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December 23, 2004
Here We Go...
The echoes of the screamed "NOOOO!!!" I shouted when I heard the news that Disney is making the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, are still reverberating. At least my fears of them severely butchering the books is. Here is a clip showing some of the work that Weta is putting into the project. While it is wonderful news that Weta is on board and the clip is a very small piece of a much larger whole, one hopes that they will do equally well with the good creatures of Narnia as with the baddies, which this clip primarily features.
It is much harder to portray goodness and innocence than it is to portray evil. Attempts at portraying piercing, awe-ful goodness or joyful holiness or interesting innocence often do not work. Case in point: the glorified Ewok village which attempted to be Lothlorien in the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring. To Peter Jackson's credit, the Shire was beautifully realized and Rivendell also.
Sadly, this all is a symptom of our fallness. It is a malady hardwired into us, into the world, since the Fall. Our very basic concept of story is rooted centrally in conflict. Can you picture a story without conflict and resolution. If one trys to imagine such a story, I think it seems simply boring. Of course there is a glory, perhaps a greater glory even, in stories which run through the arc of Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation to arrive at forgiveness and resolution. God is about just such a story with the world.
Do our stories get to that point, either the ones we write or the ones we live? I hope so. Many in our day do not, or perhaps cannot, even see Goodness and a potential return to it as anything other than an abstract imaginary concept. Our serious cinema is often excellent at truly portraying the fallenness of the world. And that can be a form of speaking truth, which may be a worthy goal. If that is all that is ever produced, though, either by an individual or an industry, then that is not the entire truth that God has spoken about the world. Images of forgiveness and redemption do sometimes occur in cinema. Rare is the attempt, and rarer still the successful attempt, to take on a topic such as goodness or justice and to a commendable job. I am not an encyclopedic film buff by any means, so my sample size is very small, but films like Chariots of Fire, The Mission, some of the Jane Austen films, stand out in my mind for having some nice portrayals of goodness.
Finally, I am not, though I once was, an advocate of producing and viewing only Pollyanna-ish movies. I do want to cheer, though, when someone, either a Christian or someone who is not, portrays the themes of forgiveness and goodness well, even amidst the struggle of fallen life...especially amidst the struggle life. More importantly, I want those themes to be visible parts of my own life and the lives of my fellow believers.
| By jackdas | 1:14 PM
Comments
good thoughts. i will say that took me about fiftythousandyears to load....
Posted by: joy | karagraphy.com at December 24, 2004 1:39 AM
