Nan handa la Ollohtar; I am smarter than C.S. Lewis
I have now had the pleasure of seeing the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe three times. The first time I saw it was on the evening of my birthday, when my lovely and soon-to-depart roommie ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
supermer gave me a surprise party. My impression was that the film was good but not great; and I had wanted it to be great, so I was somewhat disappointed. The second time I saw it, I liked it far better. The third time, when I saw it with my mom and grandparents, I liked it as much as if not more than I liked it the second time. I can't say what has made it grow on me. I now love the film.
Of course, since I am a self-important lit snob, I must have a negative criticism or two, but they are minor. One is that the film features female centaurs when there are no such creatures in mythology. (I understand male centaurs to reproduce with human females; but perhaps the lack of humans in Narnia necessitates female centaurs and negates this criticism.) Also, I believe the novel states that the White Witch has blood-red lips. The film's witch is entirely pale. I remember imagining the witch with black hair, but I'm not sure the book says so, and the blond witch may be a perfectly legitimate reading.
More annoying is that the film declares the witch's name to be Jadis. I don't remember that name's being mentioned in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It is first mentioned in The Magician's Nephew as the name of a witch whose connection with the White Witch is unclear. They may be the same person, or they may be relations, or they may be similar only in their skills and desire for power.
Perhaps the most annoying thing about the film is the professor's speech about why Peter and Susan should believe Lucy about the world in the wardrobe. The film's professor does question what "they teach in schools these days," but he doesn't go through the brief but compelling arguments about why the gateway might disappear and reappear and why going to another world would take none of this world's time. The film's professor also takes an enormous illogical leap by suggesting Peter and Susan should believe Lucy simply because she is their sister and they are a family, while at the same time they shouldn't believe Edmund, their brother, even though he, too, is family.
The special effects seemed strained to me on the first viewing (maybe I'm still a bit LOTR-dazzled), but I liked them better on subsequent viewings. The visuals in general were stunning.
As I've seen the film, I have developed a particular dislike for Peter, which few others seem to share. Peter (and, for that matter, Susan and post-redemption Edmund) in the books has no personality. (Lucy is the only Pevensie with a somewhat developed character. Narnians like Tumnus and Puddleglum are much more rounded and likable.) The film's Peter is bossy and annoying. He rebukes Susan for "trying to be smart" when hesitating to cross the dangerous river. As for Edmund, I sympathize with Edmund for bucking Peter's authority, not because I approve of what Edmund does but because Peter is domineering and condescending. I can't remember Peter's giving Edmund one kind word. He calls Edmund "selfish" for going back into the house after his father's picture when Edmund obviously needs comfort, not criticism. He rebukes and shoves Edmund for Edmund's "encouraging" Lucy in her tales of Narnia. Peter physically threatens Edmund and frightens him into obeying Peter's decree "Apologize to Lucy!" Yes, Edmund is rebellious and secretive, but such treatment is not going to encourage him to open up to his siblings. It will only estrange him from them and encourage him in his victim attitude.
Even after Edmund is rescued and returned to his siblings, Peter has no true kind word for him. The sisters hug him; Peter smiles and says, "And Ed, try not to wander off." Once again, he is asserting his authority and doing so at a time when Edmund needs comfort and forgiveness. Edmund is fatally wounded by the White Witch and is rescued only by Lucy's miraculous fireflower juice. What does Peter say to him? "When are you going to learn to do as you're told?"
Peter also makes his "duties" as eldest his privilege to do what he will not allow the others to do, risk death for Narnia. They all must go back home because their mother charged Peter with their protection, but Peter may fight and die and be a hero, even though his mother would mourn his passing just as much as she would that of any of her younger children. Though he won't admit it, Peter, too, is a child, not any more a soldier than his younger siblings. Hence Edmund's one outburst "You think you're Dad, but you're not!"
All these traits considered, I am annoyed that Peter gets to be high king and "The Magnificent." What is so magnificent about him? It can only be his cleverness at being born first.
Now, as blasphemous as it may seem, I have to say my favorite character in the film was the White Witch. I do not mean that I approve of her actions, of course, but that she is quite impressive and by far the most compelling. If I could play anyone, I would want to play her. But the actress does a phenomenal job. Every look, gesture, and line she delivers with perfect imperiousness. Her chain-mail dress (my favorite of her costumes; I want one) might be awkward and unwieldy for some, but on her it is a great and terrible battle costume, at once spectacular and deadly. She is insidious in duping Edmund, inexorable in her pursuit of the Pevensie children, and exquisitely cruel in the slaying of Aslan. All in all, she is a master villainess, one we love to hate and cannot help but admire, comparable to Satan in Paradise Lost.
The film, much more than the book, gives me an insight into the witch's character that I find most intriguing. I am convinced that, at least on an unconscious level, she wants Aslan to kill her. She almost admits it before she slays him on the Stone Table. She says she's "disappointed" in Aslan for what she perceives as his folly in allowing her to kill him. She does not know he will be resurrected. As she perceives it, if she kills him, she has defeated him. She will have proven herself greater than he, greater than the Great Lion, Son of the Emperor-Over-Sea. She will, on some level, have earned the right to be Queen of Narnia.
So why is she disappointed? Why is she not simply glad, relieved, or even contemptuous? Evil masterminds (NTs, for the Myers-Briggs students among you) despise weakness and stupidity and certainly do not waste their admiration or affection on such. The witch is surrounded by the weak and/or the stupid. Her followers love her (stupid, for she does not love them) or fear her (weak). With such beings she can have no fellowship. Among them she is the greatest and, by consequence, quite alone; worse than alone, because she has no one to admire, revere, or fear. If there is no one greater than she, the world holds nothing to awe or intrigue her; the world is disappointing.
But there is Aslan, her great foe, her only real threat, the only being she knows possibly greater than she. The films may not make it clear, but the books indicate that to meet Aslan is a numinous experience. Aslan tells the witch not to cite the deep magic to him, for he "was there when it was written." He is older, wiser, more powerful. He alone has the power to awe the White Witch. His being makes the world greater than what it would otherwise be, mere armies she can crush, a grain of sand she can hold in her hand. He makes the world wonderful, for he is wonderful.
The witch has two options for how to respond to Aslan: She can acknowledge his superiority, either by submitting to him or by leaving his domain; or she can challenge his authority and make him prove it. She chooses the second. There are two possible outcomes: Aslan will defeat her and prove his superiority, or she will defeat Aslan and prove hers.
When the witch slays Aslan on the Stone Table, she thinks she has defeated him and proven her superiority. By killing him, she has removed the last bit of wonder from the world. It is once again grown small and containable. No one now is greater than she. She mows down her opponents in battle without the ceremony and awe that were at Aslan's death. They do not deserve it.
And then a miracle. Aslan is not defeated. He is resurrected, powerful, numinous, terrible, wonderful. He is, and the world is wonderful. The witch is awed. Even as she turns to kill Peter, she knows Aslan is coming for her, coming to kill her, coming to defeat her. And when he throws her to the ground, her last expression is not of fear and not of hatred. It is awe.
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So how am I smarter than C.S. Lewis, you ask? It is simply that I (and Disney, it seems) know in what order his books should be read better than he. They are to be read in the order he wrote them, not in chronological order, even if the man himself said so. I am disturbed that I can no longer find a collection of the Narnia books with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as No. 1, The Horse and His Boy as No. 5, and The Magician's Nephew as No. 6. Sadly, I did not get my own copies until they were published only in the incorrect order.
Yes, Nephew is chronologically first. Yes, it explains how Narnia came to be, how the witch might have gotten there, how the wardrobe was made, and how the professor is so ready to believe the Pevensie children. None of those are reasons that it should be read first.
The new Star Wars trilogy occurs chronologically before the original. It tells (albeit sometimes poorly) the backstories of several characters and explains how the emperor came to power. Should it be seen before the original? No. It is designed to be seen afterward. There is no entertainment or dramatic benefit to knowing already that C3PO was made by Anakin/Vader when beginning to watch the original trilogy. There is both in finding it out after seeing the original trilogy. Obi Wan's remark to Anakin "you'll be the death of me" is obviously meant to be heard once we know that Anakin as Vader will kill Obi Wan. But these little things are not so important as is the fact that the new trilogy fills in blanks and questions raised by the original, questions we don't think to ask until seeing the original, questions to which the answers, if known before seeing the original, make the original less grand and dramatic. The scope of the new trilogy is much larger, making the original seem hardly epic. Anakin/Vader becomes much more complex and compelling in the new trilogy, making the original Vader rather two-dimensional. And finally, who would want to ruin "Luke, I am your father" for the audience? No. The new trilogy is chronologically first but made to be seen after the original.
It is so with the Narnia books. The wardrobe gateway into Narnia is much more unexpected and magical if we do not know the wardrobe's connection with Narnia that we learn in Nephew. We feel a resonance between the adventures of Polly and Digory and those of the Pevensie children when we later find out the wardrobe connection. Also, Nephew's network of universes in the wood between the worlds makes Narnia and Calormen seem smaller and less impressive if known beforehand. Let there be some mystery surrounding Aslan when we meet him for the first time, as there is for the Pevensie children, as there is for the disciples when Jesus first calls them, when they have not yet seen him glorified. Let the backstory further magnify the characters and the setting we have already discovered and found beautiful, rather than have it cow the story that we read later.
Finally, let me inform those who have been blasted with entertainment news concerning the film that yes, there are many Christian overtones, and no, it is not a conspiracy. The spiritual themes of the Narnia stories is not a recent discovery, not something exciting and new as it is being made out. Disney is not conspiring with Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ. The stories are fifty years old, and there is nothing secret about their symbolism, tone, or spiritual theme. Lewis was a Christian and the author of much more Christian apologetic work than fiction.
That said, the stories can be read and the film viewed and enjoyed with no knowledge of scripture or doctrine. The stories stand on their own as great fantasy works.
