Flashes of Panic

I saw The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe yesterday. I hit a late-afternoon showing at a poorly-located theater, which meant there were three of us in the theater. (This is rivaled only by the time, in a former job, when the office rented a van to see Prefontaine, and after the first of us bought his ticket, the teller picked up a phone; when we went in, we realized he’d been calling up to the projection room to say, “Looks like you’ll have to show it after all.”)

I think the last time I read the books, I took them out of the Allentown Public Library, which would put it, probably, in summer ‘96. I figured I would have forgotten some details, but apparently I nearly memorized the books the first time around. (Who, in elementary school, wouldn’t have wanted to come back from Narnia with sword and shield to visit vengeance on the bullies? It was my favorite part of The Silver Chair.) There was nothing which disappointed me by its absence: someone else noted that the books are short enough that little needs cutting to fit a feature-length movie (unlike, say, The Lord of the Rings.)

Anyone who’s avoiding the movie because of “the Christian allegory” should go see it anyway. There is precisely one major plot point which parallels the New Testament, and if there are church groups taking their children to see it, they’ll need to do some explaining to make sure their children get the point.

Was I blown away? No, not really. I think the books remain ten times stronger than the film; they are better paced, and because they describe just enough and leave out just enough, any reader with an active imagination has far more vivid pictures in their head than can be realized on film. The scene at the Stone Table, in particular, was much more cold and dreadful in print. Also, the books communicated the passage of time in a way the movie didn’t. But other things took. Lucy, for example, somehow reminded me of my younger niece, and the sorrow or joy on her face moved me more than whatever was moving her.

That’s a pretty mixed evaluation. I guess I’d sum it up as “not as good as the book,” but that doesn’t make it a bad movie by any stretch. I hope they continue the series; I’m looking forward to the Voyage and The Horse and His Boy particularly.

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