Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Tilda Swinton and Skandar Keynes in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."
Forget the scary hype: This magical movie, based on C.S. Lewis' beloved novel, is as familiar and comforting as a favorite sweater.
Dec 9, 2005 | There's something a little ragged around the edges of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe": It has a vaguely faded, not-quite-new feel to it, like a hand-me-down book from a past generation, with cover wear and smudged pages and a wiggly spine -- all the things used-book dealers sniff at but which, to readers, are simply a book's way of wearing the love that's been lavished on it.
And that's exactly what makes this adaptation of C.S. Lewis' much-loved 1950 novel so wonderful. There's nothing too clean or too overbright about it. It's magic, but not the loud, shiny kind: It has the texture of worn velvet, or a painstakingly hand-knit sweater stored away for years in tissue paper.
The picture, set in England during World War II, opens with an air raid, as four siblings -- Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie -- and their mother scramble for safety. It's decided, as it was for many English children at the time, that the young Pevensies should be sent away to the countryside to stay with a mysterious and eccentric uncle, Professor Kirke (Jim Broadbent, who makes two mischievous, whiskery appearances in the movie, one at the beginning and one at the end -- stay in your seat when the end credits start). The kids are a bit bored in the professor's vast, shadowy house, a nest of rambling stairways and doors to who-knows-where. But one day, during a game of hide-and-seek, the youngest Pevensie, Lucy (played by the wonderful newcomer Georgie Henley), makes her way into a massive wardrobe. She pushes her way to the back, only to realize this is a wardrobe with no end: Its dark forest of coats opens onto another world, a cold, icy one that, the children later learn, has long been under the spell of a chilly, imperious creature known as the White Witch (Tilda Swinton). Narnia is a land populated by talking beavers, foxes and badgers, and by fauns who negotiate the rough, snowy terrain on their furry, sturdy but delicate legs. The White Witch has ensured that it's winter all the time in Narnia, and there are no holidays to break up the coldness of the season: There has been no Christmas for 100 years.
The Pevensie children's old world felt unsafe and unsure enough, but this strange, new one is beyond anything they could have imagined. They also learn that, as humans (or "Sons of Adam" and "Daughters of Eve," as Narnia's inhabitants put it), they're part of a prophecy that, if it comes to pass, would destroy the White Witch's power.
There are obviously many reasons why C.S. Lewis' Narnia series -- of which "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is the first installment -- have been captivating readers for so long. But I think one reason people respond to the Lewis books -- a reason that's ably served by this adaptation -- is that even though they take place in a fanciful universe, they show respect for kids' integrity and intelligence, instead of just treating children as charming but woefully undereducated beings. They also understand the occasional savagery of children, without passing judgment on it. Narnia is a place that stands to bring out either the best or the worst in children, or in anyone: The oldest two Pevensies, Peter and Susan (played by William Moseley and Anna Popplewell), are young teenagers, and they end up facing the first tests of adulthood in territory that's both bracingly but also terrifyingly unfamiliar.
