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I'm frozen heavenly and I like the way you leave me cold
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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??
You must, if you haven't. I was just thinking that I need to see it again. It's been years.
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Nine
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[ducks and runs]
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*pursues with chainsaw*
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I also liked the sense one had that each of the siblings really did have distinct relationships with each of the others.
And Edmund's betrayal of Lucy after his first visit to Narnia still has the ability to make me every bit as uneasy as Aslan's sacrifice. Maybe more so. It's the single most uncomfortable moment of the book, for me.
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"Aslan!" said Eustace. "I've heard that name mentioned several times since we joined the Dawn Treader. And I felt—I don't know what—I hated it. But I was hating everything then. And by the way, I'd like to apologise. I'm afraid I've been pretty beastly."
"That's all right," said Edmund. "Between ourselves, you haven't been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia. You were only an ass, but I was a traitor."
—which does rather put everything into perspective for Eustace.
And Edmund's betrayal of Lucy after his first visit to Narnia still has the ability to make me every bit as uneasy as Aslan's sacrifice. Maybe more so. It's the single most uncomfortable moment of the book, for me.
When he betrays his family to the White Witch, he has some excuse that he doesn't yet really understand who she is and what she's capable of. She's promised him the world, she's told him exactly what he wants to hear and seduced him half like a mother, half like a lover (and she's cool as flint all the while, which makes her all the more terrifying), and he's resentful and dazzled and susceptible. He's out of his league. But when he betrays Lucy, he knows exactly what he's doing, he knows how much hurt it will cause her, and he does it anyway: for no more reason than spite and guilt. And that hurts!
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An interesting thought, that.
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It fascinates me how fantasy stories, or at least the demonstrably popular ones, are receiving such reverent treatment by the movies, while beloved sf tales suffer one indignity after another (I, Robot?).
I first saw Tilda Swinton in The Deep End. She has a chilly role there of a different sort.
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Yes. It's always wonderful to see someone else's vision of something that (at least in my case) was embedded in your imagination at an early age, and realize that it's still right.
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Aside from creating a dramatic contrast, I thought that the air raid scene was the most graceful way they could have introduced contemporary young people to the story's cultural context. Remember that nobody in Lewis's original audience needed to be told what the London Blitz was.
What I loved most about Tilda Swinton's performance was the underlying artificiality whenever she tried to express any kind of non-threatening emotion in Edmund's direction. It was a lovely touch to remind us that her character is not, in fact, human.
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Ye gods and little fishes.
Remember that nobody in Lewis's original audience needed to be told what the London Blitz was.
I had actually forgotten, until I re-read the book at the beginning of this break, that the whole reason the Pevensie children are being sent away to the country is the Blitz. I always remember in the case of A Tale of Time City, but my historical brain clearly checked out on this one . . .
the underlying artificiality whenever she tried to express any kind of non-threatening emotion in Edmund's direction.
Yes. She is always faintly, perceptibly off. I was sorry they had to lose the line about her as a Daughter of Lilith, because that always made so much mythical sense to me, but you would still never have taken her for human. (Plus I know Tilda Swinton can't really be seven feet tall, but my God: she looks it.)
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---L.
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Nine