The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

After over a month we finally went to see the latest epic fantasy blockbuster movie today: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe has a mouthful of a title, and is a grand production that almost justifies it.

It's been several years since I read the book on which the movie is based, but I still have fond memories of the cartoon adaptation from when I was a kid (in fact, I remember skipping a Cub Scout meeting to watch it, which made me feel guilty at the time, but it also taught me that one doesn't need to attend every meeting of an event one has signed up for, especially when one signed up to have fun). I didn't know that there was also a 1960 adaptation, nor a 1980s adaptation - neither of which I've seen.

My memories of the book are pretty sketchy, too, so I can't honestly judge how true to the book the film is, although it hit all of the points that I remembered. I enjoyed the first few books of the series when I was a kid, but never so much that I was moved to read the whole thing.

In the film, the four Pevensie children, Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (the improbably-named Skandar Keynes), and Lucy (Georgie Henley) are sent away from war-town 1940s London by their mother to live with the enigmatic Professor Kirke (Jim Broadbent). While there playing hide-and-seek, Lucy discovers an old wardrobe in an abandoned room, where she stumbles through a gateway into the fantastic world of Narnia. Inhabited by amazing creatures - and no humans - she encounters and befriends Tumnus the Faun (James McAvoy). Tumnus is under orders (as are all Narnians) to turn any humans he encounters to Jadis, the White Witch and usurper of the throne of Narnia (Tilda Swinton), but he has pity on Lucy and lets her go.

Her siblings don't believe her story when she returns, but Lucy and Edmund go through the wardrobe later on, and Edmund encounters Jadis (who is in a sleigh that makes her look like a little Dalek, strangely enough). He tells her who he is, and she exhorts him to bring his whole family to her, with vague promises that he can become king of Narnia. Keeping his encounter from Lucy, they return to Earth, and later on all four children are forced into the wardrobe after accidentally breaking one of the Professor's windows.

The children find that Tumnus has been arrested for not telling Jadis of the children's existence. But they soon encounter the friend Mr. Beaver (voice of Ray Winstone), who helps them. Edmund slips away, his greed making him go tell Jadis that his siblings are here. Jadis is incensed that he didn't bring them directly to her, and imprisons him, while Mr. Beaver helps the children escape. They soon learn that they are caught up in a prophecy in which four humans are to help win the freedom of Narnia, and they're taken to meet the opposition, led by the lion, Aslan (voice of Liam Neeson, who's a whole lot less fun here than he was in Batman Begins). With the children divided and strange magic surrounding them, the final battle for the freedom of Narnia is about to take place.

Although visually grand and lovely to look at, overall I found the film... slight. I've always known that the story was a sort of Christian allegory, although since I personally consider Christian myth itself to be a sort of allegory (and in today's political climate not a very good one) I've always been baffled by it, never really finding any deeper meanings. Perhaps they're not truly there to find, but with my general lack of a Christian background, I'm not likely to extract them without considerable effort. (Imagine how baffled I was by David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus or Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins, which I read on assignment back in college. But I digress).

The story is a fairly exciting adventure, with some good chases and narrow escapes. But its underpinnings are sorely lacking: We have no sense of the world of Narnia, just that it has an ambience of fantastic creatures (who apparently have no cities). While Jadis is clearly cruel and an unfit ruler, the nature of her background and ambitions are never revealed. (Does she just crave power? To what end? What does she do when she's not chasing humans across the snow?) There's a movement against her rule, and apparently has been for some decades, but what have they been doing? (Very little, it appears.) This leaves the story as simply a primal battle between good and evil, which leaves our heroes on the side of good simply because they got thrown into the war and feel the need to do what's right. Which isn't so bad, but the story ultimately feels hollow. Only Lucy, who wants to help her friend Tumnus, seems to truly be fighting for something we can viscerally feel and understand.

As I said, the film looks great, down to Aslan's expressions. It feels like an effort to tap the same audience as The Lord of the Rings; Debbi thinks it might instead tap the enthusiasm of the Harry Potter movies, but the closing battle felt very much like the big fight in The Return of the King. (Presumably, the producers would be pretty happy to have a string of sequels which capture both audiences.) The acting was generally... okay. Henley as Lucy gave a creditable performance for a 10-year-old actress, although she seemed perpetually bemused by everything around her (sometimes not entirely appropriately). Moseley as Peter resembled nothing so much as a young Peter Davison (eerily so, actually). Reviewers have been wowed by Swinton as Jadis (not to be confused with Jadis), but I thought she didn't really have a whole lot to do, and seemed a bit like a poor man's Glenn Close to my eyes.

Ultimately, the film is a little morality play with lush visuals and a lot of action. They got some powerful bits right - especially Jadis' facility for transmuting creatures into stone statues - but the story is something of a hodge-podge. It's a fun outing, but I have little doubt that I'll have largely forgotten about the film within two weeks.