Wednesday saw Jean, Renee and I attending The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I thought this was an excellent adaptation of the book, and that it captured the spirit of the characters and story quite well. The temptation to get all saccharine must have been overwhelming, but in truth the sentimentality was limited to the areas where it was actually called for.
Tilda Swinton is fast becoming one of my favorite character actresses. She was in Constantine, as the archangel Gabriel, and here plays the White Witch with a great sense of detachment, contempt and suppressed fury. The voices of the various animal characters were appropriate, and James McAvoy, as Mr. Tumnus, was almost exactly right. His character was the one I was most worried about, as there would surely be a temptation to turn him into the fluttery children's book stereotype that pops up so often in fantasy movies. Here he gave, in just a few brush strokes, a performance that evoked a living person, with flaws, that I could actually believe in.
When Renee was five and six (and still Kelly) we read all the Narnia books together (me doing most of the reading) and they are etched in my memory. Now there is a movie of the first book, and I'm quite comfortable with their stewardship. Let's have another!
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