Chronicles of Narnia-The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

Review by David Hilborn

05 December 2005

The Evangelical Alliance’s Head of Theology, David Hilborn, takes a look at the new Walt Disney production of 'Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe'

C.S. Lewis' Narnia books were a significant part of my childhood, and I particularly love The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which kicked off Lewis' great seven-volume epic for children when it was published in 1950. So I was very glad to be among a preview audience for a recent screening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Yet I arrived conscious that when Hollywood gets its hands on a classic book, the results can be underwhelming. Yet since the surprise success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ last year, big bucks are more forthcoming for religious pictures, and Narnia is the most obvious beneficiary to date. A massive $200 million has been spent on this movie, and as they say in Tinseltown, the money is up there on the screen. Lewis' saga had long been thought unfilmable, however, CGI technology has allowed the many fantastic creatures and scenes conjured up by Lewis' prose to be rendered convincingly in the cinema. Thanks also to some breathtaking New Zealand locations, the film looks wonderful.

But that, of course, is not the main issue. The appeal of the Narnia books to the millions who have read them lies in their focus on the great universal themes of good and evil, love and betrayal, power and sacrifice, and in the way those themes are played out so movingly in the lives of their four young protagonists: Lucy, Susan, Edmund and Peter Pevensie. Narnia is a parallel universe that the Pevensie children enter through a miraculous wardrobe in the rambling country house of Professor Kirke, to which they have been evacuated in the dark days of the Blitz.

Of course, for Lewis himself, and for his fellow believers, the most important point of all is that the Narnia chronicles are a vivid allegory of the Christian Gospel—from creation through fall to atonement, resurrection, final judgement and recreation. With so strong a biblical subtext, the obvious concern for Christians is whether Narnia: The Movie remains faithful to Lewis' source material, and particularly, to its portrayal of Aslan's / Jesus' substitutionary atonement and resurrection as the hope of the world.

Well, I am delighted to say that for all its state-of-the-art production values and for its commercial hype, the film is scrupulously faithful to the book. There is no attempt to water down the Christ-centred theology; no succumbing to Star Wars style syncretism. The involvement of Lewis' stepson Douglas Gresham (himself a committed Christian) as co-producer has ensured that the epic we see on screen is the avowedly Christian epic authored by Lewis half a century ago. I can say this with confidence because I re-read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe immediately before the screening, and could match whole descriptive passages, whole chunks of dialogue, the whole magnificent plot line, to what I was seeing and hearing in the preview theatre. Sometimes, a screenplay suffers from too slavish a translation of a book, but this is not the case here. By sticking so closely and so lovingly to what Lewis wrote, director Andrew Adamson and his team have complemented the great storytellers' work in a vivid and memorable way. I am sure Lewis himself would have wholeheartedly approved.

All this is helped by some fine performances from a cast that includes Tilda Swinton as the White Witch and Jim Broadbent as the Professor, while Ray Winstone and Dawn French do a great job voicing Mr and Mrs Beaver as the quintessential working class, salt-of-the-earth couple. Liam Neeson is commanding and masterful as the voice of Aslan.

If there are flaws, they are minor. The climactic battle scenes work well, but fall somewhat short of the sheer visceral impact of those in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The middle third of the film is a little on the slow side, and might possibly test the attention spans of some younger children.

Make no mistake: this film is very good news indeed—and not just for the studio, who surely have a big Christmas hit on their hands. It is good news for the families who will see and enjoy it together. It is good news for the youngsters who will be spurred to discover Lewis' entrancing books. It is good news for Christians seeking an enjoyable, non-threatening way to share Jesus with friends and neighbours. But above all else, this movie is good news because it so powerfully communicates the Good News that Jesus Christ died in our place to redeem us from sin, and rose from the dead to give us new life.

David Hilborn, Head of Theology at the Evangelical Alliance

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