Film
Into the darkness
by David Larsen
The happy ending of Prince Caspian’s predecessor presents its bill.
There’s a beautiful scene a few minutes into The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian where the young prince of the title flees his castle on horseback, pursued by his uncle’s henchmen. They race across open grasslands in a wide-angle shot, the prince arrowing ahead, his would-be assassins clustered behind. It isn’t quite a direct quote of the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Arwen flees from the Nazgul, because it happens under a full moon, but the formation is strikingly similar.
The image, which passes in an eye-blink, is more than simply a nicely judged tip of the wink from one Kiwi adaptor of British fantasy classics to another. It also hints Andrew Adamson’s second Narnia film will be a darker, more Peter Jackson-tinged beast than his first. Take the hint seriously.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, despite turning on the almost sexually intense murder of Aslan, the series’ Christ figure, by Tilda Swinton’s White Witch, still managed to feel unthreatening. Aslan came back to life, and the four human characters, having learned some needed lessons, went on to rule a fantasy kingdom for years without losing a day of their lives back in our world.
As Prince Caspian opens, that happy ending is presenting its bill. In one of many shrewd departures from the CS Lewis source material, Adamson and co-writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely show us what it might really be like to spend a decade as a king or queen and then be shoved back into a child’s body and told to behave yourself. The former High King Peter (William Moseley) has the most obvious case of culture shock, picking fights with anyone who dares to treat him as just another schoolboy. When he and his siblings find themselves called back to Narnia – as impersonated by a dizzyingly beautiful stretch of Coromandel beach – it’s clear all four of them feel as much relief as joy.
But 1000 years have passed in Narnia, and the country has been conquered by the genocidal Telmarines. In the book, Lewis’ heroes simply accept this and get on with things. Here, the news all their friends are long dead is allowed to have some weight. So the mood is already grim as the film moves towards its central conflict, Peter’s bitter dispute with Caspian (the madly good-looking Ben Barnes) over how best to defeat Caspian’s uncle Miraz (Sergio Castellitto). In a brilliantly filmed extended assault on Miraz’s castle, the two of them manage to get a good fraction of their army killed.
This is harsher than anything in the first film. Their costly failure leads the two rivals to what, in Lewis’ world, is always the right answer: ask Aslan for help. This is the one area where the books do something Adamson can’t match. Aslan is either God incarnate or he’s a cheap narrative contrivance, turning up to save the day when the story’s backed itself into a corner. There’s no middle ground, and, as voiced by Liam Neeson, the great lion lacks the gravitas Lewis creates for him on the page. The result is that the film, having created a convincing dark night of the soul for its heroes, can’t credibly resolve it. We’re left with a rousing final battle scene, but also the nagging sense that this happy ending, like the last one, isn’t quite as happy as it looks.
Your essay on existentialism was quite impressive, Max.” “I left that section blank.” “Yes. Extraordinary.” What’s an exchange like this doing in a Hollywood blockbuster? The big-screen update of 60s spy spoof Get Smart belies its title: it’s smart already. Steve Carell shines as clutzy Agent 68. The world-in-peril storyline is cleverer than any three James Bond scripts put together, but never makes the mistake of taking itself seriously. And there’s a Bill Murray cameo. By all logic, this should be yet another failed remake of a cult TV show. Instead, it’s the best laugh I’ve had at the movies for ages.
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN, directed by Andrew Adamson.
GET SMART, directed by Peter Segal.
