The Inferno

Issue date: 12/5/05 Section: Film

The acting and special effects were phenomenal. The film´s special effects helped to bring the story to life in a realistic way, that easily could have become over the top and completely lost it´s significance.

Some doors should be opened with caution, especially if they lead to an alternate world where fauns, centaurs, and talking beavers are running wild. "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" which comes out later this month is the first film adaptation based on the novel written by C.S. Lewis in 1950.

The film takes place in England during World War II and focuses on the Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. Their mother sends them to live in the English countryside after their home in London is bombed during nightly air raids. They are taken under the care of a professor and Lucy, the youngest Pervensie, is not adjusting well to this situation.

One rainy day the children decide to a game of hide and seek. Lucy is trying to find a good place to hide in a spare room. She finds more than she bargained for while hiding in the room's wardrobe. While in the wardrobe, she finds a portal to another world, Narnia. Lucy tries to convince her brothers and sister of what lies behind the back of the wardrobe. At first they don't believe her but on a whim they decide to see if she's telling the truth. They realize that she was and they also find out that the citizens of Narnia were expecting them. The Pevensie children apparently are a part of a prophecy in which they are expected to defeat the evil White Witch. She has caste a spell over Narnia in which winter has lasted for over 100 years. The with the children's help Aslan, the previous ruler, finds the courage to fight to reclaim his kingdom.

Whether you read the novel as a child or not, you'll love this movie. It's a movie that anyone from the age of five to 80 can understand and enjoy. The acting and special effects were phenomenal. The film's special effects helped to bring the story to life in a realistic way, that easily could have become over the top and completely lost it's significance.

"The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" reaches out to such a diverse age group because it is a film that works on so many levels. It's a great plot for younger children to get into but it's not the kind of movie that dumbs it down so that older audience members are subjected to an hour and a half of agony. There are also elements of British history and mythology that are interwoven into the story.

The novel that the film is based on was the first of seven novels that C.S. Lewis wrote about Narinia. He had been awarded the Carnagie Medal in recognition of the series. There are parallels that can be seen between the stories of C.S. Lewis and those of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of "Lord of the Rings". The two authors were actually contemporaries of one other and both belonged to the same literary associations.

If the success of the "Rings" trilogy is any indication, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" should have no problem equaling it's popularity.

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