Surprisingly Accomplished Adaptation

I grew up with the animated film and the BBC version, though when the latter was originally shown on terrestial television, I was only 7 years old. I loved Narnia as a child, and hadn't revisited it for a long time until my sister gave me a new complete set of the books for christmas last year. Being an analytical person by nature, I made certain to watch the BBC series again (digging out my old tape) before seeing the film, in order to compare the two.

I have to admit, the film is far superior to the BBC version. While I continue to have a soft spot for the BBC series, all nostalgia aside, the acting was terrible. All the children, with the exception of Peter (Richard Dempsey), were melodramatic almost to the degree of amateurs – I'm not surprised that they left the profession after making the series (to my knowledge, only Dempsey has continued as a successful actor). Barbara Kellerman, who played the White Witch, was equally horrendous, massively over-acting her part – she seemed to think she was in a pantomime. The puppet for Aslan was laughable, robotically jerking along, the mouth flapping open and shut in a bizarre attempt to approximate speech. The beavers were equally hilarious, in overlarge costumes restricting their movement meaning they had to shuffle along, arms held aloft like furry dinosaurs.

Having said all that, the effects weren't bad for 1988. As a child, I thought it was magnificent. But unsurprisingly, it doesn't hold up to the CGI wizardry of the new film at all (compare the beavers, or the cartoon griffin of the BBC to the fully realised depiction in the film). In addition, the acting in the new film is infinitely superior (although the 'Scottish' housekeeper was pretty poor), in particular Tilda Swinton, who at no point descends into ham acting, and the children are much improved. Lucy of the BBC series was all agape, treating the whole thing like a school play. Today's Lucy is actually capable of acting, along with the rest of the cast. Before I looked again at the BBC series, I would have laboured under the misapprehension that it was a work of genius, untouched by time. Believe me, its not – anyone who grew up with it and hasn't had a look since then, do so before imagining it an equal to the new film. It irks me to think a Disney film which has been touted as a Christian parable (though I would argue it is considerably less religious than the book, much to my relief – the overweening religiosity which plagued Lewis' writing doesn't poison the film) is a superior adaptation than the cherished BBC effort, but unfortunately I find it to be undeniable.

I still enjoy the series, because it was a part of my childhood and I'm extremely sentimental about these things – I'll be getting myself a DVD copy, if only to watch the cast reunion.

To go into greater depth on the film, there were numerous and significant changes to the plot of the book, many of which were positive. Firstly, the opening sequence; unsurprisingly for a children's book, Lewis didn't go into any detail about the horrors of civilians in warfare. This also marks the first instance of a new backstory provided by the script – Peter's treatment of Edmund. In the book and the series, Peter is generally cast as a mature, slightly over-protective older brother while Edmund is (for most of the book) an entirely objectionable little brat. In the film, Edmund is softened considerably, and in turn, Peter is made far less 'noble', if thats the word.

This is followed by numerous minor changes, such as the first entry into Narnia is caused by a hide-and-seek game – in the series and the book, Lucy's initial entry is due to exploration, not her search for a hiding place. The cricket is invented (perhaps to emphasise the 'Englishness' of the book?), as is the cricket ball through the window and knocked-over armour. Instead of Susan, Peter suggests taking the fur coats, and both Lucy and Edmund (in the opening two visits) are bereft of fur coats in the film whereas they were not in the book or series. Mr Tumnus wasn't wearing his iconic green coat, and one other little mistake is the White Witch's pigmentation – she should, as her name suggests, be a very pale white, not merely pale-skinned.

In addition, there were some pleasant little nods to those looking out for book references, with the Professor's apple (pointing to The Magician's Nephew, which focuses on the apple that the White Witch eats and that Digory brings back to his dying mother, later to plant it, becoming the tree from which the wardrobe is made), and the drawing of glasses and moustache on the lion statue (though I'm not totally certain of that, but seem to remember it from the book).

The main change, aside from the softening of Edmund and staining of Peter, comes with the rush from the beaver's home. First, Edmund leaves with his coat – the suffering of his cold journey to the witch, without a coat, was dealt with at length in the book. The party follows Edmund all the way to the castle, rather than briefly searching then returning to the house. Mrs Beaver does not spend hours preparing for the journey, the wolves are right outside rather than coming to an empty house, and there is an escape tunnel. The pub is another new detail (though an entertaining one), as is the character of the fox (presumably based on the old fox at the christmas meal). Needless to say, the fox's role in tricking the wolves is a further fabrication. Finally, the flight down the river, a major sequence, is entirely made up, along with the wolf encounter.

A few religious details are missed out, such as Jadis' parentage (that she is the daughter of Lillith, 'first wife of Adam', doesn't crop up in the series either). More importantly, there is no mention of the 'Emperor-over-the-sea' of whom Aslan is meant to be the son, and who was the creator of the 'Deep Magic'. The stone table section is not hyped up into Christian iconography, but left relatively pagan.

Another important change is the children's reluctance to take up their quest – there is no such hesitation in the book or series. The little scene where the animals have a christmas meal, much to the witch's dismay, is missing, replaced by the cunning fox. Much to my pleasure, the sexist commentary by Father Christmas was modified – previously, he told the women that 'the battle is not for you', but this changes to a general lament about the horror of war. Susan and Lucy are shown to have skill with their weapons, and Susan even gets to kill a dwarf (the one notable sexist comment is Susan's epithet remains 'Gentle', compared to the rather more impressive titles of the men. However, I can see why the script writers chose to keep it, albeit I'd rather they'd been braver and changed it to something less patronising). The battle is much extended, but as there was little focus on this in the book, there is plenty of scope to add detail.

Probably a few I've forgotten there, but you get the idea. The film was far from faithful to the book, but as has been mentioned, it was a reasonable adaptation. Less religious, less sexist, and arguably more realistic in parts (dialogue of the children, for example).

As to the animated film, I'm at present too clouded by fond memories to make a reasonable judgement – I'll have to rewatch it and see if I'm still holding illusions about it as was the case with the BBC series. When I re-read the book, I had firm images of the animated feature in my head; I'd like to think it was better than the film, but we'll see how I feel after a repeat viewing.

Out of interest, has anyone seen the 1967 Narnia series? I didn't even realise there was an earlier live action version until checking through some old newspapers recently. Apparently, it was first shown on ABC television Sunday, July 9th 1967 at 18:15 starring Elizabeth Crowther, Zuleika Robson, Edward McMurray and Paul Waller as the children, Jack Woolgar as the Professor, Elizabeth Wallace as the White Witch, Bernard Kay as Aslan, George Claydon as the Dwarf, Angus Lennie as Mr Tumnus and Robert Booth as Maugrim. Ring any bells?

Hilmi Sonmez : 12 Jan 2006 11:37 |  Tags: Aslan Movie Narnia Review White Witch |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

UK Cross–Forum Meeting, Farnborough, 19/11/2005

Writing about web page http://www.cyberkwoon.com/new/index.php

UK Cross-Forum Meeting, Farnborough, 19/11/2005

I’ve been waiting for this for several months now, Dave having set it up back in August. I had also been hoping that widening it out to a few other forums would increase the numbers, but unfortunately I didn’t see anyone from Bullshido or MAP there (though to be fair, I only posted up the information shortly before the meet itself). It may be that the two people from Bullshido who said they’d be interested in popping along (because they live in the area) will come along tomorrow.

Upon first arriving, there was no-one there, which was slightly worrying, but after doing my usual confused wander around and through the Community Centre, I found some Kwooners in the car-park. Jamie Clubb, Dimi and Dave were all there, along with Dimi’s instructor (whose name was Stephen, I think), Dimi’s girlfriend Elke and another girl from the club whose name I didn’t catch.

The meet started off with everyone chatting; one of the main reasons I felt motivated to attend despite my dodgy shoulder (which very annoyingly was still stopping me sparring) was the social side of things. This set the tone of the meeting – there was a lot of talking! I’ve met a reasonable number of people from the internet now, and pretty much all of them have been pleasant, personable individuals. Today was no exception; also a continuing pleasure to geek out with fellow MA obsessives, even getting some poetry discussion in with Dave on the lift to Farnborough North.

The first bit of physical action came with Jamie’s RBSD session. Unlike last time, he didn’t do the whole ‘vocalisation’ thing, which certainly pleased me; I found it hard to get into the roleplay last time. The drills were again focused around the fence, using pads; as soon as the pad guy touched your arm, you threw a right hook, or if they simply moved in, you pushed back. Doing it with just the one arm was occasionally a little awkward, and eventually it became more of an excuse for me to work my hook. Dave came over for some advice on adding power, and I also had my usual babble of questions for Jamie about the technique (mainly I was interested in the consequences of breaking your hand). Effectively what he was trying to teach, if I understood it correctly, was to get in the first shot, get it in hard, and keep throwing whatever you can with whatever you can until the situation is under your control. This was driven home by further padwork in that vein, adding in elbows and hammerfists on top, while trying to break the habit of going straight into guard.

After Jamie’s RBSD, there was some further chatting, followed by Dave’s Wing Chun. This was a bit similar to the last Wing Chun session he gave in March, as once again various students held forth on the ‘centre-line’ principle whilst demonstrating how they would defend that centre-line and deflect attacks. I asked a few questions about kicks and circular techniques, and learned that kicks are dealt with in the same way as ‘sticky hands’ is utilised against punching; ‘sticky legs’. The session eventually dissipated into such discussions accompanied by demonstration, rather than any drills, finally losing the physical aspect altogether as I had a long chat with Dave about his views on Wing Chun. Interesting points that came out of that were his views that it doesn’t function well under a ruleset and is therefore unsuited to competition, that he doesn’t feel sparring is too useful in the way he teaches a class (though he is by no means unfamiliar to sparring, having a history in boxing), and that he disagrees with those who try to market Wing Chun as something that fits everyone. I’m trying to keep an open mind about Wing Chun, but it still doesn’t really appeal. I’m sure that’s partly due to the constant criticism and various bullshido of some commerically minded instructors, but basically for me it’s a matter of taste.

Third up was Dimi’s instructor, who runs the ‘Fit2Fight’ club in Belgium, teaching MMA under the moniker ‘free fight’. I’d been looking forward to this, since Dimi told me that some transitional techniques from stand-up to grappling would be shown; I’d mentioned this as something I’d like to learn in a Cyberkwoon thread earlier. All the drills started off with jab, cross, low kick, and then for the first one, you followed round with the kick, sunk down, reached over and pushed the other guy to the ground with your body weight, pulling your own leg back and through to go into side mount.

I found myself partnered up with someone I didn’t know, who had arrived a bit later on, who turned out to be a guy I’ve ‘known’ (i.e., posted alongside) on forums for years: aamc99 (Andrew). I didn’t cotton on to this until we were doing the second drill, when he mentioned he did Southern Praying Mantis – Andrew is the guy who set up the JFS Bradford seminar along with Nish (who posts on Bullshido as kismet, I think). We were supposed to be doing a technique in which after the jab, cross, low-kick, you then shot in and pushed through for mount. However, I found that discussing SPM and internal CMA with Andrew was a lot more interesting. I was particularly intrigued by his demonstration of body mechanics, soon making it clear to me just how much extra force could be generated by a thorough understanding of body alignment, like the ‘open/close’ position (he said it had a number of names, but that’s the one I remember) based around the chest, spine and hips. Not that I got anything more than a feel for it in those few minutes, but it did get me thinking about CMA, which I’ve never really bothered with before (ZSK is supposedly a CMA, but I’ve always seen it as a well-taught kickboxing class with a few forms thrown in).

After a third technique, in which you distracted your opponent into closing his guard, then slipped down to his leg, grabbed the ankle and pushed outwards on the inner leg with your forearm for the takedown, we finished up (while I learned some more about CMA from Andrew). The meet then moved to the mats, where a few of us exchanged a few submissions, Jamie delving a bit deeper into the triangle. This was due to it being a particularly successful technique for some BJJ competitors at a tournament Fit2Fight had recently fought at – Jamie showed one counter, then we gathered round my laptop to look at the triangle escape to kneebar Erik Paulson used. It also gave me the opportunity to ask Jamie about his training at Gracie Barra in Birmingham, which I plan to check out once term ends.

The final seminar of the day (leaving the total similar to March at about 4hrs) was taken by Matt Williams , who went through the ‘fa jin’ principle in a plethora of CMA, like baiji, taiji and xing yi. That therefore involved doing things like a punch driving through with the leg but heel kept on the floor, or whipping the arm diagonally downwards into the opponents shoulder. However, both Dimi and I found that these techniques started straining on the sore spots – we were both carrying injuries, mine in the shoulder his in the leg. So, we went through some more submissions instead.

As ever, its great to talk to people in person who you’re used to seeing as words on a screen, and also cool to put a face to aamc99, as I remember the days when we both used to post on Tung-Fu before it went down the shitter. I’m hoping that the next meet will be a little better attended (although as with last time, Dave’s students bumped up the numbers, further helped by Dimi’s entourage). To that end, I’m going to try and set something up in Coventry, but that depends on Warwick Uni Sports Centre – we shall see. I missed out on sparring, but my shoulder refused to sort itself out in time; next meet will hopefully make up for it.

Hilmi Sonmez : 12 Jan 2006 11:13 |  Tags: Bullshido Cyberkwoon Defence Forum Kung Fu Martial Arts Mma Self |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem