The Working File

The movie Prince Caspian has gotten lukewarm reviews for the most part, but my daughter and I very much enjoyed it. Reading the reviews, I get the sense that many people decided in advance that they wouldn’t like it. Either they do not much like fantasy, or Christian fiction, or they are serious Christians who are ever alert for betrayals. The best example for the latter that I have seen is Jeffrey Overstreet, who was very critical of the movie in two separate blog posts.

Mr. Overstreet certainly knows more about C.S. Lewis, and probably about filmmaking, than I do. I learned something reading those 2 posts, but, I can’t help but shake the sense that he is asking way too much of this movie.

Before the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was released, many people settled on a simple way to judge whether the movie retained the book’s Christian character. The test was whether it contained the following line, spoken by Aslan:

The Witch knew the Deep Magic. But if she could have looked a little further back… she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.

It had that line, and most people were satisfied that the movie reflected the book’s Christian aspects.

For Prince Caspian, I never heard of any such simple test in advance, but I essentially settled on the following exchange between Lucy and Aslan:

For a time she was so happy that she did not want to speak. But Aslan spoke. ‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘we must not lie here for long. You have work in hand, and much time has been lost today.’
‘Yes, wasn’t it a shame?’ said Lucy. ‘I saw you all right. They wouldn’t believe me. They’re all so—’
From somewhere deep inside Aslan’s body there came the faintest suggestion of a growl.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lucy, who understood some of his moods. ‘I didn’t mean to start slanging the others. But it wasn’t my fault. But it wasn’t my fault anyway, wasn’t it?’
The Lion looked right into her eyes.
‘Oh Aslan,’ said Lucy. ‘You don’t mean it was? How could I – I couldn’t have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I? Don’t look at me like that…oh well, I suppose I could Yes, and it wouldn’t have been alone, I know, not if I was with you. But what would have been the good?’
Aslan said nothing.
‘You mean,’ said Lucy rather faintly, ‘that it would have turned out all right – somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?’
‘To know what would have happened, child?’ said Aslan. ‘No. nobody is ever told that.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Lucy.
‘But anyone can find out what will happen,’ said Aslan. ‘If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me – what will happen? There is only one way of finding out.’

This exchange appears in the movie. It is altered, and placed in a different part of the story, but it is there. Some of the alterations are significant in ways I hadn’t noticed before I read Overstreet’s review, but other changes I think were harmless and improved the story. The book is widely regarded as one of the weakest in the series. It has a lot of exposition, and an odd structure. The movie is an improvement in this regard, and some of the changes to the Lucy/Aslan sequence are related to the improvement. In the book, for example, Lucy has the above exchange with Aslan much earlier, and the first part of the seuence where Lucy talks and Aslan remains silent is turned into a dialogue.

The switch to a dialogue, is I think justified for basic movie purposes. It works better on paper than in a movie, especially with a CGI lion who isn’t fully capable of providing the facial response such a scene would require if Aslan remained silent.

Moving it towards the end was also justified, I believe, because it made Lucy’s failure to follow Aslan lead to a greater cost. In the book, her failure essentilaly means they lose a day’s travel. It always seemed a bit weak to me. In the movie, her decision, maybe leads to an unnecessary and fruitless battle. I thought it actually strengthened the point.

All in all, I think there’s only so much you can expect from a movie adaptation of any book, including beloved Christian books. I think Overstreet’s expectation that the movie would or could include a meaningful representation of the Bacchus sequence to be completely unrealistic. Unles you read a something outside the books to explain them (and Mr. Overstreet’s review actually does a good job), the Bacchus section, and its connection to Christianity, is probably incomprehensible to most people, i expect, even as presented in the book. I can’t imagine it being understood in a movie, although I could be wrong. After all, nobody is ever shown what would have happened. I’ll be curious to read what Barbara Nicolosi thinks after she sees it. She strkes me as very sensible, and attuned to the limits of Christian-themed film making. If she agrees with Overstreet, I’ll give it another thought.