[Bêthberry]

Well, I have seen Narnia and so now I can commit an actual comparison of it with LotR on Estelyn's thread. And if, in attempting a coherent view, I go over ground already covered, please overlook the repetition.

Narnia is visually intoxicating. It is beautiful as LotR is beautiful visually, but more consistently so. I also really appreciated how the movie is, as best a movie can be, faithful to the tone and style of Lewis's work, which Jackson's LotR was not. imho. I came away wishing that LotR was more Tolkien and less Lucas or perhaps that should be, more consistently Jackson's own vision rather than piecework.

I also thought the acting in Narnia overall was several notches above that in LotR. I didn't sense any miscues as happens in LotR, with silly jokes at Gimli's expense. The humour is in keeping with the aesthetic vision of the movie. Nor did I feel there was a host of unnecessary plot/character changes. (I am not impressed with the Arwen/Aragorn dynamic in LotR and the horse snogging.) Tilda Swinton was magnificent as the White Witch; I never once was reminded of her other more iconoclastic roles such as in Orlando, but often thought of how much the character reminded me of Bodeacia, the ancient British queen. For me, she carried the role more convincingly than Kate Blanchett did Galadriel.

So, a stunningly beautiful re-creation of Lewis' work. There were times, however, when I felt the pacing could have been swifter--extended camera pans of the children's faces to mark their emotional reactions after awhile became tedious and I found myself ruminating upon the shape and form of children's dental development. I also wondered why the White Witch had to have hair that ressembled the Rasstafarians' way with coils and curls.

That said, the movie could not escape some of my regrets over Lewis's work--and this is a matter of personal taste. Like Tolkien, I dislike the style and form of the allegory, both in terms of some the direct 'meaning' and in terms of some of the symbols chosen for various representations. I understand that most members of the audience would need some historical background to explain why the children are shipped off from their mother but the context of the war with the Nazis has a particularly unpalatable effect of providing a historical context which I wouldn't support--and one which Tolkien himself clearly disagrees with. Secondly, why winter has to be something terrible I can't understand. Perhaps this is natural for an Englishman, but the Canadian in me knows it is part of the natural order of things so why should it become a fixture of the evil witch? I wouldn't want to live in an endless spring or summer; it is the variation which is valuable.

Similarly, I found myself wondering why foxes were good but wolves--wargs?--are bad. Farley Mowat trumps Lewis here as far as I am concerned. Nor can I accept as a condition of movie belief that the male god Aslan must triumph over the female goddess. Yes, I understand that this is a feature of Lewis's ideology but it is one which limits the books for me and thus the movies. Tolkien's books are not so limited as they eschew such a direct alleogorical interpretation.

I also question the concept of putting a medieval world with colourful banners and gorgeous tents and kings and queens and lovely gowns into the context of children's fantasy world, one distanced from the real world they live in. Don't get me wrong--I love the idea of a wardrobe full of adventure--but ultimately the fantasy is diminshed by it being something outside the children's real world, despite the Professor's willingness to listen. It is dressup. This does not happen with Tolkien's fantasy world because of how he has placed it as historically prior to our time.

All this said, I wonder if Narnia will lack the wide ranging audience which LotR was able to grab. There were a good many families with children in the theatre with us and fewer adolescents or adults there on their own.