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Narnia-related question: I was talking with some folks about the Narnia movie, and someone said that C. S. Lewis had renounced Christianity (this is what they said they remembered from the Shadowlands movie). I said I was pretty sure he hadn't, that Lewis was such a prominent Christian that if he had done so I would've read about that somewhere... so, Lewis kept his faith, right?
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I don't think the movie was better than the book. It adds a lot that I think it important, but it also takes away some too, though not much, little things that I found myself missing from the movie.
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There were things in it that bothered my cinematically snarky side: some of the cuts too clearly made things easier to shoot or were "flinches" to keep the PG from reaching PG-13, and a certain scene with a healing potion that's supposed to be able to heal any injury neglects to heal one really obvious visible wound.
But that, again, is the cynically snarky side of me. By and large, I'd tend to agree with OSC's review. The characters are well drawn, the effects are amazing, the performances are uniformly good (and Tilda Swinton is remarkable), and I think I'm going to have to buy a copy of the soundtrack.
By all means, go. I wouldn't recommend bringing children younger than, say, six. But by all means, hire a sitter and go.
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I actually approve of the cuts and the limits on the violence. We saw the parts we needed to see to know what was happening, and if the majority of it occurred from a distance, that is as far as I am concerned good film storytelling.
The point of the tale is the magic and the family coming together. The battles are not the real story being told, they are just the device that moves the story forward.
Posts: 38 | Registered: Oct 2005
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About that Allegory thing: This seems like a good time and place to ask..
Aslan's sacrifice in LW&W always made perfectly good sense to me, it saves Edmund from the bad guys in a very direct and necessary manner. Jesus' sacrifice in the Bible, not so easy. This one, apparently, saves humanity from themselves, for reasons and by means that are not clear at all. Aside from Narnia, all other works of fiction that deal with this event seem to focus exclusively on how nasty the sacrifice was, and just take it as given that you already know what it was for.
So I could really use an explicitly illustrated link between the story of Narnia, which I can actually understand, and the New Testament. Anyone here have a link to an essay along those lines, a book title, or suchlike?
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I didn't notice much about the child acting, as I was distracted by the huge teeth.
Aslan was great. I love Liam Neeson's voice. I would have liked Aslan to be... more, though. More magical, or something. It was competent, and I misted up a few times. Better than the book? Probably. I'm sure my imagination supplied a lot when I read it as a young'un.
But I still pretty much agreed with the B rating EW gave it.
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Marc – as a direct allegory, Aslan’s sacrifice refers to one particular theory of Christ’s death – the Ransom theory, where the blood of traitors belonged to Satan and was “paid” by Jesus instead. It was the most common interpretation for many years, but not followed so much anymore.
Decent brief explanation of the theory and the reasons it fell out of favor here. (Disclaimer – I’m not familiar with the site, I just did a quick google and this one seemed to combine the virtues of reasonable accuracy with reasonable simplicity.)
The various atonement theories are themselves allegories – attempts to explain the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus using metaphors that people are familiar with – at various times in history ransom, feudal honor, and law courts have been the dominant metaphor.
So the Aslan/Stone table thing is an allegory of an allegory, and it works better if you don’t stretch it too far or try to force fit everything into one-to-one connections.
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quote:I didn't notice much about the child acting, as I was distracted by the huge teeth.
Me too! My friend and I had roughly 14 one-liners about British dental care.
I thought it was amazing, though.
The battle scenes bugged me a little bit, though, just from a tactical standpoint. But that's typical, and it didn't make me enjoy it any less.
I didn't care for the performance of Lucy, but I loved Liam Neeson as Aslan. Although I kept calling him Qui Gonn.
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quote:as a direct allegory, Aslan’s sacrifice refers to one particular theory of Christ’s death – the Ransom theory, where the blood of traitors belonged to Satan and was “paid” by Jesus instead. It was the most common interpretation for many years, but not followed so much anymore.
I think this the reason I loved the Narnia books but did not recognize them as Christian allegory until I was in college. The theory of the atonement that I knew was not the one referred to in the books, so when the Deep Magic demanded Edmund's blood, I thought it was plot device, and I was annoyed with Edmund. That whole section didn't really make sense to me, but it's a fantasy novel - they have their own rules.
I also think that the way I thought of God was different from Aslan's character - I was much more aquainted with the Loving Father aspect, so "Not a Tame Lion" didn't ring any bells.
I post this to justify why I didn't recognize the allegory. I watched it with Matt on Friday, and the conversation went like this:
Katie: "I didn't know this was the Christ story when I read it." <Tumnus calls Lucy a Daughter of Eve> Matt: "Really?" Katie: "Yeah, it was a great fantasy, but nothing I recognized." <Aslan is killed for the sake of Edmund> Matt: "Really?" Katie: "There were talking animals! I didn't know it was referring to something real." <Tumnus promises that Aslan will always love Lucy and will come back again someday> Matt: "Really?"
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Slate has a good article on the christian aspects of the Narnia books.
I tried to summarize it here for about 5 minutes, but I don't have the skill to do it without confusing anyone or misquoting her.
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quote:Originally posted by Ser Bronn Stone: I actually approve of the cuts and the limits on the violence. We saw the parts we needed to see to know what was happening, and if the majority of it occurred from a distance, that is as far as I am concerned good film storytelling.
The point of the tale is the magic and the family coming together. The battles are not the real story being told, they are just the device that moves the story forward.
Please understand, I'm glad it's PG, and I'm not suggesting that it should be a bloodbath. But my awareness of the reasons for those cuts distracts me from my suspension of disbelief.
And, while I wouldn't include the (fantasy!) Narnia in such considerations, I can't help but wonder sometimes if presenting violence as neat and clean is really that helpful for children. Certainly a lot of movies go way over the top, but in a way a (PG) movie that allows dozens of people to be gunned down bloodlessly doesn't to my mind deserve consideration over a (R) movie that has one person get shot and suffer.
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That last post just reminded me. When the witch kills Fox by turning him into stone, a little 7 year old (or so) girl the row in front of us started crying quite a bit--the scared kind of crying. She obviously hasn't been desensitized enough.
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I child in my audience, when Susan and Lucy were stroking the dead Aslan, asked, "Is he going to wake up?"
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There were several children in my audience crying and screaming at things they saw in the movie.
Making it G rated would have just been silly. As it was, I think they should have made it PG-13, and included a little bit of blood. I don't mean gore, it's not a horror movie, but I too felt some of my suspension of disbelief washing away a bit.
I found myself indifferent about Aslan's voice. I was expecting to hate it, and while I didn't REALLY hate it, I didn't really like it either. If only James Earl Jones hadn't been Mufasa.
With the exception if certain parts of the battle scenes, I found myself somewhat underwhelmed by the movie. The PotC trailer almost had me more excited at times.
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DKW - Many thanks. Clearly lots of further reading to do, but at least I now know which allegory it's an allegory of. Knowledge of the phrase "Atonement Theory", in particular, is exactly the kind of thing I needed, that's a key that opens up a whole new library.
Off to dig up the paperbacks again - I found out today that there's someone on the planet who's never even seen them. This shall not be permitted..
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Knowledge of the phrase "Atonement Theory", in particular, is exactly the kind of thing I needed, that's a key that opens up a whole new library.
