The Chronicles of Narnia

Having read the C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia as a child and enjoyed them immensely (one of those stories that take you away from your present reality and then has the courtesy to repeat the favor over several books), I anticipated the release of the movie version in 2005 with some trepidation. Your interaction with a book is often so unique that any movie version has to be a disappointment. Occasionally there are real successes where the new movie carves out its own distinct character but somehow, and often unaccountably, remains true to the source. It is then that you end up with two separate enjoyments, the movie and the book, separate but related.

More often though, the movie is more or less derivative of the original story and then you are left debating about how the weighting of this theme was overdone, how that sub-plot was overlooked altogether, how a secondary character was portrayed inconsistently with your reading of them, etc. Your judgment of the movie becomes a function of the extent to which it is closely correlated or not (Cheaper by the Dozen) to the original book.

You look forward to those occasions when the derivative movie reinforces your reading experience, often serving as the catalyst to go back and re-enjoy the book. You dread when the celluloid rendition besmirches a recollected story by its ham-fisted rendition.

And yet it is a little more complicated than that. I was struck by this last night.
When the Chronicles movie came out a couple of years ago we took all three kids to see it as they had all read and enjoyed the books. The net of the post-viewing discussion was that the filming was beautiful and that while the producers had clearly made the effort to adhere to a pretty nuanced and layered story as closely as possible and had done a fair job of doing so, it was definitely a derivative movie and that the power of the memory of the books would definitely outweigh that of the movie.

Last night the Chronicles were on TV and my daughter very much wanted to see it again and so we re-watched. Nothing in the second viewing changed my assessment from the first. However, I was struck by just how visually powerful some of the scenes were. Lucy stumbling through the closet into Narnia's winter, the lamp post, the Edwardian decorations of Mr. Tumnus' home, the wretchedly drained-of-color forecourt of the White Witches palace, the rich panoply of Aslan's army.

So I end up with the original story line and pleasure from the books intact. That is the memory carried, not the version of the movie. And yet now, in thinking of the parts of the story, there is a visual picture that supplements the reading experience. The producers have rendered a snapshot of those scenes consistent with that which I had created in my head, but theirs has an immediacy and detail which adds one more pleasure.