True Fantasy
With the release of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Hollywood is showing signs of recognizing the important lesson taught, not only by the success of The Lord of the Rings but The Passion of The Christ — namely, that the truths of the Gospel still matter to a huge audience as much as they mattered to great Catholic artists like J.R.R. Tolkien and Mel Gibson and, when presented well, still resonate with the human heart.
These movies are, in the deepest meaning of the word, cultural events. Their layered meanings prompt the highest kind of reflection. They allow the viewer to enter a moral universe, where human actions matter profoundly. It we want to build a civilization of love, we must restore the nearly lost ability of our fellow human beings to engage in and articulate moral reasoning. These movies are powerful educational tools toward that accomplishment.
C.S. Lewis, the author of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, was another deeply convinced Christian who suffused his fiction with a brilliant combination of exciting creativity and rooted Christian orthodoxy. His seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia, of which Lion is the first book, transpose the Gospel into a fantasy world yet retain all the essential elements.
A Lion of New Life
Not everyone who sees the film is going to realize this, however. We cannot underestimate the amount of biblical illiteracy in our society. With the release of the new film version, a mass audience is about to be exposed to the story, but not all will have the Christian background which will enable them to “decode” the story and see the depths of meaning behind it.
We cannot assume that everyone who sees the movie has enough background even to formulate questions about its Christian connection. What they need for this movie is the same thing they needed for The Passion of The Christ, a “Little Catechism” to take them beyond mere entertainment and into meaning.
Movie-goers found our million-selling Passion book such an invaluable tool that Catholic Exchange, in cooperation with Ascension Press, has written 100 Questions about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Please go to NarniaOutreach.com for more details about this new and vital resource. Our prayerful purpose is to help the film-going audience grasp the deepest meaning of the story of Aslan, the Great Lion and Son of the Emperor-over-Sea who, like the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, lays down his life for the wicked, and brings the breath of new life to a world frozen in death — a world where it is “always winter and never Christmas.”
Pictures for a New Generation
Tom Allen, President of Catholic Exchange, notes in the book’s foreword that one of the curious features of C.S. Lewis's creative process was that his stories always began as pictures in his head. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for instance, began with the picture of a faun carrying packages in a snowy wood. Allen adds:
We live now in a time that is dominated far more by the Image than by the Word. People get their information about life, the universe, and everything primarily from TV and the movies. Less and less do people read. And less still do they read works of abstract theology. So the release of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a motion picture is a particularly welcome event because it gives us the essence of the Gospel in a way that anybody can understand it. Still more welcome is the fidelity to the original story the filmmakers have displayed. Through it, the pictures Lewis saw in his mind will become visible to our eyes as well as our minds. And through it, a whole new generation — who might have missed this marvelous tale because they are not readers — will be introduced to the joys of Narnia and her most gracious Lord, Aslan. Our prayer is that many will be led from the image on the screen, not merely back to Lewis's words, but to the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ.
Co-author Matt Pinto concurs: “Lewis's imagination is so rich and exciting that it's possible to receive the story simply at the level of story and be 'full after the meal,' so to speak.” However, one of the joys of good literature — like good film — is the pleasure of digestion, of finding that you really did eat something of real substance and not just a piece of quickly forgotten fluff. 100 Questions about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will help many readers — both believers and non-believers — see into the depths of Lewis's faith and fiction with new eyes.
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