The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [2005]

C.S. Lewis sub-titled The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - the first of his seven 'Narnia' books, published in 1950 - 'a Story for Children'. The book has previously been adapted as an animated feature for television and [twice] a BBC-TV serial. This large-scale, live-action production is branded by the Disney logo and given an official imprimatur of approval by a co-producer credit for Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham. However, it is torn between a need to stay faithful to much-loved source material and an impulse to be the foundation of a fantasy blockbuster franchise in the tradition of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series. The awkward use of an overall and an episode title - as attempted on Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles - is an implied promise that the rest of the stories will be told if this is a big enough hit.

One thing that distinguishes Lewis from Tolkien [and many other fantasists] is his clear, uncluttered prose: the marvels of Narnia are presented through simple, indelible oddnesses like the Victorian gas-lamp in the middle of an enchanted, frozen forest [how it got there is explained in the penultimate book, the prequel The Magician's Nephew] or the witch's seduction of the sulky Edmund with Turkish delight. Sadly, that's not an approach much favoured at Disney and, though almost all the detail from the novel is in the film, Lewis's tiny moments tend to get swamped by big-picture business, which usually means large-scale action and hairsbreadth escapes from destructive peril. A single sentence ['This story is something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids'] is an excuse for a whole reel featuring CGI Nazi bombers devastating Finchley and a desperate scramble into the Anderson shelter with Edmund risking death to rescue a photograph of his absent [but much-evoked] father - followed by a tearful family farewell at the station and a chuff-chuff to the country house where we eventually [after business with an overly strict housekeeper that happens to be exactly like the set-up of last year's film of E. Nesbit's 5 Children and It] get to the wardrobe. This is how a large-print 171 page novel becomes a 140 minute film, and while it's always nice to see hordes of fantastical creatures swarming in battle across chunks of New Zealand, there's a sense that we're back in Middle Earth rather than Narnia [Lewis was rather tart about Tolkien's need to go on and on] in the company of some plummy children who'd be rejected by Hogwarts as too bland [the exception is Georgie Henley, who is perfect as Lucy].

Whereas the Rings films were handled by someone devoted enough to the material to treat it roughly and the Potter series has branched out to be a little daring in casting directors, this is the first live-action film from Andrew Adamson, who cut his teeth directing the Shrek films but was also a special effects supervisor responsible for the splashy, affectless action scenes of Joel Schumacher's Batman movies. He is clearly comfortable with photo-realistic talking animals [Liam Neeson voices the messianic Aslan as if he were recording a talking book for the blind] and the grand sweep of a fantastic landscape, but otherwise tends to a faint plodding in the spirit of the Hallmark Channel's essays in miniseries adaptations of Ursula LeGuin or H. Rider Haggard. It's the sort of film where the writing and direction feels 'careful', rather than inspired - but still sounds too-frequent wrong notes [the Pevensie children are so British they'd never use Americanisms like 'I guess' for 'I suppose' but slips like that crop up throughout]. And, in its rollercoaster fashion, it never stops, which means that we never have a moment to appreciate the still eeriness of the hall full of statues which turn out [not that it's ever explained] to be heroes turned to stone while trying to overthrow the witch or the beautiful but frozen landscape where, thanks to the evil spell, 'it's always winter but never Christmas.' When spring comes, it's with some hokey special effects glitter and a peril scene on cracking ice - and the fact that there's a reason for the overturning of the curse gets lost.

The major redeeming feature is perhaps the single most perfect casting choice of the decade - Tilda Swinton, one of that select group of performers [see also Rutger Hauer, Darryl Hannah and David Bowie] who can play any part just so long as it isn't a human being, is magisterially wonderful, even with ill-advised icicles stuck out of her head, as the Witch Queen of Narnia. Eschewing the obvious Morticia Addams look, Swinton's Jadis is coolly seductive but always at the edge of her patience while wooing Edmund, divinely malicious as she tells the shackled faun that he's in prison because of his wretched cell-mate ['he turned you in … for sweeties!] and a Boadicca-like fury in battle whirling two swords at once. It's a near-surreal career arc that begins with Derek Jarman and Peter Wollen, rises with Orlando and then lands at Disney and a thousand merchandising tie-ins, but that too adds to the real bite of Swinton's wickedest of all witches.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: Sight & Sound February 2006

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