The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

(2005, Dir.: Andrew Adamson)

Sometimes it seems to me that C.S. Lewis wove allegorical elements into The Chronicles of Narnia as a way of distracting the adults, keeping them busy while his intended audience of children immersed themselves in the spirit and adventure of a magical land populated by dryads, centaurs and talking animals, with no need to bore themselves with tiresome theological arguments about Christ figures. Lewis was a very clever man.

Andrew Adamson’s adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe does a commendable job of following Lewis’s example in this respect at least—I’d wager it is the very rare child who would identify Aslan as Jesus unprompted, and so much the better. Narnia appeals as much to our fears and desires and sense of wonder as it does to our sense of the eternal, and although the film is uneven in conveying these first elements, where it does not fail is in overemphasizing the latter.

The Pevensie children—Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy—each in their turn project elemental characteristics of childhood—impending responsibility, trepidation, grasping (not quite knowing enough to be greed) and curiosity—and while none of the performances are wholly stirring, they are at their worst competent renderings. Given that they are burdened with carrying much of the film, they do well.

The film stumbles most obviously with Aslan, in a way that relates to both his cinematic presence and his allegorical meaning. Adamson (or screenwriter Ann Peacock) drops a sequence from the book where the children learn before meeting him that Aslan isn’t a man at all, but a lion, “terrible,” in fact “… but he’s good.” Allegorically, it was important to understand Jesus not merely as a hippieish flower child dispensing peace bouquets, but also as a rebel and revolutionary who was terrible in greatness. On screen, Aslan is thus a little less fearsome in his aspect when he first appears, and although he gets a good roar and even a mauling, he never quite projects the underlying menace that is such an important counterpoint to his quiet compliance on the Stone Table.

It is at least a little amusing that for a “Christian” film the quality so commonly lamented as lacking is Magic. But it is also true. Lewis tended to keep a lot of the magic in his Narnia books beneath the surface, often ending description with notes that he would say more, but if he did parents wouldn’t let their children read it. Computer effects, no matter how expert (and the film’s effects are a success), can’t quite fire the imagination in the same way. As Aslan sagely observes, there are deeper Magics—hidden Magics—much more powerful than what is written on the surface.