Chronicles of Narnia: LWW
Dec. 16th, 2005 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
green_amberProbably no spoilers.. (hmm.. well.. is it actually possible to have spoilers for Narnia anyway? Come on! Although it did turn out that Va age 15 had no idea it was a Christian allegory..)
The problem with the film of Narnia, is not that the film makers didn't make as good a fist at it as they could ; but that you simply can't make a film of Narnia in the naturalistic tradition, which is in any way faithful to the book, *and* which will appeal to the same adult audience that bought so profitably into LOTR. Lucy is far better cast than I dreaded from the trailers, Aslan's mane is rich and CGI perfect, and I genuinely wanted to bury my face in it (although that could be because he looks slightly like a giant version of my cat Java - "aw kitty!" I muttered on his first appearance.) . And Tilda Swinton is as good as anyone could ever desire as the Boadicea version of the White Witch (two handed sword play! John Woo eat your heart out!) No, the casting, acting, sets and SFX are largely fine. Even the children's E C Nesbit British upper crust accents and demeanour are, of course, absolutely justifiable, and narrowly but successfully avoid sounding like the Famous Five in the Comic Strip Presents... But..
The L, the W and the W is fundamentally a children's book encompassing an allegorised version for children of a mythic tale for adults: the death and resurrection of Christ. As it is an allegory for children, its heroes are children. LOTR on the other hand gives us a mythic tale for adults (albeit child-like adults) whose heroes are adults. As such we can engage reasonably, both emotionally and intellectally, with the passions, the fighting and the romance (such as it is) of LOTR when filmed on the big screen, becaue it looks sensible: we expect adults to be able to perform such acts of derring do and we can thrill to their nobility.
But Narnia gives us a world where we simultaneously have to believe in Father Xmas turning up to give gifts to little children, and a few days or weeks later, in those same children killing wolves and fighting hags in battles as people who will become great warriers of myth. In the later books, when Peter reminisces about finding his sword again, "with it I killed the Wolf", we remember it as an act of courage , of nobility and of passage to adulthood. On screen, it's a 14 (?)year old sticking a toy sword in an overgrown alsation while his sisters hide up a tree. More Huckleberry Finn than Aragorn, and the 15 year old next to me was stifling a laugh not a tear.
Plus the fact that the climactic battle scene, which as many people have observed could have been CGIed in from LOTR, substituting hags and centaurs for orcs and elves, is everything that matters in LOTR and justly over the top, but in LWW really doesn't matter. Once Aslan has risen again, we KNOW that good will triumph. The battle is more or less there only for Peter to prove himself and Edmund to redeem himself. Neither really works here. Peter going into Aragorn slo-mo battle fury just looks silly; and Edmund's death rattle is petulant not heart rending. Lucy's smile as she goes off to heal the sick with her cordial is not the smile of Lucy the Valiant who has become a Queen warrior of Narnia, but of a girl who's discovered her Transformers toy works after all when you put the batteries in properly. This isn't the fault of the actors. The problem is that within filmic naturalism, we can't possibly believe in children acting as adults as quickly as LWW demands.
((Which still isn't any excuse for why grown up Peter and Edmund appear to have been cast out of a 60's German porno movie. But let's skip that.))
The answer of course would be to make the film in stylised form - anime, cartoon - somewhere where children wielding swords doesn't look silly. But I suspect the main audience of 30-40somethings, who are so profitably enjoying these adaptations of their childhood reading, really wanted live action and only live action. New Zealand may have a lot to answer for.
The problem with the film of Narnia, is not that the film makers didn't make as good a fist at it as they could ; but that you simply can't make a film of Narnia in the naturalistic tradition, which is in any way faithful to the book, *and* which will appeal to the same adult audience that bought so profitably into LOTR. Lucy is far better cast than I dreaded from the trailers, Aslan's mane is rich and CGI perfect, and I genuinely wanted to bury my face in it (although that could be because he looks slightly like a giant version of my cat Java - "aw kitty!" I muttered on his first appearance.) . And Tilda Swinton is as good as anyone could ever desire as the Boadicea version of the White Witch (two handed sword play! John Woo eat your heart out!) No, the casting, acting, sets and SFX are largely fine. Even the children's E C Nesbit British upper crust accents and demeanour are, of course, absolutely justifiable, and narrowly but successfully avoid sounding like the Famous Five in the Comic Strip Presents... But..
The L, the W and the W is fundamentally a children's book encompassing an allegorised version for children of a mythic tale for adults: the death and resurrection of Christ. As it is an allegory for children, its heroes are children. LOTR on the other hand gives us a mythic tale for adults (albeit child-like adults) whose heroes are adults. As such we can engage reasonably, both emotionally and intellectally, with the passions, the fighting and the romance (such as it is) of LOTR when filmed on the big screen, becaue it looks sensible: we expect adults to be able to perform such acts of derring do and we can thrill to their nobility.
But Narnia gives us a world where we simultaneously have to believe in Father Xmas turning up to give gifts to little children, and a few days or weeks later, in those same children killing wolves and fighting hags in battles as people who will become great warriers of myth. In the later books, when Peter reminisces about finding his sword again, "with it I killed the Wolf", we remember it as an act of courage , of nobility and of passage to adulthood. On screen, it's a 14 (?)year old sticking a toy sword in an overgrown alsation while his sisters hide up a tree. More Huckleberry Finn than Aragorn, and the 15 year old next to me was stifling a laugh not a tear.
Plus the fact that the climactic battle scene, which as many people have observed could have been CGIed in from LOTR, substituting hags and centaurs for orcs and elves, is everything that matters in LOTR and justly over the top, but in LWW really doesn't matter. Once Aslan has risen again, we KNOW that good will triumph. The battle is more or less there only for Peter to prove himself and Edmund to redeem himself. Neither really works here. Peter going into Aragorn slo-mo battle fury just looks silly; and Edmund's death rattle is petulant not heart rending. Lucy's smile as she goes off to heal the sick with her cordial is not the smile of Lucy the Valiant who has become a Queen warrior of Narnia, but of a girl who's discovered her Transformers toy works after all when you put the batteries in properly. This isn't the fault of the actors. The problem is that within filmic naturalism, we can't possibly believe in children acting as adults as quickly as LWW demands.
((Which still isn't any excuse for why grown up Peter and Edmund appear to have been cast out of a 60's German porno movie. But let's skip that.))
The answer of course would be to make the film in stylised form - anime, cartoon - somewhere where children wielding swords doesn't look silly. But I suspect the main audience of 30-40somethings, who are so profitably enjoying these adaptations of their childhood reading, really wanted live action and only live action. New Zealand may have a lot to answer for.
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Date: 2005-12-17 11:09 am (UTC)