Lucy returns to the country house and pops out of the wardrobe, where no time at all has passed and no one will believe her story. Under the rules, Tumnus ( James McAvoy) is supposed to deliver Lucy ( Georgie Henley) to the witch forthwith, but fauns are not heavy hitters, and he takes mercy. It is the witch who has kept Narnia in frigid cold for a century, no doubt because she is descended from Aberdeen landladies. Only toward the end of this film do the special effects ramp up into spectacular extravaganzas that might have caused Lewis to snap his pipe stem. The adventures that Lucy has in Narnia, at first by herself, then with her brother Edmund and finally with the older Peter and Susan, are the sorts of things that might happen in any British forest, always assuming fauns, lions and witches can be found there, as I am sure they can. I don't know if that makes the White Witch into Satan, but Tilda Swinton plays the role as if she has not ruled out the possibility. For those who read the Lewis books as a Christian parable, Aslan fills the role of Christ because he is resurrected from the dead. That's the charm of the Narnia stories: They contain magic and myth, but their mysteries are resolved not by the kinds of rabbits that Tolkien pulls out of his hat, but by the determination and resolve of the Pevensie kids - who have a good deal of help, to be sure, from Aslan the Lion.
What is remarkable is that this bookish bachelor who did not marry until he was nearly 60 would create four children so filled with life and pluck. The kids are from a tradition which requires that British children be polite and well-spoken, no doubt because Lewis preferred them that way. There are mythological creatures in Narnia, but most of the speaking roles go to humans like the White Witch (if indeed she is human) and animals who would be right at home in the zoo (if indeed they are animals). Tumnus is explaining to her that he is a faun.įauns, like leprechauns, are creatures in the public domain, unlike Hobbits, who are under copyright. Playing hide-and-seek, Lucy, the youngest, ventures into a wardrobe that opens directly onto a snowy landscape where before long Mr. In the opening scenes of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," two brothers and two sisters from the Pevensie family are evacuated from London and sent to live in a vast country house where they will be safe from the nightly Nazi air raids. Tolkien's universe was in unspecified Middle Earth, but Lewis' really was next door. cummings:: "Listen: there's a hell/of a good universe next door let's go." When you’ve created your own universe, how do you feel when, in the words of a poem by e. Tolkien, who wrote the Ring trilogy, were friends who taught at Oxford at the same time, were pipe-smokers, drank in the same pub, took Christianity seriously, but although Lewis loved Tolkein’s universe, the affection was not returned. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia books, and J.R.R.