Narniana

[sir_guinglain]

It's over a week now since I saw The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. What remains with me? Narnia's size opening up through the film, from a snowy set behind a wardrobe to an extensive country synonymous to its inhabitants with 'the world'. Peter's gaze at the soldiers on the station platform during the World War Two sequences; others, both at the cinema and in the press, have thought that this was envy, but I saw apprehension, as in this interpretation Peter is not far off the age where he would receive his call-up papers and gone to fight. The chatty, homely Beavers. The departure of the two kings and two queens from Narnia at the end; nowhere else could a passing from adulthood to childhood be a loss of innocence, as universal responsibility gives way to the small matter of a broken window and a cricket ball. The interpolated line given to Jim Broadbent's Professor - not just 'You won't get in that way' but 'I know. I've tried' - and those of us who remember the books, however dimly as in my case, know that this is not 'God' as one newspaper reviewer thought, but Digory Kirke who grew the tree from which the wardrobe was made from the pip of an apple from Narnia's dawn, and who has lived his life in a kind of exile. I was on the verge of tears for the last few minutes of the film, from the coronation scene onwards, at least; and I'm not sure why.