Author Sarah Arthur has graciously written a guest analysis for Hollywood Jesus, taking a look at what The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe perhaps sadly lost in translation from book to screen. “Getting it right,” Sarah suggests, means more than just nailing the visuals, plot, symbolism and characterization.
Here’s a snip:
…not only is your father reading the story, adding his own inflections, interpreting the personalities of the characters in his own unique way, but behind his voice—or rather, speaking through him—is another voice, the voice of the narrator, the one who is telling the story from the inside.
It’s the voice of every fairytale from the beginning of time: authoritative yet personal, succinct yet chatty, a touch gossipy, even conspiring with you on matters of taste and opinion. It’s the voice of the nursery, of bedtime, of tales told by the fire, establishing a relationship of trust between teller and hearer without which the form of fairytale comes apart at the seams and becomes mere plot, either bald and flat, or bald and terrifying.
[Read the article at Hollywood Jesus]
