Worth Seeing, With Some Reservations

Rating: 7/10 (16 January 2006)

Narnia is exceptionally well filmed. The four Pevensies are arguably the most beautiful family of young children you'll see in any movie. Tilda Swinton is awesome as the Ice Queen. She combines stunning beauty with ferocious will in the role. Jim Broadbent has a small --very small-- role in the film.
The computer animation is head and shoulders above any I've seen before, especially the beaver husband and wife. The majestic lion Aslan is impressive as are the fauns, centaurs, trolls and ogres who swell the ranks of the armies of the Good and the Evil. Only the wolves' mouths when they speak don't quite make it.
Having praised the actors and computer actors, and adding that the sets are stunning and the climactic battle scene good, let me state what's wrong with the movie. It is faithful -- more faithful than I would have expected in a two-hour-plus movie, to C. S. Lewis's novel. And that's the problem, because Lewis's novel, no matter how revered as a children's "classic," is flawed both as fiction and as theology.
In the novel, you can skim past the pages where Santa Claus appears, with his flowing white locks and dressed in Victorian red-plush coat and boots, riding a sleigh with a full complement of reindeers in front, to give the Pevensie children their gifts, gifts which will prove crucial in confronting the dangers ahead of them. In the movie, you can't get away from how odd this scene looks juxtaposed with what goes on around it. It teeters on the brink of mawkish, and it strikes me as the type of scene an old-ladyish Oxford don might well have appreciated over fifty years ago.
More disturbing is the equation of the lion Aslam with Christ. It's bad theology. Aslam does not have the relation with his followers that Christ had with his: Aslam's are his subjects and like it or not, he's a warlord, at least until the Great Battle is fought and won. Aslam also does not have the relation with God that Christ had. He isn't God's son, he's a lion. He's the King of the Beasts, more in line with pagan wood gods of the Romans or Druids than with Christian deities or semi-deities.
But, oh my, are those children adorable and boy, do the animal scenes make it, and wow, is Tilda Swinton hot --and a good actress too. So, all in all, Chronicles is well worth seeing.
It's just not worth believing in.