Saturday, January 07, 2006

The Chronic (what!)-les of Narnia!

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I just got back from seeing this at the theater. SO good. To say I loved it might be too strong of a word, but I really, really, REALLY, really liked it. I read the book when I was a spud (but only this one, and none of the others, for some reason) and I found it to be very faithful and exceedingly well-executed. It's not a flawless film - like King Kong '05, there was the occasionall unconvincing performance and phony-looking effects shot, but I was so happy to be wrapped up in the magic of both respective worlds that I didn't care. A few things I'd like to comment on:

- The Christian Allegory. When I read the book as a wee'an, I enjoyed it simply as an imaginative fantasy story with your typical lessons about courage, heroism, family etc, and didn't pick up on the Xtian morals and stuff until somebody pointed them out to me years later. It's definatley very apparent when you know about it - Aslan is very much a savoir figure, with being executed and brought back to life, and Edmund being tempted by turkish delights (sins of the sweet) and redeeming himself. But I don't think it takes away from the story, and I don't think it takes away from the film either.

- The Kids. Not the ones in the movie, but the ones in the cinema. As I watched the theater fill up about 3/4ths full of little kids and their parents, I was expecting another daycare center nightmare like the one present when I went to King Kong, complete with fidgiting, screaming, and a popcorn bucket percussion section in the front row. However, none of them said a peep - I was actually really taken aback by how quiet the little blighters were, but they were totally captivated by the story.

- Tilda Swinton: what a fucking bad ass. I consider White Witch to be one of the greatest evil women in all fiction, period. She'd chop up the Wicked Witch of the West and Cruella DeVille and eat them with her cornflakes. Swindon pulled her off beautifully. She's not a "conventionally" beautiful actress, which is good. I wouldn't want some damn fashion model looking broad playing the Queen. She was evil to the core with an icy stare that grabbed you and wouldn't let go. Scary scary scary. Other stand-out roles for me included James McIvory as the 70's art school dropout-looking fawn Mr. Tumnus, Ray Windstone and Dawn French (of French & Saunders) as the voices of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, and Jim Broadbent as the old Professor.

- I am a huge vagina, but some moments actually made me get a little bit teary-eyed and lumpy-throated. Such moments included Lucy and Susan's coming onto Aslan's sacrificed body, and Mr. Tumnus turned into stone, but for some reason, the biggest weeper for me was towards the beginning when Lucy and Edmund come out of the wardrobe, and Edmund tells the other kids he's just playing along, but she's making this up. The look on her face, man, there's something about little kids getting shafted by older kids that just cracks my heart to bits.

- It's staggering how much better this movie is than Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. If they had chosen to devote an entire third of this movie to Edmund's working up the courage to ask a cute centaur chick to the Yule Ball, and had an angry Aslan shouting his head off and slamming Peter aginst the wall, I think I'd likely have gone up to the projection booth and strangled the projectionist with the film.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tilda Swinton.

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