Narnia
We went to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on Christmas Day (big movie-going day in Sweden). I was impressed. The movie captured the feel of the book very well (at least as far as I remember, I haven’t read them for at least a decade), and the visual style was very near the illustrations I remember.
A co-worker complained that the look was too plasticky, at least compared to the Lord of the Rings movies, filmed near the same location, but I felt it didn’t detract from the movie at all. The tone of the novel is far from Tolkien’s darkness and — dare I say it? — grittiness.
Tilda Swinton was brilliant as the White Witch, with just the right combination of icy beauty and pure evil.
I know about the Christian content of course (and am fine with it), but what I found impressive was that the allegory was very “grown-up”. It wasn’t didactic at all. If you want to explain it to a kid, you’d have to explicitly make the connection between Aslan and Jesus Christ — it isn’t written in the movie (or the book). This means that the whole point of allegories is exposed, which can’t be bad at all. After all, if the Narnia books are allegories, can’t the Bible be it too?
All in all a very entertaining movie. And props to the producers for using British accents except for the evil wolves (and maybe Aslan — I can’t recall where his accent was from. Not Alabama, in any case.)
Posted at 21:20,
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