Heaven Wins Big—At Least for Now

William Edgar

Reflections on the first Narnia film

Walt Disney Pictures put a great deal of capital behind promotion for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe so even if you were not predisposed to care about the opening, December 9, 2005, you had to know about it, and even be intrigued. It was made into an événement. Posters everywhere, spots on television, and build-up in the news media were part of the plan. So also were the hundreds of special viewings the day before, all over the country, many of them for churches and religious leaders.

Still, films have been touted before, and then flopped. This one did not. Indeed, on its opening weekend it grossed $65.6 million in North America, making it the second biggest December opening on record. The first? The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, weighing in two years previously at $72.6 million. As of March 1, 2006, Narnia, still in theaters, had pulled-in $664.5 million and was ranked 22 on the worldwide biggest box-office movies, trouncing its competition.

Given this commercial success, surely what Christians are hoping for is that the messages of the film, those presented in the popular book series by C. S. Lewis on which it is based, will have a strong impact, even a transforming power on our culture. The stories are clearly Christian. Because the form is so imaginative, appealing not only to children, but to all ages, it ought to perform much “good magic” on our jaded culture.

The messages are hard to miss, although some do—or at least they think them of minimal importance to the story. Apparently even Mark Johnson, the film’s producer, was never quite convinced that the Christian message is present, or that Aslan, the great lion, is a figure of Christ. To which Richard Jenkyns, not himself inclined toward faith, in an acute review in the New Republic, retorts, “That was certainly imperceptive.” Speaking of the book’s impact, Jenkyns adds, “The young reader may be unaware of the Christian significances, but it is a dull child who does not sense that Aslan is supernatural.”[1]

Most of my readers will know this wonderful tale, so I won’t summarize it. The book on which the film is based is the first of seven (Lewis wrote it first, though he wanted The Magician’s Nephew to be read first—a practice few readers care for). They have been read and reread by millions. They may not quite reach the level of The Wind in the Willows or the Just-So Stories, but they rank up there with the best of enduring literature for children of all ages.

Now, for a couple of questions, germane to the concerns of the Trinity Forum.

What Makes for a Good Story?

Is the film good? Does it work, within the canons of its genre—so different from prose? To answer that we need to go behind the question.

What makes any film, or novel, good? One compelling answer is in the word story. What makes a good story? Here we get some help from Lewis himself. In a marvelous essay, “On Stories,” he advances the important thesis that what gives us pleasure when we are before a good story is not the ability of the story-teller to construct a suspenseful plot, but something quite different.[2] It has to do with the way the author can put the reader, or the viewer, into the scene, or in front of the character. And this must ultimately be by an appeal to the imagination.

Lewis compares the feeling of being shut in portrayed in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, where the men are entombed in a rock chamber surrounded by mummies, to the feeling of being shut out in H. G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon, where the character Bedford is caught out of his ship on the surface of the Moon at the end of the lunar day. The first brings claustrophobia to the reader, who feels himself to be trapped, short of breath, near to death in the way of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Premature Burial.” The way Haggard describes the scene, the details, the darkness, the terse discussions, all feed the reader’s imagination such that his or her own breath shortens. The second brings agoraphobia to the reader, who feels cold, and lonely before the eternal silences “which have gnawed at so much religious faith and shattered so many humanistic hopes.”[3] Both succeed as stories.

Lewis didn’t care for Alexandre Dumas’s suspense novel, The Three Musketeers, because, he said, the author fails to create any atmosphere. There is no country, no weather, and no feeling that London is any different from Paris. But he loved the romance novels of Trollope and the tales of Kenneth Grahame, because they present real threats and real happiness, the happiness of the simplest and most attainable things, “food, sleep, exercise, friendship, the face of nature, even (in a sense) religion.”[4] Presumably he wouldn’t care for Robert Ludlum and similar writers. But he loved J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in part because Tolkien is able to transform the mood from the simple enjoyment of ordinary folk to the terrors of an epic struggle against evil.

The essay helps us know what standards Lewis himself held for films. He reports going to see the movie version of King Solomon’s Mines and hating it. Seemingly little things irritated him, such as the introduction of a woman in shorts, not in the book, who goes with the adventurers wherever they went. But most of all, he decries the way the film-maker was not satisfied just to have the heroes trapped in the rock chamber—so he added an earthquake! This changed the story from one that could convey the slow danger of death by starvation to one of catastrophe and sheer excitement. Lewis is not saying writers and film-makers should not use high drama, even crude or sensational drama. He is saying it must be done imaginatively: “The one lays a hushing spell on the imagination; the other excites a rapid flutter of the nerves.”

Is the Movie Good?

On his own standard, then, how does the first Narnia film rate? I’d give it a B+, and in some places an A–. A film is not a novel, so woodenly comparing the book and its film is unhelpful. Yet some of the differences are noteworthy.

Some of us feel strongly about not tampering with certain quotes. For example, a favorite statement about Aslan: “’Course he isn’t safe. But he is good,” is spoken in the book by Mr. Beaver to Susan before the lion arrives. In the film it comes at the end, in a conversation between Mr Tumnus and Lucy, and the word “safe” gets changed to “tame.” The setting is changed, and so is the mood. In the book, Aslan has not yet appeared. There is a mystery to his nature and his timing. We wait, with the children, with a good deal of wonder and fear, mixed with excitement. In the film, the feeling is more philosophical, more reflective, almost like adults who think about their past. But it is done well, in my opinion, and so the appeal to the imagination is preserved.

The deeper question is whether the film stands up to the criteria for imagination. For that matter, we need to ask whether the book does as well. In the film one can sense certain choices made, presumably for editorial purposes, or to make it more appealing for today’s audiences. Perhaps some things are lost here. Does the air-raid scene at the beginning really add to the suspense or put the story in its context? And why is it that in the book there is a strong emphasis on the sacrificial redemption of Edmund, with some attention to the final battle, whereas the battle gets more attention in the film. Is this the choice of the director, Andrew Adamson? Or is it that of screenwriter, Ann Peacock? What is lost is part of the theological emphasis of the book—although one could argue that cosmic battles are featured throughout the Chronicles, and certainly in this book, as they are in portions of Scripture.

As movie battles go, the confrontation in the film uses a number of successful imaginative devices to draw the viewer in. The quiet, nervous wait before the clash, the wounding of friends, the noble heroism of the centaur—these are effective. Still, the mood portrayed in the book’s version of the slaying of Aslan is deeply compelling. We don’t get enough of that in the film, and onscreen the monstrous glee of the witch’s allies is sensational rather than truly hideous.

Let’s not be too severe. The film flows. It has a feeling of taking you from one world into another. Nothing is contrived, even though we’re confronting talking animals, fauns, and people together. There is suspense, but not merely a “rapid flutter of nerves.” Compared to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it is not quite as mysterious, not as drawn-out. Maybe, as my editor suggests, this will improve in the next six episodes. In the films based on Tolkien’s classic the trees—the Ents—are personified, and move slowly, in a Rackhamesque gothic spirit. In the Narnia film leaves and petals fly around in an unlikely whirlwind. But generally, the film moves from the modest wardrobe through the winter to a thaw and a brilliant summer.

Just Flashes of Brilliance

For the film to have greater imaginative strength it would have to be a bit slower and more sensuous. There would be more food and more sharing of meals. In the novels Lewis loves to describe exotic drinks, special victuals, and the conversation around the table. His descriptions put you right there. When the group returns to Mr Tumnus’ cave, where Lucy had first had tea with the faun, there, a terrible surprise awaited them:

The door had been wrenched off its hinges and broken into bits. Inside, the cave was dark and cold and had the damp feel and smell of a place that had not been lived in for several days. Snow had drifted in from the doorway and was heaped on the floor, mixed with something black, which turned out to be the charred sticks and ashes from the fire . . .

We get some of this in the film. And occasionally the film really does put you in Narnia. The children’s passage through the wardrobe is so vivid you can almost feel the prickly pine branches coming after the old fur coats. The technology for the talking animals is simply marvelous—lots of great touches here. The beavers are given a Cockney accent. Mr Tumnus, played by James McAvoy, is beguiling. His guilt is real, but not one of existential alienation. His affection is genuine but playful at the same time. Other characters were well-crafted, especially the cruel wolves and the noble centaur. The fox was, well, foxy, and on the side of the good guys. Who would otherwise feel sorry for a fox?

Reviewers had mixed judgments about the children. Some said there was not enough character development, and so on, but I found them rather compelling. Lucy was played by Georgie Henley, who was able to be a little girl and clever and delicate all at once. Skandar Keynes had the toughest job as Edmund, having to be mean and ugly and then sweet and loyal, after his redemption. Anna Popplewell did fine as the older sister, prone to scolding but with a sense of loyalty to the family. And Peter was played by William Moseley, who had to be true and fair, courageous and yet impatient with Edmund, but still be a child, and he carried it off well, though without brilliance.

The clear standout actor is Tilda Swinton, who was the perfect ice-cold witch. Never over the top, but cruel in her domineering grip, she turned hatred into an art form. Jim Broadbent as Professor Kirke and James Cosmo as Father Christmas were properly avuncular, with a twinkle in the eyes, but not much more.

Reviewers were also divided about Aslan. Some found him too small. Others found the voice of Liam Neeson not to fit. Perhaps. But considering what Disney and Walden could have done, he was fine. On the whole, we must praise screenwriter Ann Peacock for a lucid, engaging narrative, faithful to the original within the genre of film.

Will it Endure?

Now a more sociological question. Is the film’s appeal temporary? Is it a mere blockbuster or is there something more permanent about it? Will the Christian messages get through in the way they ought? Will the film “comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable,” or will it merely be sampled and put back in its box?

There are several reasons for the film’s present appeal and most of them cut two ways. The first is about timing. Our culture is caught between cynical relativism and sentimental escapism. On the one hand, happy endings are out because they are naïve and unrealistic. Are we not struck today by the requisite sex scenes, the swearing and the blood in so many hit movies? Television, which used to be something of a haven from excess, is now a primary vehicle for raunch. Narnia takes us away from all that, into a place where good and evil are clear, and there is indeed a happy ending.

But it manages to do so without sentimentality. This is because, on the other hand, the media gives us sappy, uncommitted versions of love where good feelings trump the harsh reality of a fallen world. Narnia doesn’t do that. Edmund really is mean-spirited. Aslan really mourns his impending death and sends the sad mood across Narnia. The wintry land is a metaphor of cold, Nazi-like oppression. Indeed, the story was conceived in the wake of the cruelest war in human history, which was only over five years before Lewis began to work on it. The film brings this out by beginning with an air raid during the blitz. Although no blood is shown in the film, it is implied, with scenes such as Peter cleaning his sword after killing. So that would be a first reason for the film’s appeal: to be moral without being cynical or sentimental.

All the same, it seems that the film lacks the ambiguity that characterizes good and evil in the present world. Naturally we want virtue and treachery to be pitted against one another. Yet in real life good people are ambivalent and bad people are banal (as Hannah Arendt would put it). The problem here may be in the novel itself. The good heroes eventually emerge victorious for the sake of righteousness. Doom befalls the wicked, after moments of remorse and near repentance. The operas of Mozart exhibit this real-world tug of war. Don Giovanni is not purely evil. Tamino is not simply pure. Husbands are threatened, wives are unsure. The children manage to quarrel in the Narnia film, but they are somewhat out of our reach, without feet of clay.

Blood, not Ink—or Pixels

A second reason for its appeal, closely related, is that the film, like the book, centers on redemption. Some would argue that redemption must be the key to any good story. This may be so, but a good story must do it convincingly. C. S. Lewis once said the Christian writer must have blood in his veins, not ink. So many Christians will write “with a message,” rather than simply enjoying words. The difference is critical.

As Lewis argues in several places, especially An Experiment in Criticism, when there is too strong a message, a work of fiction thins-out and becomes propaganda rather than narrative. Propaganda has its place, of course, but the novels and poems that truly grip up take us into the narrative so that we suspend our disbelief. Lewis recognizes the relative merits of the icon and the toy, but asks that good art, be it in the form of paintings, music, or novels, be persuasive of truth, without preaching.[5] Flannery O’Connor, the powerful Southern Roman Catholic writer of the previous century, was often faulted for her realism and the grotesqueness of her characters. Her response: how can you be redemptive if you are not confronting the harsh world from which we need to be saved?

Again, though, it is not certain that the film does this. At times one senses that the characters are more illustrations of verities than flesh and blood people, or animals, with their ups and downs, and their struggles over virtue. The film is more of a sermon than a slice of life.

Genre Wars

Third, the film, like the book, is in the genre of fantasy, and as such rides on the crest of the wave that has given us Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and many other avatars in this field. The chief box office rival of Narnia this winter was King Kong, a lion story of quite another kind.

Several questions may be raised. First, should Christians be so in love with fantasy and science fiction? Larry Woiwode, the mainstream New York author of such novels as Born Brothers and Beyond the Bedroom Wall, says no. A convinced Christian in the Reformed tradition, Woiwode believes much fantasy is simply escapism. My own view is that he is on to something important, but yet is too summary in his judgment. Why do so many Christians accept fantasy as the cutting-edge genre for articulating their message? Many want it to be their universe of discourse. Is it because fantasy allows them to navigate between the visible and the invisible, between this world and eternity?

Lewis insisted that his children’s stories were not allegories. Rather, they are symbolic narratives. Allegory was a perfectly legitimate genre to Lewis, who defended its propriety—and indeed that of much medieval literature—over against some Renaissance “new learning.” Allegory weaves everything together into a tale with a moral. Think of Pilgrim’s Progress.

But Narnia does not do this. Rather, it is a patchwork of images and symbols, using places and animals to illustrate various principles for living. The wintry forest depicts the fall. Peter is the noble king who earns his throne by valor. Father Christmas is the generous grace-giver. Tolkien famously faulted Lewis for mixing it up. Strictly, Santa Claus doesn’t belong in the same world with dwarves and witches and talking animals. And that would be a fault, if he were writing allegory. But he wasn’t.[6]

A deeper question would be what kind of fantasy may qualify as Christian. We can easily dismiss Frank Perretti’s novels and the rather absurd Left Behind fantasy series as not only poor theology but poor writing. More controversial, though, are the Harry Potter novels. Although for many they are not in a literary class with Tolkien and Lewis (or, for that matter, any of the Inklings), these yarns are still well-crafted and do exercise the criteria for imagination mentioned earlier. Alan Jacobs notes the parallels between J. K. Rowling and C. S. Lewis in several places.[7]

Rowling has expressed her love for the Narnia books, which may be one reason she wanted to write seven volumes. Like Lewis, she loves details, describing school, teachers, and experiments. Spells are cast in Latin (“Expelliarmus!”), and Quidditch (from “quiddity,” or things), is a game that resembles some of our favorite sports and has their same addictive qualities. Jacobs takes seriously the charge of some Christians that Harry Potter is an invitation to the magical arts. But, helpfully, he points out that in the best tradition, from the middle ages to the Renaissance, magic is not the seduction of raw power, but represents the same sort of concerns as science—to wit, the improvement of the human condition. Harry Potter is full of warnings against the darker kind of magic. Children understand this.

A thought: in both Narnia and Lord of the Rings the two worlds, ours and the heavenly realm, are kept distinct. You cannot choose to enter Narnia. It must draw you in. I take that as a theological statement about the power of grace.[8] Whereas in Harry Potter you can choose to enter the realm of Hogwarts at will (as long as you are gifted with magic in the first place). If you miss one train, you take the next, a flying one. Indeed, while the fear of the occult in Harry Potter by some Christians is misguided, it is true that Lewis and Tolkien will reserve magic for the other place, and not have it work in our own world of the shadowlands. Tolkien was insistent that Middle Earth belonged to an analogous world, a “sub-creation” where certain principles of grace and redemption are exemplified in a realized eschatology. The idea of traveling from one world to another is at least as old as Lewis Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass. So, the popularity of fantasy is one reason people have responded, but it is not at all certain they have respected these important theological characteristics of the best kind of fantasy.

But Seriously

Fourth, the film, and the book it renders, are a healthy return to moral seriousness. Had J. K. Rowling won Time’s “person of the year,” it would have been for getting a generation of TV-addicted teenagers to read, and for unabashedly celebrating the difference between good and evil. The first Narnia film has the same goal, albeit in the visual medium. It was co-produced by that fascinating group, Walden Media, whose declared calling is to educate and inspire our young people to ponder the great themes of literature and thereby to improve. They have a good track record. Having produced films such as Holes and Because of Winn-Dixie, they may with integrity claim the intention to recover virtue in the media. Further, they plan to produce Amazing Grace, the story of John Newton, the converted slaver, and Charlotte’s Web, the wonderful story of faithfulness and loyalty from E. B. White. Micheal Flaherty, their president, is unabashed in his desire to foster the values of Thoreau’s Walden in a conservative vein (he was a staff writer for National Review). Not quite a return to “Western Literature,” the idea is still to educate into the virtues. And there is resonance for that.

At the same time, one must always worry about moralism. William Bennett’s popular publications about virtue surely help us recall a literature that is not confused with postmodern relativism.[9] But virtue for virtue’s sake is ultimately not a good thing. It can enslave us to being good, something the New Testament rails against, since no one can be saved by the law.

Values talk is fine, as long as there is power talk—that is, as long as we can put values in a framework that makes them practicable. For people in our contemporary culture really to be transformed by the message of the gospel, there will have to be more than a few good films with heroes and heroines and battles between good and evil. Tilda Swinton, whom I praised earlier as an actress, in real life exhibits a typical reaction of many in our times, when she avers Narnia is more spiritual than religious, and is basically about “finding self-sufficiency in difficult circumstances and finding the capacity to dig deep, survive, and prevail.”[10] Huh?

Signposts in a Strange Land

Fifth, Narnia appeals for the good reason that we long for eternity. Peter Berger captures this idea with his notion of signals of transcendence.[11] We need what Herman Melville called the “shock of recognition” of something better, something more human, something heavenly. Yes, heaven! As in Scripture, heaven is the real world, of which ours is only a distorted, fallen one. We are “citizens in the heavenlies,” according to the Apostle Paul, even though we are not yet fully there. That is really home, whereas today we are merely on the way. The film’s music, by Harry Gregson Williams, helps draw us in.

Yet here is where the film could not convey some of the editorial depth of the book. For example, in the endearing chapter, “A Day with the Beavers,” where Aslan’s arrival is unveiled to the humans, there is a wonderful commentary that all fans of C. S. Lewis would immediately recognize as conveying Sehnsucht.

And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream . . .

And on it goes, with words resembling Lewis’s thoughts about the “inconsolable longing” that recognizes the “weight of glory” before it comes. We could wish the audiences of the film would know something of this shock of recognition. Surely some do.

But will it last? Can this marvelous film help in the daunting task of the transformation of society? The bad news is that it may well fall prey to the deep cultural biases of escapism and mindless therapeutic nonsense, as Tilda Swinton would have it. But the good news is that it can encourage us to greater imagination, to greater art. Those are not things that will in themselves effect transformation. But they surely will help to persuade. Not moralism, nor propaganda, but good, well-crafted artistic persuasion.

In The Great Divorce, a literary reply to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, heaven is so real that flowers are heavy to pick up and the grass cuts your feet. Using language verging on Platonism, Lewis wants us to know that the place where Christ welcomes us is not some dreamland far away, but the solid reality of a permanent dwelling. Today, we see things upside down. Good art can help us see things right side up. According to the Book of Revelation, heaven is coming down to earth, and will soon replace the old heaven and the old earth (21:10). It is then that,

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold I am making all things new.’ (Rev. 21: 4-5)

The Narnia stories, whether in this film and its likely sequels, or in the marvelous novels, are not going to effect great leverage for the transformation of society. It’s just going to take much more for that to happen. But they are a helpful contribution. May we be urged to work quietly with our hands and hearts, crafting true stories, appealing to the imagination, for the sake of the truth. May we see small but real changes, which one day may add up to significant cultural transformation.  

Features, Arts and Culture, Tue 14 Mar 2006