Hollywood has treated us to some great visual adaptations of the written word; The Godfather series remains a shining example for movie buffs everywhere. In the genre of fantasy fiction, the LOTR series managed to faithfully capture a vast, sweeping tale set in imaginary worlds, filled with imaginary creatures. “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” tries to follow in these legendary footsteps, only to stumble and fall.
The Chronicles consisted of a seven-book series penned by C.S. Lewis. The first book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), starts in London during the dark days when German armies sat atop a shaken Europe and German bombers pounded the cities of Britain. The main characters are a set of four siblings, with the eldest Peter looking after Susan, Edmund and little Lucy. They (like so many thousands of children were in real life) are evacuated to safer surroundings in the sparsely populated countryside. Boarding with a grouchy spinster of a housekeeper and a reclusive professor, the children are soon bored. Then they discover the Wardrobe and the adventure begins.
This particular wardrobe happens to be a portal to the land of Narnia, a beautiful fantasy land covered in snow and inhabited by talking animals and creatures like fauns and centaurs. The four kids soon discover that their idyllic, “secret world” land is a dark and dangerous place. A legendary Prophecy seems to foresee the four of them sitting on the ancient thrones of Narnia. Of course, like any decent Prophecy, this one has a Catch: they need to battle against the Witch, the self-declared Queen of Narnia.
She rules with an iron fist and, quite literally, a cold heart; her cast has plunged Narnia into 100 years’ of winter, and she can quick-freeze her enemies. Opposing her is Aslan, the natural King of Narnia, who needs the help of our four adventurers to finally overcome the Witch. From here on, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a roller-coater ride as the children’s characters grow, discovering hidden strengths and learning to conquer old weaknesses.
And now to the 2006 movie based on the book.
Having read the Chronicles a few years back, I had forgotten the details, but remembered the grandeur of the story. The movie, constrained by market-friendly statistics, tries to capture this grandeur in a couple of hours. It fails. The characters came across as monochromatic; the surly kid is always surly, the cute one is always cute, and the Witch always looks at the peak of her lifetime’s worse PMS. Even Aslan, the great lion, is reduced to a few minutes of on-screen presence and magnified roars.
Not good.
What was good was the overall visual spectacle. The movie is beautifully shot, with a memorable opening sequence of a German bombing raid, and fantastic Narnia locales. The CGI department provides the various creatures with amazing presence (I especially liked the beaver). The kids do a decent acting job, considering that some of the characters were only added in post-production.
Yet, overall, the magic of Hollywood has definitely diluted the magic of the original tale.
P.S. For the pro-Hollywood brigade, here’s an interesting bit of trivia: In the mid-1990s, a Hollywood studio planned a version of this book where the four kids would stay with a professor in Los Angeles, to keep safe from earthquakes. It never went into production. (https://factmonster.com/spot/narnia-lookback.html)
Thank God for small mercies.