The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

In many ways my reactions to the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe were similar to my reactions to the first book in the series by C. S. Lewis. The first volume is the best volume, and it has a certain novelty that glosses over the allegory and the stilted characters. There is a fundamental illogicality to the land of Narnia--centaurs, fauns, Christ-like lions, a white witch, and so on--the same sort of illogicality you find in the world of the wizards in the Harry Potter series. This world in the first Narnia book is so new, and the surprise of the discovery of the world through the wardrobe so compelling, that the first book is a fun and pleasant read. In the later books the allegory and the Sunday School elements become overbearing, the lack of character development more irritating, and the tendency to cast characters out of Narnia once they go through puberty and become fallen adults just a little too much.

The film as a whole is slow and has something of the quality of a mystery play—characters going through the motions, carrying out their roles, fulfilling their destinies, not because they have the choice to do so but because they are compelled by the design of the plot. There is the cute little sister whose pure faith makes her the appropriate child to be the first to discover Narnia. There is the older brother, the reluctant prince who rises to the challenge of saving Narnia and becoming its king. There is the errant and jealous little brother—seduced by the white witch’s offer of chocolate—who is later redeemed back into the loyal fold. There are the talking beavers and fauns and horses and so on. Everything you expect and want to find, all lumped in there together.

A number of scenes are staged on easily recognizable sets, and they have something of the quality of the scenes in the original Star Trek series--a certain cheesiness, though executed with more technical aplomb than was possible forty years ago. The digital effects are often easy to recognize, but they are also well done, and the talking beavers and Aslan himself—that divine lion—are impressive, as are the digital natural settings—sunsets, fields, forests.

Overall, Narnia in this film is claustrophobic and artificial. The obvious comparison is with the Lord of the Rings series, directed by Peter Jackson. The comparison is obvious because the the films are all of a type, the Rings films came out shortly before the Narnia film, and because Lewis and Tolkien themselves were friends. While Lewis’s world is to me a false and artificial one, there is something potentially real about Tolkien’s world, something that Jackson succeeds in conveying in his films. Tolkien knew how to develop characters, how to cloak allegorical meaning and themes in the action and setting of his story, how to make you care about the characters and to be uncertain of their fates and intentions, how to make you feel that something of dire importance is at stake, not only to the future of Middle Earth but to human history. You feel in the Lord of the Ring trilogy—both the books and the films—that the world of Middle Earth extends outside the geographical and temporal limitations of the story, and indeed if you’ve read the Silmarillion and other works by Tolkien you know that in his own mind it did.

Ultimately, the filmmakers wanted the first Chronicles of Narnia to be a feel-good film. Making his audience feel good was not Jackson’s main intention. Nor was it, for that matter, Tolkien’s intention, or even Lewis’s. Unfortunately, Lewis’s inventiveness ran out in the later novels, his characters remained flat, his intentions became obvious. Tolkien’s inventiveness was alive to the last sentence of his last novel, his characters recognizable, their intentions complex, mysterious, and real.