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Saturday, December 10, 2005

Not a Tame Lion

I saw The Chronicles of Narnia last night, and rate it 4-1/2 stars out of five: I highly recommend it.

A friend cried when Aslan the Lion was treated cruelly by the White Witch, although she didn't know why she was so sad.

2 comments:

  1. I just saw Narnia and thought it was an extremely well produced film. Beyond the amazing special effects, I was impressed with Tilda Swinton's performance of the White Witch. She creates a lasting performance of unbridled evil. This Ice Queen will be a villain for the ages.

    The children by and large did a good job of acting as well, in particular, by the underrated Skandar Keynes who played Edmund. His resentful and gloomy demeanor elevates his betrayal and subsequent redemption in a realistic manner - nothing sugar coated here.

    There were some obvious Christian and Old Testament metaphors such as Edmund's betrayal of Aslan and Aslan's resurrection, and references to sons and daughters of Adam and Eve; but if you looked closely there were some very clever metaphors: the cracked table on which Aslan dies(the temple splitting), the Professor as St. Paul, escaping from the wolves as they try to cross the river (fleeing from Egyptians across the Red Sea), Aslan's tent (Solomon and the Tent of the Meeting), the gas lamp (the burning bush in the wilderness). I am sure there will be dozens of more metaphors discovered.

    I was glad to see the rating kept at PG by keeping much of the unnecessary gore out of the film. The battle scenes were tremendous and left the blood and guts to the imagination. This fortunately allows most children to see the movie without parental permission.

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  2. Hegs,

    Great comments. I missed most of these metaphors, although there was a lot in the film that seemed significant, for reasons I couldn't understand.

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