Lucy in the Sky

Rating: Null/10 (15 December 2005)

Writing about big movies like this is a real pleasure because you can assume that the reader has already been exposed to the mainstream opinions and obvious controversies. So one can focus on other, perhaps more interesting issues.
I was never a fan of Lewis' romantic Christianity and his allegorical crusade, not with the genius of "Alice in Wonderland" as the benchmark. Or the King Arthur stories. But I have to admit that while I found his written tale dull as Oxford dust, his storytelling ability had magic, and that was what made the thing fun for many. That business about the narrator being explicit and commenting on what is happening is lost in the two movies.
Oh, I should say that you really should see the 88 BBC version first. It was both cheaper and more magical. It had much better kids except for the young girl. Neither production gave us an awareness of the powers of the Queen (except via wand), so that power had to be carried by intensity. Therefore, the screaming queen of 1988 fit better into the dynamics of the world.
If you do see the 1988 version, it will remind you how artless this modern one is. I'd say about a quarter of the shots in this new one are almost perfect copies from the older. Look at really great productions; "Aliens" comes to mind, and you will note that there is not a single interesting design in this whole thing. Every shot, every character (mostly dumb rubber masks in queen associates) every character action is from the third bin down in familiarity. That is, except Tilda.
Magic should be in the way the thing is portrayed. Nothing here seems magical at all, nothing like "Time Bandits" for instance, or a few of the better parts of "Lord or the Rings." The sets were dull, the magical places ordinary.
I am an admirer of Tilda. I'll see anything she is in and expect to enjoy it. She did have a captivating sequence here in the final battle, but it was ruined in a way by the dreadfully staged "stone table" sequence before. Straight out of a 40s cannibal movie, with a set so cheesy and artless it made me squirm. No Baz Luhrman here.
Here's the thing. Tilda knows a whole lot more about what works and what doesn't than the director. So she's created her own character in his vacuum, her own wardrobe and makeup. Some of that is great, but it doesn't fit anything, not the book, and not the lumpy director's vision, or what it seems to be.
So what you end up with that's positive, is an appealing young girl, an amazing witch in the battle scene, and one extremely nice cinematic effect. It was so good it made everything else seem cinematically unimaginative. This was when Lucy pulled the sheet off the wardrobe to reveal the tree carving (Alice again!). The dramatic movement of that drape was wonderful, just wonderful. It was featured in the trailer. Then you got Lucy's gaze for the first time, one that is repeated tiresomely thereafter.
That this wonderful bit of magic came and went before Narnia appears made me look in vain for more.
(There's another scene that could have been great. While Lucy is being hypnotized, virtual satyrs dance in the fireplace, a sort of dream within the vision within the movie. Another director might have implied what Lewis does, that everything that follows could be Lucy's Dream.)
Oh, there's one overt decision the director made. A sad one. He decided to play up the Nazi angle. So we have that incongruous bombing sequence where the Germans look like monsters. This gave Tilda her cue to have an Aryan look and movieland Nazi coldness.
What follows is an intrusion of the American battle narrative on the original British one: war is depicted as inherently vile at the beginning up until Santa Claus becomes an arms merchant. Thereafter it is depicted as glorious, with the girls now involved as warriors. The shift is that Christians are battling evildoers, you see.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.