Forgive Tilda Swinton if she engages in flattery of the filmmakers behind The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Fiercely independent, highly educated and outspoken, the English actress is known more for her withering analysis, not her praise, of the Hollywood dream machine.
“Most big-budget, industrial films are such rubbish,” she tells the Sun in a private interview after a morning of round-table sessions with dozens of media. “What I don’t understand is why this film isn’t.”
But the key, Swinton says, is the magical spell cast by New Zealand director Andrew Adamson (celebrated for his animated hits Shrek and Shrek 2). Adamson, drawing on his childlike enthusiasm for a book that had enchanted him at the age of eight, makes his live action directorial debut with The Chronicles Of Narnia.
“I think it was very, very clever that he was asked to make it,” Swinton says of the genesis of the new film, which opens Friday. Walt Disney Pictures executives hope this is the first in a franchise that will rival the success of The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series, both inextricably linked to the original Narnia books by the late C.S. Lewis.
“I truly believe honestly, gloves off, that he has made a classic film,” Swinton says of Adamson. “I think that it is a classic children’s film. And it is for this reason: As a special effects master, he knew what children need is not a virtual world but a ‘real’ world. They needed to see real 3-D children interacting with a 3-D world.”
[Read the rest at Jam Showbiz]
