I am returned from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which I saw with my mother this afternoon. Surprisingly enough, I really liked it. I'm not sure it's the best adaptation of a novel I've ever seen onscreen, and the first half is better than most of the second, but Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes are marvelous as Lucy and Edmund (who must be believable, or the story doesn't hold), I was very fond of James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus (who is my favorite character in the book, so I was in dread over him), and I remain unconvinced that Tilda Swinton is not, in fact, a Daughter of Lilith.*
Most of the slip-ups, I was even willing to forgive for some weirdly inspired piece of imagery. There is too much of the battle between Aslan's forces and the White Witch's, which takes up something like three pages, tops, in the edition I own—but the sight of the Witch in her spined and tawny battle regalia, like a dead winter with neither snow nor new green, and her chariot of polar bears, is worth at least its screen time. The opening scenes of the Blitz are nowhere to be found in the book, but their real-world terror strengthens all the high-fantasy contrasts of Narnia—especially Edmund's run back into the house, against his later, disobedient plunge into battle. The scenes in Aslan's camp are pageantry, but the sacrifice at the Stone Table has all the right mythic horror: I suppose it could be a crucifixion, but only if Hieronymus Bosch and Alan Garner had collaborated on it. I didn't even mind the added scenes with Mr. Tumnus and Edmund in captivity. About the only bit I would really have thrown out the window was the frozen waterfall and the first confrontation with Maugrim.** But then there was Jim Broadbent as Professor Kirke, to make up for it. I want to be that kind of professor when I grow up.
Instead, I got my New Year's resolution from a random generator:
You know, that's not an entirely useless piece of knowledge to have . . .
*Her White Witch looks nonhuman. There's not blood in her veins; there's only cold. Even when her winter melts, she is no more approachable: bare-armed, in dry black, at the Stone Table, she looks like a carrion crow embodied as an archaic koure. Her initial scenes with Edmund, too, were even more reminiscent of The Snow Queen than I had pictured; and it worked beautifully. I liked particularly the added touch that the food and drink she creates magically for Edmund are, as you see when her driver pitches the cup against a tree, nothing more than tricks of snow. She cannot really make anything warm.
**It's meant, I think, to ramp up the tension when Peter has to face the wolf—no Prokofiev jokes, please—over his sisters' lives, but it simply didn't work for me. I would rather have devoted those five or ten minutes to more character work, or even to some of the lines that I missed. Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters as deep as a spear is long on the World Ash Tree? Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea? There's always room for a little Norse myth . . .
Most of the slip-ups, I was even willing to forgive for some weirdly inspired piece of imagery. There is too much of the battle between Aslan's forces and the White Witch's, which takes up something like three pages, tops, in the edition I own—but the sight of the Witch in her spined and tawny battle regalia, like a dead winter with neither snow nor new green, and her chariot of polar bears, is worth at least its screen time. The opening scenes of the Blitz are nowhere to be found in the book, but their real-world terror strengthens all the high-fantasy contrasts of Narnia—especially Edmund's run back into the house, against his later, disobedient plunge into battle. The scenes in Aslan's camp are pageantry, but the sacrifice at the Stone Table has all the right mythic horror: I suppose it could be a crucifixion, but only if Hieronymus Bosch and Alan Garner had collaborated on it. I didn't even mind the added scenes with Mr. Tumnus and Edmund in captivity. About the only bit I would really have thrown out the window was the frozen waterfall and the first confrontation with Maugrim.** But then there was Jim Broadbent as Professor Kirke, to make up for it. I want to be that kind of professor when I grow up.
Instead, I got my New Year's resolution from a random generator:
In the year 2006 I resolve to: |
You know, that's not an entirely useless piece of knowledge to have . . .
*Her White Witch looks nonhuman. There's not blood in her veins; there's only cold. Even when her winter melts, she is no more approachable: bare-armed, in dry black, at the Stone Table, she looks like a carrion crow embodied as an archaic koure. Her initial scenes with Edmund, too, were even more reminiscent of The Snow Queen than I had pictured; and it worked beautifully. I liked particularly the added touch that the food and drink she creates magically for Edmund are, as you see when her driver pitches the cup against a tree, nothing more than tricks of snow. She cannot really make anything warm.
**It's meant, I think, to ramp up the tension when Peter has to face the wolf—no Prokofiev jokes, please—over his sisters' lives, but it simply didn't work for me. I would rather have devoted those five or ten minutes to more character work, or even to some of the lines that I missed. Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters as deep as a spear is long on the World Ash Tree? Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea? There's always room for a little Norse myth . . .
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