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• Wednesday, December 7, 2005 08:58 AM

  Here's the problem...

  Well, it's not quite a problem, but it's a fact of life. People who are complete literalists about political indeology or religion are simply not equipped to appreciate the subtleties and nuances that makes for interesting storytelling and art. The people who picket movies about gay people, or movies like "The Last Temptation of Christ" can't look past the the surface of those movies. People like that prefer a movie like "The Passion of the Christ" which is all surface; Jesus gets betrayed, he gets whipped, he gets crucified, he is resurrected, bada bing, bada boom. There is no subtext, except maybe that of the source material, which would be the Bible (and as we all know, fundamentalists are not big on finding subtext in the bible). It sounds like there's plenty of subtext in C.S. Lewis's original book (having never read it), and it's probably going to hard to make a watchable movie version with retaining some of that ambiguity.

  I will not avoid "The Chronicles of Narnia" because the book it was based on was written by a Christain who intended his story to teach the gospel. The worst case scenario is that it will be an on-the-nose tract, and I'll be out $9.00. "The Chronicles of Narnia" certainly wont turn you or your kids into a Christain, anymore than "Brokeback Mountain" will turn you gay. Christain Fundamentalists have ridiculously stringent standards for what constitutes a good movie. Beacause of this, they are rarely satified with most of the movies that come out, and they are apt to gush over anything that they expect will meet their requirements. If it is a good movie, it will be accessible to Christians and non-Christains alike.

  —tonyx3 Read tonyx3's other letters
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