The Lion, etc.

Did you hear me being interviewed on the radio the other week about my thoughts on The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe? Ok sure, I was actually just one of a number of callers to ABC talkback, and yes, it was a discussion with Tracy Bartram, but my voice still travelled out across the length and breadth of this wide, brown land we call home... well, across Victoria anyway.

Tracy didn’t like the film, but that’s ok because I don’t like Tracy. I find her irritating, like lemon juice flicked into your eyes.

Tracy was hosting the 774 Breakfast Program while Red Symons was on holiday, and I’ll tell you, there are few things that can snap you into consciousness faster than the coarse sound of Tracy’s voice in the morning. Like a sharp jab to the larynx, it slices through the fog of slumber and wrenches you awake, triggering an apoplectic fit as you flounder frantically for the Snooze button.

Anyway, just as I was about to hurl the alarm clock at the wall, Tracy asked for listeners to phone in with their opinions of the Narnia movie, and started to give her own. My curiosity was captured, and my hand was stayed. For the moment at least. As I said before, she didn’t like it, which put her at odd with her callers, who all did. I wasn’t going to call in, but then I heard her say that one thing that irritated her was that you’ve got these English children in a very English movie and then they go through the wardrobe and the first creature they meet is an American beaver! To me, the beavers’ British accents placed their origin elsewhere, so I thought I’d call to set her straight.

The show’s producer answered the phone and asked for my name and suburb, which I gave her. “Did you like the film,” she asked? “Yes, I did,” I replied. “Ah, good. So did I. She’s on her own here.” He, he.

When I got through to Tracy I told her I liked the film but that I was calling because she’d said that the beavers were American when they were clearly English. The only American accent came from Morgrim the wolf. “Oh no,” she clarified, “I meant the beaver is an American animal.” One wonders why Tracy was troubled at seeing an American beaver in an English setting, but not an African lion, and a… well, you know, a faun, a unicorn, a centaur, and a minotaur? She asked me what I thought of the evil wolf being given an American accent, and I said I found it quite refreshing. Villains, more often than not, have British accents, while the heroes have American ones, as in Star Wars, for example, so I thought it was nice to see it the other way around. She said she guessed that was what was good about the ABC, that everyone was entitled to express their own opinion. I asked if she was going to read the book, and she said she had no intention of doing so. Which is a shame.

So yes, I was very happy with The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Not a perfect film, but a very satisfying adaptation of the book. I thought Lucy and Edmund were brilliant. Great casting. Peter and Susan were mostly irritating, though fortunately not to the extent of Lucy from the 80’s TV series, who made me want to bash her head in with a paving stone. I also liked how the animals were just animals, and didn’t wear clothes like they did in the TV series. Strangely enough, they looked more dignified without pants on!

I thought the character development in the film was a little heavy-handed and awkward at times, particularly when it came to showing how selfish and irresponsible Edmund was. Yes, I get it! Move on! I don’t know if I would have had Liam Neeson’s voice for Aslan. His voice had the warmth and strength I was expecting, but not the majesty. Maybe James Earl Jones would’ve made the whole thing seem like The Lion King 2, but that’s who I’ve long heard as Aslan. He’s just incredible. (Except when he’s Darth Vader screaming “Noooooooo!” like some overacting, B-grade hack. Then he’s just awful; but, to be fair, I don’t think anyone could have made that line work.)

Contrary to some early reports, the film wasn’t cunning Christian proselytising designed to poison children’s minds with Christian values and soften them up like some sort of pre-evangelism. The underlying allegory was there if you wanted to see it, and easy to miss if you didn’t. In fact, if you didn’t know anything about Christianity, the Christian references would go right over your head. I think a lot of people have been getting too worked up over the issue. The story may be influenced by that of Christianity, but, as Age writer Philippa Hawker recently pointed out, it’s also influenced by “E. Nesbit, Enid Blyton, The Wind in the Willows, Greek mythology, Norse tales, Hans Christian Andersen and schoolboy chivalric fantasies”. Whatever its influences are, I think it’s a wonderful story with a positive message that anyone can enjoy and benefit from hearing.

So one down, somewhere between four and six more to go, depending on who you talk to (apparently not all the books would do well as films). I just hope they make The Last Battle (and make it well), which is my favourite of the Narnia books. Actually, I wonder if people will still call this one ‘Narnia’ when the other films are out? I know ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ is a bit of a mouthful, but that, not ‘Narnia’, is the film’s title. Yes, yes, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is the actual title, but if you have to shorten anything it should be the book title, not the series title. What’s wrong with “The Lion, etc.” for example? I think that’s what I’ll use. Maybe people will call them Narnia 1, Narnia 2, and so on? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.