Christmas Eve Viewing

[poliphilo]

I watched a bit of Prince Caspian. It was frightfully violent. The fairytale people were fighting the Spanish conquistadors. There was a cute mouse that killed grown men with a rapier. I was quite enjoying all this until a dead-eyed CGI lion turned up and everyone curtsied and bowed to it while it said pompous things. The lion had super-powers and conjured up a river god who killed the chief conquistador and then everything was fine again. The lion had been living in retirement in the forest- and the reason it hadn't intervened before and saved a whole lot of killing was a deep mystery we were advised not to question. 

Seriously, does anyone find Aslan an attractive character? I think he's ghastly. 

I cleansed my palate with Whistle and I'll Come to You- a reworking of an original idea by M.R. James- starring John Hurt as an old man grieving for the wife who has been taken away from him by Altzheimers.  The new material didn't quite fit the framework of the original- the whistle the old man finds on the beach had become a ring- thus making a nonsense of the title- but the slow pacing and murky atmospherics were just right. Forty years ago Jonathan Miller made a more faithful version with Michael Hordern in the lead that has become a classic- and this matched up to it well and was- if anything- even scarier. 

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I bailed in favour of QI after I saw they'd turned the whistle to a ring - with an inscription, no doubt, in the speech of Mordor. And why drop "My Lad" from the title? Or turn the twin beds (as I vaguely remember them) to a double? Perhaps I should have stuck with it a little longer, but this kind of change for the sake of it always irritates. The beach seemed at first glance to be suffering from a distinct lack of groynes, too - though the nightmarish exhaustion of climbing over them is very important to the story's effect. But Hurt and the hotel were both good.

How did they finish it, though? If I remember, in the James story the hero is saved by an old India hand who's come across this kind of thing in his travels. There didn't seem to be any such help at hand in 2010.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

the ONLY thing I find attractive about Aslan is his voice. I watched a bit of that the other night, and yes...frightfully violent is an accurate description. But I have little use for either those books OR those movies.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I grew up with him, and so did my children - I read LWW twice before I realized who Aslan was
I'm not sure about the films. Yes, Caspian is much more violent than LWW, but the children to whom the books were dedicated to were growing older - and the author fought in the trenches of WW1
I'm having to read Caspian again, because there were things in the film that i don't remember form the book - but, for the most part, it seemed to follow the book quite closely. What baffles me is that dawn treader is already out, and I didn't see Caspian until yesterday - how did that happen?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There wasn't. He died. And the ghost who was plaguing him turned out to be his wife.

The ghost in James is one of the scariest in the genre. It has a face of crumpled linen. Miller didn't try to reproduce this- and neither did the director last night. Perhaps this was wise. It works on the page; it probably wouldn't work on film.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I never read the books. I thought I'd give the film a whirl, because it looked pretty, but by the end I hated it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I side-stepped Lewis. He didn't figure in my childhood or in my children's. I've read some of his other things- the Great Divorce, Surprised by Joy, some of the essays. He's clearly brilliant, but I detest his world view.

The film is almost nothing but fighting and killing. It's like
The Dirty Dozen with added sermonizing.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I TRIED to read the books. I dislike being beaten over the head with a cudgel, and that's what they felt like to me. The movies were - like the LOTR movies - GORGEOUSLY shot, but still.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I tried to read the Screwtape Letters. Had it not be recommended to me by the Christian who decided I wasn't worth saving after all, I probably would have been more willing to like it. Like YOU said, clearly brilliant but...

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Felt like I'd been conned with "Whistle" last night. Poxy director (Andy De Emmony...first of all in Gaelic it is D'Emmony, yes he did Fr Ted, ought to have stuck to comedy). The whole plot (ghosts, buried treasure) was glossed over for some pox about Hurt's wife. Not scary, dull. Plus the signal went after so NO Green Street (crap) nor even the end of a re-run of Uncle Buck (nice Xmas fare). Well, I smell Turkey so Happy Xmas!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Prince Caspian seduced me with its visuals, but what it was saying was just horrid.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Lewis believed in an angry God who consigns unbelievers to the flames. It's a hateful belief and- for me- nullifys all the charm and intelligence he coats it with.

I think it represents a real moral and intellectual failure to believe in that sort of God in the modern age.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love Father Ted.

I'm cooking chicken. I had the oven on too high to begin with and the kitchen was full of choking smoke. Christmas dinner is a nerve-racking business.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think that's oversimplying Lewis a bit. It's pretty clear, both from the fate of the dwarfs in The Last Battle and from his more explicit treatment in The Great Divorce, that for Lewis hell is a self-imposed separation from God. For him, hell isn't other people so much as oneself.

In fact, there's a rather good parody of the kind of Ulster hellfire preacher you seem to have in mind at the beginning of The Pilgrim's Regress:

And when John came into the room, there was an old man with a red, round face, who was very kind and full of jokes, so that John quite got over his fears, and they had a good talk about fishing tackle and bicycles. But just when the talk was at its best, the Steward got up and cleared his throat. He then took down a mask from the wall with a long white beard attached to it and suddenly clapped it on his face, so that his appearance was awful. And he said, ‘Now I am going to talk to you about the Landlord. The Landlord owns all the country, and it is very, very kind of him to allow us to live on it at all – very, very kind.’ He went on repeating ‘very kind’ in a queer sing-song voice so long that John would have laughed, but that now he was beginning to be frightened again. The Steward then took down from a peg a big card with small print all over it, and said, ‘Here is a list of all the things the Landlord says you must not do. You’d better look at it.’ So John took the card: but half the rules seemed to forbid things he had never heard of, and the other half forbade things he was doing every day and could not imagine not doing: and the number of the rules was so enormous that he felt he could never remember them all. ‘I hope,’ said the Steward, ‘that you have not already broken any of the rules?’ John’s heart began to thump, and his eyes bulged more and more, and he was at his wit’s end when the Steward took the mask off and looked at John with his real face and said, ‘Better tell a lie, old chap, better tell a lie. Easiest for all concerned,’ and popped the mask on his face all in a flash. John gulped and said quickly, ‘Oh, no sir.’ ‘That is just as well,’ said the Steward through the mask. ‘Because, you know, if you did break any of them and the Landlord got to know of it, do you know what he’d do to you?’ ‘No, sir,’ said John: and the Steward’s eyes seemed to be twinkling dreadfully through the holes of the mask. ‘He’d take you and shut you up for ever and ever in a black hole full of snakes and scorpions as large as lobsters – for ever and ever. And besides that, he is such a kind, good man, so very, very kind, that I am sure you would never want to displease him.’ ‘No, sir,’ said John, ‘But, please, sir…’ ‘Well,’ said the Steward. ‘Please, sir, supposing I did break one, one little one, just by accident, you know. Could nothing stop the snakes and lobsters?’ ‘Ah!...’ said the Steward; and then he sat down and talked for a long time, but John could not understand a single syllable. However, it all ended with pointing out that the Landlord was quite extraordinarily kind and good to his tenants, and would certainly torture most of them to death the moment he had the slightest pretext.

That bit always makes me laugh.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I tried to read Lewis. I failed and why others have succeeded is utterly beyond me. The experience, though mercifully brief, was enough to keep me far from any film adaptation of his work.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I'm no fan of Islam, but I found "The Horse and his Boy" something close on incitement to hatred.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm oversimplifying. Lewis's doctrine of hell was comparatively subtle- but it's still a doctrine of hell- and I don't see all that great a moral difference between his position and that of the hellfire preacher in The Pilgrim's Regress.

Any God who builds hell into his universe is a wicked God- and it is wicked to give him honour.

Don Cupitt says of Lewis, his "...self-conscious rejection of modernity leads him close to vindictiveness on the many occasions when he arranges supernatural retribution for people and points of view he dislikes. There is all too much holy relish."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they'll film it.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

He was a freind of my father's, and I was a bit disappointed that none of the books was dedicated to me

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

disagree entirely - he believed that hell was an individual's choice of separation from the good - whether or not the individual believed in God - whic hi s why some of the apparently "bad" people were "saved" in the Narnia books - that's in the Last Battle - their service on the "wrong" side was judged to be service of the good, and therefore of Aslan

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

er - no, he didn't - see another post

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

As i said, he fought and was wounded in the trenches - and his best friend was killed - that was bound to colour his writings

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He's entertaining, and he writes with admirable clarity and simplicity. I don't like what he has to say, but he says it well.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

Every time I read your take on literary things, I then read your friends' take on literary things, and then your discourse over their take and -- Well, I get breathless with the lovely education I get. Thank you for telling me about the Whistle. And as for Caspian, the Hollywood group here nearly didn't get to do a sequel to the whole Narnia thing because it bombed so badly. They intentionally made it as violent as they could to bring in -- who else? -- teenage boys. Who were off seeing something else blowing up while the families stayed away from it. So now they're back to a more family friendly picture with Aslan jumping in there from time to time just to remind you that he's the one that brought in the money the first time.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're right. I was oversimplfying.

But I think any theology which has hell built into it is a mistaken theology- even a wicked one.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah.

I'm afraid I just don't like him. I find him creepy.