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Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The
Home Vision Entertainment // Unrated // August 27, 2002
List Price: $24.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The genre of fantasy has a long and distinguished history, though few of its works have successfully made the transition to film. One of the beloved classics of fantasy literature is the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. A friend and contemporary of J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings), Lewis created a lively fantasy universe in a series of seven children's novels, involving children from "our world" drawn into a magical otherworld inhabited by fauns, talking animals, witches, princes, dwarves, queens, and the like. The first, and most famous, of the Chronicles of Narnia is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which was filmed in 1988 by the BBC for television. Having enjoyed Lewis' novels both as a child and as an adult, I was curious about how the television adaptation would fare. In a word – badly.
In terms of the book adaptation, the obvious comparison at this point is with Peter Jackson's film of The Fellowship of the Ring. Both are extremely faithful adaptations of beloved fantasy classics, even down to the dialogue; yet even leaving out considerations of special effects, acting, or budget, The Fellowship of the Ring is in an entirely different league than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The fact that The Fellowship of the Ring is a cinematic masterpiece owes a great deal to the fact that the scriptwriters understood that simply filming exactly what's on the page wouldn't necessarily present the true magic of the story; to preserve the essence of the story, it would sometimes be necessary to translate rather than simply transcribe.
On the other hand, the adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is completely unimaginative. The film follows the book exactly, scene-by-scene and using dialogue taken directly from the text of the book, without any apparent consideration of the different demands of the film medium. Some material has been added the beginning of the film, elaborating on the brief fact that the children have been sent out of London because of the air raids, but nothing has been taken away. Every line spoken by a character in the book is presented in the film, even if it adds nothing to the scene or is even confusing without the context of the book's narrative.
The result, oddly enough, is a film that's much slower-paced than the book. While the book skips lightly along, always with another marvel around the corner, the film plods along. It arrives at all of the same places that the book visits, but with a heavier tread; each scene seems to be overly drawn out, and transitional portions of the story, such as when the children are fleeing the house of the beavers, are dragged on to the point of tedium. Nor does it help that the cinematography is amateurish; visually, the film has nothing particularly interesting to offer. In the end, the story's sense of adventure fades through lack of forward momentum. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a very short book, but even so, the filmed adaptation is three hours long, and a very tedious three hours, at that.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe also highlights, rather unfortunately, a major reason for the lack of successful serious fantasy films until very recently: special effects. The world of Narnia is full of fantastic creatures, from fauns to giant talking animals. In a written fantasy, the special effects take place in the reader's imagination; when Peter, Lucy, Edmund, and Susan meet a pair of talking beavers, the beavers are charming and fantastic and not the least bit silly. But when we see the same characters in the film version... what we see are not magical talking beavers, but a painfully cheesy live-action representation of them: full-sized human actors enveloped in large brown rugs, with fake noses and face paint, wearing rubber gloves tipped with claws on their hands and flippers on their feet. Frankly, words fail to express how awful these costumes are... and it's an agony that the film could easily have been spared.
The children's visit with the beavers is crucial to the plot, but it's not important that their hosts be, specifically, beavers. If the scriptwriters had used good sense, they would have substituted characters of a different species: other fauns, for instance, since the makeup artists did a creditable job on the faun Mr. Tumnus in an earlier scene. But C.S. Lewis wrote beavers, so in the film we get beavers. And in its blind adherence to the letter of Lewis' text, the film fails to preserve the spirit of the story. The scene with the beavers is farcical rather than charming as it is in the book, and certainly, any precious suspension of disbelief gained so far comes crashing down with a resounding thud.
Unfortunately for what's really an entertaining story in its original form, the film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe goes spiraling steadily downward after the beaver encounter. It's possible to forgive poor costuming choices (although the beavers do verge on unforgivable), but not a consistent pattern of poor directorial and production choices. For instance, the viewers' already overstrained suspension of disbelief is given a further burden to bear when cartoon animals start showing up in the film. Consistency is just as important in a small-budget production as in a large-budget one, and when we get a mix of barely-moving stuffed animals (like Aslan), human actors in utterly ridiculous animal costumes (like the beavers), and badly-animated fantasy cartoons, the effect is bizarre and unintentionally hilarious. The entire tottering structure of the film is brought one step further to its collapse by a serious epidemic of overacting from most of the adults with speaking parts, most particularly the White Witch (Barbara Kellerman), who delivers more than half of her lines at a full scream.
Is there anything that actually works in this film? The four children are good choices for their roles. Edmund (Jonathan R. Scott) is clearly "beastly" as his brother calls him, spiteful and sulky; yet Peter (Richard Dempsey) is also evidently a goody-two-shoes capable of sometimes annoying even the best of people. Lucy (Sophie Wilcox) fits the bill as the cheerful "baby" of the family, and though her lines are the same, the film Susan (Sophie Cook) appears to have somewhat more of a personality than in the book. The early sequences in the film, particularly those scenes involving Lucy discovering the magic wardrobe, are also rather pleasing; it's a shame that the charm dissipates as quickly and as thoroughly as it does.
Video
The transfer of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is impeccably clean: not a single print flaw or the tiniest speckle of noise are anywhere to be seen. The print has obviously gone through a thorough clean-up process; it might even be argued that it has been cleaned up too much, in fact, because removing the last few speckles of noise may have also removed some of the detail of the actual image. Whether or not it's partly due to the cleanup process, the overall image of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is very soft and blurry.
Apart from the blurriness, colors are understated and sometimes slightly washed-out, but usually appear natural. Contrast is satisfactory in well-lit to medium-lit scenes; several of the darker scenes resulted in a complete loss of detail. On the bright side, I was pleased to note the almost total absence of any edge enhancement.
The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, despite the misleading fact that the menu screen is presented in widescreen anamorphic.
Audio
The soundtrack for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is only mono, but it functions adequately to present the dialogue. The overall sound is, unsurprisingly, very flat, but reasonably accurate-sounding, even when the actors' voices range up and down the volume scale.
Extras
The DVD comes with a few minor extras: trivia, a text excerpt on C.S. Lewis, and a stills gallery. The most interesting "special feature" is actually an insert card that explains what is "Turkish Delight," the candy that Edmund is seduced by in the film, and offers a recipe to make it at home.
Final thoughts
In the end, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a production that is faithful to the letter of Lewis' text, while utterly failing to capture the spirit of the book that it is based on. I honestly can't recommend it.
In terms of the book adaptation, the obvious comparison at this point is with Peter Jackson's film of The Fellowship of the Ring. Both are extremely faithful adaptations of beloved fantasy classics, even down to the dialogue; yet even leaving out considerations of special effects, acting, or budget, The Fellowship of the Ring is in an entirely different league than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The fact that The Fellowship of the Ring is a cinematic masterpiece owes a great deal to the fact that the scriptwriters understood that simply filming exactly what's on the page wouldn't necessarily present the true magic of the story; to preserve the essence of the story, it would sometimes be necessary to translate rather than simply transcribe.
On the other hand, the adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is completely unimaginative. The film follows the book exactly, scene-by-scene and using dialogue taken directly from the text of the book, without any apparent consideration of the different demands of the film medium. Some material has been added the beginning of the film, elaborating on the brief fact that the children have been sent out of London because of the air raids, but nothing has been taken away. Every line spoken by a character in the book is presented in the film, even if it adds nothing to the scene or is even confusing without the context of the book's narrative.
The result, oddly enough, is a film that's much slower-paced than the book. While the book skips lightly along, always with another marvel around the corner, the film plods along. It arrives at all of the same places that the book visits, but with a heavier tread; each scene seems to be overly drawn out, and transitional portions of the story, such as when the children are fleeing the house of the beavers, are dragged on to the point of tedium. Nor does it help that the cinematography is amateurish; visually, the film has nothing particularly interesting to offer. In the end, the story's sense of adventure fades through lack of forward momentum. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a very short book, but even so, the filmed adaptation is three hours long, and a very tedious three hours, at that.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe also highlights, rather unfortunately, a major reason for the lack of successful serious fantasy films until very recently: special effects. The world of Narnia is full of fantastic creatures, from fauns to giant talking animals. In a written fantasy, the special effects take place in the reader's imagination; when Peter, Lucy, Edmund, and Susan meet a pair of talking beavers, the beavers are charming and fantastic and not the least bit silly. But when we see the same characters in the film version... what we see are not magical talking beavers, but a painfully cheesy live-action representation of them: full-sized human actors enveloped in large brown rugs, with fake noses and face paint, wearing rubber gloves tipped with claws on their hands and flippers on their feet. Frankly, words fail to express how awful these costumes are... and it's an agony that the film could easily have been spared.
The children's visit with the beavers is crucial to the plot, but it's not important that their hosts be, specifically, beavers. If the scriptwriters had used good sense, they would have substituted characters of a different species: other fauns, for instance, since the makeup artists did a creditable job on the faun Mr. Tumnus in an earlier scene. But C.S. Lewis wrote beavers, so in the film we get beavers. And in its blind adherence to the letter of Lewis' text, the film fails to preserve the spirit of the story. The scene with the beavers is farcical rather than charming as it is in the book, and certainly, any precious suspension of disbelief gained so far comes crashing down with a resounding thud.
Unfortunately for what's really an entertaining story in its original form, the film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe goes spiraling steadily downward after the beaver encounter. It's possible to forgive poor costuming choices (although the beavers do verge on unforgivable), but not a consistent pattern of poor directorial and production choices. For instance, the viewers' already overstrained suspension of disbelief is given a further burden to bear when cartoon animals start showing up in the film. Consistency is just as important in a small-budget production as in a large-budget one, and when we get a mix of barely-moving stuffed animals (like Aslan), human actors in utterly ridiculous animal costumes (like the beavers), and badly-animated fantasy cartoons, the effect is bizarre and unintentionally hilarious. The entire tottering structure of the film is brought one step further to its collapse by a serious epidemic of overacting from most of the adults with speaking parts, most particularly the White Witch (Barbara Kellerman), who delivers more than half of her lines at a full scream.
Is there anything that actually works in this film? The four children are good choices for their roles. Edmund (Jonathan R. Scott) is clearly "beastly" as his brother calls him, spiteful and sulky; yet Peter (Richard Dempsey) is also evidently a goody-two-shoes capable of sometimes annoying even the best of people. Lucy (Sophie Wilcox) fits the bill as the cheerful "baby" of the family, and though her lines are the same, the film Susan (Sophie Cook) appears to have somewhat more of a personality than in the book. The early sequences in the film, particularly those scenes involving Lucy discovering the magic wardrobe, are also rather pleasing; it's a shame that the charm dissipates as quickly and as thoroughly as it does.
Video
The transfer of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is impeccably clean: not a single print flaw or the tiniest speckle of noise are anywhere to be seen. The print has obviously gone through a thorough clean-up process; it might even be argued that it has been cleaned up too much, in fact, because removing the last few speckles of noise may have also removed some of the detail of the actual image. Whether or not it's partly due to the cleanup process, the overall image of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is very soft and blurry.
Apart from the blurriness, colors are understated and sometimes slightly washed-out, but usually appear natural. Contrast is satisfactory in well-lit to medium-lit scenes; several of the darker scenes resulted in a complete loss of detail. On the bright side, I was pleased to note the almost total absence of any edge enhancement.
The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, despite the misleading fact that the menu screen is presented in widescreen anamorphic.
Audio
The soundtrack for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is only mono, but it functions adequately to present the dialogue. The overall sound is, unsurprisingly, very flat, but reasonably accurate-sounding, even when the actors' voices range up and down the volume scale.
Extras
The DVD comes with a few minor extras: trivia, a text excerpt on C.S. Lewis, and a stills gallery. The most interesting "special feature" is actually an insert card that explains what is "Turkish Delight," the candy that Edmund is seduced by in the film, and offers a recipe to make it at home.
Final thoughts
In the end, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a production that is faithful to the letter of Lewis' text, while utterly failing to capture the spirit of the book that it is based on. I honestly can't recommend it.
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