The acting and costumes are wonderful, and so are the special effects.
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By now, most fantasy fans know that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were college chums. Both men were fascinated by mythology and the Bible, and as members of the same writers' club at Oxford they critiqued each other's work. It was Lewis who encouraged his friend to publish "The Hobbit" (1937)--a story written for Tolkien's children--though Lewis wouldn't write anything for youngsters until his first Narnia book, "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" (1950). But Lewis's tales of a kinder and gentler fantasy world were instantly more popular with children, because they were easier to grasp.
That's certainly true of the film versions as well. While Peter Jackson milks Tolkien's Middle Kingdom for all the complexity, strangeness and gritty violence that it contains, Andrew Adamson--whose only previous directing credits were the family-friendly "Shrek" and "Shrek 2"--follows Lewis's lead and pitches this simpler tale of good and evil at young viewers. Or rather, as he says on one of the bonus features, he's made the movie for the child in everyone.
Adamson says they looked at 2500 children on tape, saw 800 in person, workshopped 400, and narrowed it to 120 before finally deciding that William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes, and Georgie Henley made believable siblings. And the fledgling actors do as decent a job as the Harry Potter crew did their first outing.
Their adventure begins when London is bombed during WWII and (shades of "Lemony Snicket") the children are sent to live with a professor at his country house, as real children did with Professor Lewis. There, in a spare room, they enter a mysterious wardrobe and pass through its contents of coats and cloaks into the snowy world of Narnia, which has been in constant winter since the evil White Witch (played with understated relish by Tilda Swinton) has been in power.
No doubt you've heard that just as "The Golden Compass" has been branded a pagan series, this one is Christian. But the only obvious Christian allusions come with Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson), a lion who, like Christ, is betrayed and willingly submits himself to ridicule and death, only to rise again. The famous biblical line "It is finished" is also spoken. And on one of the bonus features, we're told that Aslan created Narnia. But it's not that clear-cut. Tolkien complained that his friend's series was too much of a mythological mish-mosh--an odd mixture of Biblical allusions and Celtic, Greek, and Roman mythology. Father Christmas even makes an appearance, bestowing battle-worthy gifts on the children. There are pan pipe-playing satyrs, stately centaurs, giants, pugnacious minotaurs, griffins, dwarves, and animals divided not by the food chain, but by the same sense of good and evil as the other creatures of Narnia. When they face off in a single battle that's a blip on the screen compared to Lord of the Rings' spectacles, cheetahs, tigers, beavers, wolves, polar bears, and rhinos join the fight. It's quite the unpeacable kingdom, really.
With a complicated fantasy, I think the key lies in crafting a screenplay that captures the heart of the book while constructing its own core narratives, and Adamson, Ann Peacock, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely do a great job of that. Adamson had a fix on this series from the very beginning, knowing exactly how he wanted to bring it to cinematic life, and it shows. He also had a marvelous relationship with his young actors, and this too contributed to a sense of wonder and adventure that pervades. Though the children enter a fantasy world through a portal and there's a clear line of demarcation, they drag a little reality behind them as they enter Narnia. That element of believability is what makes this film compelling--for the child in all of us, and for the adult as well.
Video:
Disney has done a fantastic job on the HD transfer. The AVC/MPEG-4 codec produced zero in the way of artifacts, and the colors seem true, while the black levels are enough to convey the illusion of 3-dimensionality. Even in scenes that are murkier by design, or washed with a blue cast to give them a sense of surreality, there's great clarity of detail and sharp edges. The two-disc DVD was presented in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but this Blu-ray is in 2.40:1 widescreen, which to my eye pulls in slightly more detail on the edges. It's one of the best pictures I've seen this year to date.
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