The Chronicles
Yesterday I saw the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time. Yes I know I am slow but this is kind of a hectic season for a music minister. Besides, I haven't really wanted to brave the Christmas crowds let alone the Christmas movie going crowds. We caught a matinee and I saved 4 bucks. I remember when the matinee at the Fox theater downtown was 25 cents...groan! (You can interpret the groan to mean whatever you want). I plunked down 11 dollars for two tickets.
We had just finished reading the book to my 6 year old a couple of weeks ago and last week were listening to the Focus on the Family Radio version, which I might add, is very good and much more suitable for young children than the movie.
My kids had already given me a pretty accurate review of the film. These are some of my reflections.
I was impressed with the train ride intro at the beginning. I thought, “Man! If the rest of the movie is filmed like this, this aught to be good” Overall I liked the film. The children actors were very, very good. They were the focus of the film. I thought most of the effects and animations were pretty well done, though there were a few moments when the live subjects were unnaturally oriented to the animation. The actors' eyes looked past Aslan as they spoke to him in one very obvious instance. Something you would see in early live/animation combination films. This surprised me because they did some very hard things very well. I thought the good creatures were especially well done.
I must admit that I was somewhat disappointed with a few things about the film. Number one, the unnecessary absence of certain inspired dialog that is in the book. The genius of Lewis' writing is in these lines. They contain the theology of the work. Sometimes they went for the cute quip that didn't fit. I felt the screen play often said what could have been left out, and tried to express visually what really should have been said. Healing others with the cordial looks like Lucy's idea rather than Aslan's, “How many more must die for Edmund?“ The classic, often quoted line about Aslan not being “safe“, but “good“... was relegated to a postscript instead of creating the anticipation of meeting him produced in the books. In fact, the whole dialog with the beavers designed in the book to create this anticipation was sacrificed to the wolves. Too much focus on the wolves, not enough on Aslan. Much of the dialog that connected the children to the Lion was omitted...like that which occurred on the final walk to stone table. Sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures, if the pictures are vague. I found myself saying "Why is Lucy crying about Aslan's death?” They hadn't built the verbal relationship well enough. I kept trying to think of what my reaction would be like if I had never read the book. Would it make me want to read the book?
Secondly, I felt the film vacillated between being trying to be a scary "Lord of the Rings" wannabe and a children's fantasy. It brings to mind a line in the book where Lewis writes about not going too far describing the scary details or else your parents wouldn't let you read the story.
Having said all this. There were many great scenes...especially appealing to the young and adventurous. I felt it was consistent with the book and told parts of the story well. I was just hoping for a home run on this one. I definitely want to see it again. And I look forward to seeing the rest of the series should it all come about. Long live Aslan!
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