In October,
Time asked, "Has [the Narnia movie] reproduced the Christian character of C.S. Lewis's book?" The magazine further proposed "a kind of evangelical sniff test" as a means of answering that question. It postulated that, if certain lines from the book did not survive intact, "the film may be a classic, but never a Christian classic. And its revenues, large as they may be, will reflect that." Those lines? Take a look:
The White Witch: "That human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."
Aslan (later) : "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."
Narnia scholar
Bruce Edwards has this to say about what the movie actually did present:
Aslan is risen! Hurrah. But listen closely to his explanation of the witch's downfall: she misinterpreted the deep magic, he says. No! Aslan, what about the deeper magic? Why is that written out, skipped? Aslan's explanation is that the reason good has triumphed is that he has the superior understanding; true, but that's not what's at stake here: it's his superior LOVE that dispenses grace and mercy to the unworthy. It's the deeper magic beyond time, not the proper hermeneutics issued within time. It's not what's written on the stone table, rightly interpreted, that saves; it's the unmerited favor of a Lover who will not let his beloved alone to die.
Is this difference between Narnia's "Deep Magic" and "Deeper Magic" just too deep a concept to convey on film? Do you think that the difference managed to come across anyway?
Is Edwards expecting too much? Was
Time setting too high and too unfair a standard?
And even if Disney and director Andrew Adamson "got it wrong" according to such standards, how much does that really matter? Is the "Christian character" of the Narnia stories the most important thing about it, or something else?
Greg Wright
Senior Editor and
Narnia Blogger
