A trip worth taking

Film review: Narnia The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

MANILA, Philippines - Narnia The Voyage of the Dawn Treader almost did not make it to the big screen. Disney apparently thought that Prince Caspian, despite making $420-M worldwide, did not make enough to underwrite the next movie. The Narnia franchise was rescued by 20th Century Fox, and after a two-year wait The Voyage of the Dawn Treader sails across movie screens in 3D (it opens in 2D this weekend).

In the third installment of the Narnia books Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) are brought back to Narnia to help Caspian (Ben Barnes) find seven lost lords, friends of his father’s, whom the usurping seneschal Miraz had sent abroad, he hopes, to their deaths. Caspian is to reunite their swords at Aslan’s Table, which act would dispel the mysterious evil mist that periodically claims boatloads of lives. The old friends are joined by Eustace (Will Poulter), a querulous cousin of the Pevensie children. Aboard the Dawn Treader, they sail to the very edge of the world. The journey is fraught with menace and mystery, and as such stories go, it also leads to self-discovery and growth.

The movie takes a lot of liberties with the book to make it cinematic. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the most episodic of the Narnia books, and as such, it does seem not to present a clear dramatic arc, which is what a movie that aspires to box-office success usually needs. The conversion of Eustace from an “unmitigated nuisance” to a less selfish person takes up the first half of the book. After that, the book drifts from island to island, neither building up to a climax or establishing necessary (in the sense of “inevitable” or “causal”) connections between episodes. Eustace virtually fades into the woodwork, and Caspian himself is unceremoniously dismissed a chapter or two short of the ending.

Director Michael Apted and writers Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeeley and Michael Petroni obviously thought through the material before committing it to celluloid. The result is a two-hour movie that illustrates what dramatic economy is. Incidents are transposed, telescoped, added, or substituted, to create a narrative that goes somewhere and ends where and when it should. For one, the writers invented a common villain, correctly undefined and represented only as a shape-shifting green mist and called, simply, evil. This invention provides the incidents, including the Dufflepuds episode, which in the book appears almost extraneous, with a motivating force. Each of the major characters gets his or her moment of moral trial and triumph, whether against vanity, pride, envy, or sloth — manifestations of the unformed self. And the story of Eustace’s metanoia is made to intertwine with the final battle with a sea serpent, almost bookending the movie, so that some unifying climax is effected.

There are other happy touches here and there: Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell) are cleverly inserted in the narrative; and there is a hint of a sequel, when in the last scene we overhear that Jill Pole is come to visit Eustace.

Some readers may contend that the episode with the slave traders was resolved with more wit and less force in the book. But a movie, after all, is an audio-visual experience. This one, in addition, aspires to be a blockbuster, so that some brandishing of swords (or waving of wands in the case of another movie franchise) within the first 30 minutes is only to be expected. Unlike its two predecessors The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has no big war scenes, and something like it must be written in.

But the movie is not without a few loose ends. There is Edmund’s torch, for instance. By the logic of Narnian time, it should have run out of power. Caspian has also lost his Hispanic accent. Such lapses are not difficult to overlook.

What may be more difficult to take are the basic ideological underpinnings of the source material. C. S. Lewis was not one to hide his agenda as an apologist for Christianity, and his kind of Christianity (“mere Christianity,” as he called it) is not without (from a modern perspective) unsavory elements. The Dufflepuds episode, for instance, could be read as a defense of colonialism. Viewing it, one is reminded of Prospero and Caliban: A solitary magician living in a mansion and being served, grudgingly, by what looks like gnomes with one leg whom he has made invisible “for their own good.” Interestingly, Eustace’s diary provides an alternative perspective on the events, bringing to the surface what may be considered racist or misogynist in Narnia. Eustace is eventually converted to Narnian ethics, but to late 20^th- and early 21st century audiences, his bellyaching makes some sense.

Indeed, the question is whether a Hollywood enterprise can ever use Christian material without secularizing it. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, like its predecessors, takes an ambivalent position in regard to Christian teachings, perhaps because of the (commercial) pressure to please as many publics as possible. Thus, the movie retains the idea that Aslan is known by “another name” in the real world of the children (Britain ca. World War II), but his interventions even in Narnia are minimized in the movie — in the teeth of Lewis’ basic assertion that old-fashion miracles can and do happen. Some of the Christian symbology is retained, the ones that would look good on screen: The albatross, the lilies, and (of course) the Dawn Treader itself, as the “wandering bark” of the soul. But the lamb and the fish are gone. (To be sure, a talking lamb — and one that happens to be cooking fish — does not inspire the same awe as a talking lion, even if it should be voiced by Liam Neeson.)

Whether or not there will be a next Narnia installment is matter for conjecture. Regardless of one’s religious convictions, however, producers could learn from the movie itself — that to give in to the lure of lucre is to become something of a (European) dragon.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a trip worth taking, though the preferred traveler—be warned — may be those who already share Lewis’ beliefs.