Dr. Bob Beltz is a consultant for the owner of Walden Media. He’s now working on bringing another C.S. Lewis classic to the big screen with The Great Divorce. It has the potential to be a fantastic film. It’s got the solid foundation of C.S. Lewis behind it, and if done well, could be a film classic. Dr. Beltz wrote about it on his blog on Examiner.
Catholic experts explore Biblical parallels, moral lessons at heart of classic children’s tale by C.S. Lewis, now a major motion picture.
In two weeks, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe hits theaters nationwide. People are talking . . . and asking . . . just what is this story all about?
Does the Lion represent Jesus Christ? Is the Witch a metaphor for Satan? What are the parallels to the crucifixion and the salvation story? Who is Father Christmas? What makes the Wardrobe magical?
Beginning December 9th, these and a hundred other questions will be all the talk at water coolers and across playgrounds.
To help Catholics unlock Narnia’s many secrets, the editors of the NY Times bestseller A Guide to the Passion of The Christ, have just released the definitive Catholic travel guide to Lewis’ fictional land. A Guide to Narnia: 100 Questions about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is available through Ascension Press and Catholic bookstores nationwide.
The highly anticipated film is being hailed by Christian and Catholic leaders as a faithful rendering on Lewis’ tale about the heroic adventures of four English children who journey through a secret wardrobe into the land Narnia. There they meet The White Witch who has cast Narnia into a spell of perpetual winter. Through a series of captivating adventures, they help the lion king Aslan reclaim Narnia through a redemptive sacrifice. “Beneath the surface of the story lies a beautiful metaphorical tale of Jesus Christ and God’s plan for humanity,” contends Mark Shea, co-author of the book and Senior Editor at Catholic Exchange. “Through ‘A Guide to Narnia,’ Catholics will learn the true meaning of this classic tale.”
Catholic Exchange, in cooperation with Catholic Outreach, has also produced three companion study guides and a youth activity guide to the book. These resources are available for free at www.NarniaOutreach.com, a fan site and resource center for parishes, schools and groups who want to use the film as a faith-formation opportunity.
“The movie is destined to inspire Catholics, especially youth, to face evil in their lives and respond with forgiveness, courage and honor,” said Matthew Pinto, President of Ascension Press. A Guide to Narnia is the perfect resource for individuals, schools, and parishes who wish to pass on the life-changing lessons that can be learned in this epic film.”
Whether four sentences from the C.S. Lewis book make it onto the big screen will make a big difference. **SPOILERS**
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
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.” – from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
Earlier this month, Disney ran the first test screening of its December release, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in a California theater. The existence of a screenable print constitutes a kind of opening bell for two questions regarding its content. The answer to the first, “Is it any good as a movie?” will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Disney and its co-producer, Walden Media and will only be known later this year when the box office comes in. The second, more intriguing question, “Has it reproduced the Christian character of C.S. Lewis’s book?” could also be worth tens of millions if it inspires Passion of the Christ-style repeat viewings by conservative Christians. And the answer could lie in whether the four sentences above, which constitute a kind of evangelical sniff test make it into the film. (A Disney spokesperson said that since he had not attended the screening and that there is not yet a final cut, he could not verify whether it contains the lines, but promised that “the movie is going to be as faithful to the book as possible.”)
Lewis always insisted that his seven Narnia books were not a point-by-point Christian allegory. Much of The Lion, the Witch owes more to English folktales or Norse and classical myth than to the New Testament. The passage of the four Pevensie children through the magic closet into a world laboring under a spell of eternal winter is not Christian, nor are the cruel white witch, talking animals, centaurs, and even a duo of Roman gods who inhabit it. True, the description of the redeeming figure of the lion Aslan as “the Son the Great Emperor-Beyond-the- Sea” is a big hint. But even Aslan’s sacrifice on a huge stone table (not a cross; and performed with a stone knife, Aztec-style), and his subsequent miraculous recovery could have been borrowed from any number of world religions.
It is the book’s explanation for this key sequence that makes it exclusively Christian. After Edmund Pevensie betrays Aslan and his brother and sisters, the Witch claims his blood in accordance to the laws of “Deep Magic.” Aslan concedes this and offers himself up in proxy, announcing glumly, “I have settled the claim on your brother’s blood.” Miraculously revived, he explains, “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.”
This is Christianity in a kid-lit veil. Like any good sermon, its key points can be traced to Biblical citations – here mostly from the Letters of the apostle Paul. Edmund’s treachery corresponds to the sins of humanity, which Paul explains is inherently doomed to violate God’s Law (”The Deep Magic”). Because of this violation, writes Paul in Romans, humans are literally owned by Satan (”slaves of the one whom you obey”); and “the wages of sin is death.” The idea that Aslan, because he is sinless, can voluntarily pay for Edmund’s blood with his own, is the powerful Christian doctrine of blood atonement, developed from texts like the First Letter of Peter: “You know that you were ransomed… with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” Like Christ’s, Aslan’s resurrection is inevitable (”If Christ has not been raised, then … our faith is in vain,” Paul writes in First Corinthians.) And it conquers not just his death (or as Aslan would say, causes it to move backwards) but that of all believers, who will also see resurrection. Paul rejoices: “Death is swallowed up in victory… O death, where is thy sting?” In The Lion, Aslan and Lucy Pevensie celebrate with a “mad” game of tag.
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