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calimacRe-reading the Lion for the first time in decades to brace myself for the film, I noticed how much more room the deliberately sketchy plot and descriptions leave for a creative film-maker to fill out than The Lord of the Rings does. And what we get is in places, but only in places, a creative film.
It's not a masterpiece of the cinematic art. As is usual with fantasy films, the pacing is awkward, the editing is clumsy, the acting varies from fine to inept, and the music is dreadful. The special effects are mostly pretty good. Aslan looks like a capital-L Lion. But the animators, in their anxiety to avoid artificial rigidity, have rigged Aslan so that his entire face quivers like a bowl of jelly whenever he speaks. At least it's realistic jelly.
Again as is usual, the closer the film sticks to the book the better it is. It's always fairly close, but the taste is ever so slightly off. Even Aslan's sacrifice, the best scene in the film, lacks some of Lewis's touch (such as his note that the evil creatures are still afraid of Aslan even as they jeer him). The Father Christmas scene is so clumsily done that any viewers completely unfamiliar with the story, if such exist, should guess that the unnamed man in the sled, who isn't wearing red, is that mysterious Aslan the Beavers were talking about. (And maybe Aslan is really Father Christmas: bowl of jelly and all that.)
After a brisk, faithful pacing in the earlier parts, the final third of the story is beefed up, as if it were on steroids. Its center is the huge battle about which Lewis had written ... well, virtually nothing, really. Is director Andrew Adamson a pseudonym for Peter Jackson? Whatever his real name, Adamson doesn't know how to handle Lewis's Peter, nor does the actor playing him. It's not that the children quarrel: they do that in the book. It's that where Book Peter is afraid but knows he must do his duty, Film Peter is too often faint-hearted, and doesn't project authority even when he's trying to. The lack of a High King one can believe in is the biggest hole in this film, as it was in Jackson's.
My favorite moment is at the very end (but before the egregious extra scene in the middle of the credits). The children, returned from Narnia, tell the Professor he wouldn't believe what they were doing in the wardrobe. And the Professor, who'd already said once "I wonder what they teach them in those schools" (and once was enough), replies, "Try me." Lewis didn't write that sentence, but it nicely embodies the spirit of his book.
It's not a masterpiece of the cinematic art. As is usual with fantasy films, the pacing is awkward, the editing is clumsy, the acting varies from fine to inept, and the music is dreadful. The special effects are mostly pretty good. Aslan looks like a capital-L Lion. But the animators, in their anxiety to avoid artificial rigidity, have rigged Aslan so that his entire face quivers like a bowl of jelly whenever he speaks. At least it's realistic jelly.
Again as is usual, the closer the film sticks to the book the better it is. It's always fairly close, but the taste is ever so slightly off. Even Aslan's sacrifice, the best scene in the film, lacks some of Lewis's touch (such as his note that the evil creatures are still afraid of Aslan even as they jeer him). The Father Christmas scene is so clumsily done that any viewers completely unfamiliar with the story, if such exist, should guess that the unnamed man in the sled, who isn't wearing red, is that mysterious Aslan the Beavers were talking about. (And maybe Aslan is really Father Christmas: bowl of jelly and all that.)
After a brisk, faithful pacing in the earlier parts, the final third of the story is beefed up, as if it were on steroids. Its center is the huge battle about which Lewis had written ... well, virtually nothing, really. Is director Andrew Adamson a pseudonym for Peter Jackson? Whatever his real name, Adamson doesn't know how to handle Lewis's Peter, nor does the actor playing him. It's not that the children quarrel: they do that in the book. It's that where Book Peter is afraid but knows he must do his duty, Film Peter is too often faint-hearted, and doesn't project authority even when he's trying to. The lack of a High King one can believe in is the biggest hole in this film, as it was in Jackson's.
My favorite moment is at the very end (but before the egregious extra scene in the middle of the credits). The children, returned from Narnia, tell the Professor he wouldn't believe what they were doing in the wardrobe. And the Professor, who'd already said once "I wonder what they teach them in those schools" (and once was enough), replies, "Try me." Lewis didn't write that sentence, but it nicely embodies the spirit of his book.
