Freckles & Doubt (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
freckles_and_doubt) wrote2006-01-03 01:49 pm
freckles_and_doubt) wrote2006-01-03 01:49 pm
Entry tags:
cats and cupboards and things
Narnia! Well, now. What a remarkably faithful adaptation: hardly a moral platitude out of place. In preparation for one of my lone, self-indulgent cinema jaunts this morning, I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe again last night, as a refresher. It's one of those books I must have read twenty or thirty times, and every time I re-read it, I've forgotten both how enchanting the world is, and how flat, stale and basically priggish the message. I still haven't recovered from the betrayal, at about 14, of suddenly realising that the bastard was pushing Christian allegory under the guise of fantasy, all along. Aslan, shmaslan.
That being said, the film does a remarkable job of avoiding drawing overt attention to the allegory, while still being true to the moral message. Hell, it even pulls off the impossible task of making those four cardboard cut-out Nice Moral Children into actual human beings, and rationalising the really dreadfully thin psychology behind their actions. (Allegory does tend to reduce everyone into a Single Moral Aspect. Lousy genre). One of the reasons the book has adapted so well to cinema, though, is that it's so thin and flat; it reads like a not particularly good film script, anyway. When you get down to it, the events it describes are almost exactly right for a longish movie; no need to cut stuff out, and in fact there's space for padding with the actual interactions of actual people. And as good little Hollywoodised movie-watchers, we tend to expect a certain degree of allegorical reductionism in mainstream movie characters, anyway, so it's all good.
That being said, visually, Narnia stunned: kind of the kiddie-safe, cosy, domestic version of Lord of the Rings, battles small and manageable, no nasties too nasty, but some truly lovely realisations of the book. Things I really liked:
As a brief tangent: every time I go to the cinema, I am honestly appalled that they are still running that ghastly, patronising, lame, limp, deeply reactionary Spur ad. The one where all the dear little South African children run wild with the Noble Native American Savages, across the whole gamut of drums, face-paint, dancing round the fire, wild natural landscapes and feathers in the hair. And don't forget the apparently Great American Cheetah Cub, clearly a vital part of the Native American Experience. It's getting to the point where other people in the cinema are being badly distracted by my offended snorts.
I was, however, pleased to note that the latest Disney trailer (the one about cars) has come out of the closet and announces Disney and/or Pixar as the "manufacturer" of films, rather than the more arty "maker". A pleasingly honest acknowledgement of their essentially commercial purpose, I feel.
That being said, the film does a remarkable job of avoiding drawing overt attention to the allegory, while still being true to the moral message. Hell, it even pulls off the impossible task of making those four cardboard cut-out Nice Moral Children into actual human beings, and rationalising the really dreadfully thin psychology behind their actions. (Allegory does tend to reduce everyone into a Single Moral Aspect. Lousy genre). One of the reasons the book has adapted so well to cinema, though, is that it's so thin and flat; it reads like a not particularly good film script, anyway. When you get down to it, the events it describes are almost exactly right for a longish movie; no need to cut stuff out, and in fact there's space for padding with the actual interactions of actual people. And as good little Hollywoodised movie-watchers, we tend to expect a certain degree of allegorical reductionism in mainstream movie characters, anyway, so it's all good.
That being said, visually, Narnia stunned: kind of the kiddie-safe, cosy, domestic version of Lord of the Rings, battles small and manageable, no nasties too nasty, but some truly lovely realisations of the book. Things I really liked:
- The contextualisation in the blitz. Scary, and important.
- As aforementioned, the character development in the four children; Lucy, in particular, is a little charmer, and Edmund actually made far more sense than he does in the book. I liked the added depth given to Peter, too.
- Tilda Swinton was possibly born to play the White Witch; she was interestingly true to the terribly vulnerable evil of Jadis in The Magician's Nephew.
- The fauns were devastatingly cute, occupying the recently-recognised Endearing Hobbit Sidekick Niche immortalised by Merry and Pippin.
- Father Christmas was wearing slashed-sleeved Tudor! and wasn't the ho-ho-ho Coca-Cola version, which was a tremendous relief.
- Favourite Narnia image E-VAH is the battle charge with all the big cats among the horses and centaurs. Man, I love those Narnian big cats. Too cool.
- The merfolk jumping in front of Cair Paravel. Absolutely the quintessential Narnia moment.
- The fact that the last five minutes of the film retained the four kids as adults, despite the considerable confusion this must have caused to the average non-Narnia-sussed brain-dead cinemagoer. Not that I'm a snob, or anything. And they were beautifully cast, too. I was terrified they were going to lose that bit.
- The White Witch's truly odd hunchback. Honestly, her costume designer should be hauled over coals and then shot. What the hell was with the massive, upstanding, deformed collar thingies? Looked like hell.
- Aslan. Not golden enough, too real, not magical enough. Liam Neeson's voice worked, though.
- They rather short-changed the scene with Aslan restoring all the statues in the castle courtyard. Pity, it's one of my favourites.
- Random expansion of fox character. Unnecessary, even if it was a good Rupert Everett cameo, and tended to confuse things. Although I have to admit that, deep though my loathing is of CGI'd talking animals, these were very well done. Especially the beavers. And Aslan smiled like a great big cat - he kept on closing his eyes.
- A sort of lame Thomas Covenant miasma, in which they had to have the children attempt to deny their destiny as kings and queens. Dammit, if the magical world is giving you sudden, inexplicable skills with archery and swords (as it damned well ought to), the least you can do is relax and go with the flow. One of the things Lewis got right in the books was the way the Pevensie children simply accept Narnia. It worked.
As a brief tangent: every time I go to the cinema, I am honestly appalled that they are still running that ghastly, patronising, lame, limp, deeply reactionary Spur ad. The one where all the dear little South African children run wild with the Noble Native American Savages, across the whole gamut of drums, face-paint, dancing round the fire, wild natural landscapes and feathers in the hair. And don't forget the apparently Great American Cheetah Cub, clearly a vital part of the Native American Experience. It's getting to the point where other people in the cinema are being badly distracted by my offended snorts.
I was, however, pleased to note that the latest Disney trailer (the one about cars) has come out of the closet and announces Disney and/or Pixar as the "manufacturer" of films, rather than the more arty "maker". A pleasingly honest acknowledgement of their essentially commercial purpose, I feel.