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May 15, 2008
No Bacchus? Let's Get Raucous!
Groan. And so it begins, the list of revisions and omissions and additions that the second Narnia movie prepetrates on C. S. Lewis' story Prince Caspian. I once, perhaps rather rashly, said that they should not make a movie of this chronicle at all, and perhaps that would have been better than some of the changes they seem to have made here. But passing over this story would have created very tough sledding, like Jadis in Aslan's Spring, to bridge the story over to Dawn Treader.
Well, I am not going to remake all the points that this article, by a very sensitive Catholic reviewer, makes about the film, but, alas, there is no Bacchus, thus evicerating much of Lewis' use of myth to illustrate truth. No Susan saying, " I wouldn't have felt very safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we'd met them without Aslan" and Lucy responding, "I should think not." There will be no Bacchus asking, "Is it a romp, Aslan" and proceeding to create vines to tear down the stones of oppression and new wine to gladden the heart. I am just going to have to wait till heaven to dance with wild abandon as Bacchus and the maenads and Susan and Lucy did then. To be fair, though, such holy joy would have been very difficult to pull off cinematically. Though the filmmakers might have looked to the beginning of Much Ado About Nothing for some (though definitely not all) of the expressions of joy and revelry shown there.
If only the movie makers had taken Jeffrey Overstreet's advice, I might not be as miffed:
"But I just wish that efforts like this one, and like Alfonzo Cuaron’s extraordinary film Children of Men, would do away with the label 'Based on the book.' Rather, they are new stories, 'Inspired by elements of the book.'”
Also, here is the Christianity Today review. Ouch. Two and a half stars out of four.
C. S. Lewis | By jackdas | 10:22 PM
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