Narnia Goes to the Movies

            In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, people sit in a cavern chained against a wall; a fire behind them lights the chamber.  Puppet figures and objects are passed before the fire, and their shadows are cast where the viewers can see them.  The people chained to the floor look at the performance of the shadow puppets and think it’s true; they think it’s real life.  Plato would say the people need to break the chains of illusion and turn and walk out of the cave into the light of the sun.  That’s where the real world is.  But what if Plato were wrong?  What if Plato’s real world of sunshine and truth were to be found on the cave wall all along, or, at least, what if it’s there now, in that wondrous, magical place of shadow and light we call the Cineplex?

The Magic Window

            C. S. Lewis was not a big movie fan, but he understood that there was a magical window capable of showing us things that are as far from illusion as are people from the shadows they cast.  For him that window was in fairy-tale stories.  His description of the window appears in the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle.  At the end of the series, the old Narnia has passed away, and the human heroes from the stories have come into the heavenly realm known as Aslan’s country.  They begin to notice something strange.  This new country looks like their old Narnia.  Hills, mountains, valleys—places in the old Narnia look like places here, but somehow the places look “More like the real thing . . .” (Last Battle 210).  The heroes of Narnia have entered Lewis’s version of Plato’s most real world.

            Lewis’s next challenge is to describe the difference between the two Narnias.  Here is where he describes the magic window to another world: Imagine a room with a window that looked out onto a beautiful valley or seascape. On the wall opposite the window was a mirror. Imagine you were looking out the window and suddenly turned and got a glimpse of the same sight in the mirror.

And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different–deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know.  The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that.  The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. (212-13) 

Have you ever seen an advertising brochure made for your work place or home town?  Every time you look at the pictures, you recognize the location but somehow it doesn’t look the same.  That happens whenever a place is put into a frame.  Whether still photo or motion picture, places look different, even better than they do otherwise, once they’re inside a frame.  Lewis’s heavenly Narnia looks like our own world would in a quick glimpse in a mirror.  Or a movie.  In film a picture of the world is cast onto a frame and mirrored back to our eyes and everything in the picture is deeper, more wonderful and looks “more real . . . as if it meant more.”

            The magic in movies is in the meanings they communicate in addition to words.  In film, everything means more because so many meaningful things are going on at once.  In any single shot of a movie, the following elements, each with its own meanings, will be present:

1) Images: people and their actions, objects (sets, props and costumes), designated colors, lighting, titles, and the deliberately constructed composition of all these visual elements within the frame.

2) Sounds: dialog, narration, background/setting noise, and music.

3) Literary Elements: plot, symbol, imagery, metaphor, climax, character, setting, point of view, allegory, allusion—most of the elements of meaning we associate with literature are to be found in the best of films. 

4)  Editing: Movies will be edited in ways unique to film which contribute additional visual, auditory and literary meanings.  Editing is done for the presentation of a variety of visual points of view, for emotional and experiential pace, for narrative structure, for connecting and contrasting images with other images and with sounds.

The Upcoming Narnia Films

Whenever novels are adapted into film, the books’ lovers often worry about whether the adaptations will be faithful to the original stories.  This was a major concern for the Lord of the Rings films (and the debate there continues).  That said, what lovers of Lewis’s books must realize is that movies are not books and should not be judged with the exact same critical tools.  Movies must be judged by their application of those elements of film which are centered more in images and sounds than in words but which, then, give film so much more meaning.  Any critique of a film adaptation must take into account not only the original books but both the limitations and unique advantages of film. 

I am personally encouraged by early reports about the adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to film and by the presence as consultant of Douglas Gresham, Lewis’s stepson who has worked for decades to protect Lewis’s legacy and who himself has worked in the medium of broadcasting.  As a hard core Lewis fan, I look forward to the Narnia movies. I suspect they will not be everything the books are.  But, if done well, they will give me things the books could not.

 

References

Lewis, C. S. The Last Battle. New York: Harper Collins, 1956.

—. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. New York: Harper Collins, 1950.

—. The Magician’s Nephew. New York: Harper Collins, 1955.