the four actors had nearly no film experience, with Anna Popplewell (Susan) being the one seasoned pro. Georgie Henley’s Lucy is key, as the youngest and the emotional core of the group. Skandar Keynes and William Moseley were terrific and more layered than their book characters might have led them to perform. They were all really fantastic, and I am sorry to say, totally upstaged Tilda Swinton as the White Witch. How is that possible? You watch and tell me. I love Tilda, but she was swept away by the rest of the film.
I for one am sorry now that I spent so much time drooling over the previews available at ComiCon and elsewhere; I saw a lot of the cool stuff before the movie in total, and so I had inured myself to the film’s intense beauty. What makes an effects-heavy movie like this still have soul, of course, is the performances of its leads, and the sense of reality that they can convey. Narnia is of course a fantasy world, but in order to believe in it, it has to feel real. The snow looked dreadfully cold, the beasts and denizens looked so, so very real. Several of our principal characters were computer animated, but you only know that because they were animals acting as real as the actors around them; if you let yourself believe (a major tenet of Lewis’ works) you have absolutely no reason not to think there is a pair of talking Beavers or an enormous Lion. My one complaint was that Aslan’s voice was too recognizable and actually took some of his glowing mystery away for me.
I have to talk a little more about the effects. I know some people would say, “effects aren’t everything,” but I am telling you, here they are. Recall how you forgot that Gollum was a painting of pixels, because his performance was so real, his presence on screen so undoubtable. Aslan the lion and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are just as real, just as nuanced in their expressions and acting and presence on screen, you frequently forget you are watching an effect. Weta, the amazing studio in New Zealand responsible for the Lord of the Rings movies, has done it again. Their craft is not limited to mouse clicks - they made mountains of armor, weaponry, flasks, buckles, daggers, vials, spears, leather pieces. They created incredibly articulated Minotaur heads, seamlessly gave a human actor the legs of a goat to play a Faun, filled a battlefield with true and mythological creatures (some with actors as part of their bodies) and duked it out. It will completely blow your mind.
MPAA Rating PG
Release date 12/9/05
Time in minutes 132
Director Andrew Adamson
Studio Buena Vista Pictures
