King of King of Beasts: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

By Bruce Collier May 29, 2008 Issue

Andrew Adamson’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian is the second feature film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ series, written primarily for children - the ones who still have attention spans - and young adults. Happily, there’s food for older thinkers as well. If you know nothing (or very little, as I do) of the chronicles, they are set in a parallel world (Narnia) populated by talking animals, creatures from Greek, Celtic and Norse mythology, magicians, and humans, known as “sons of Adam.” Not every book has the same set of characters, though some appear in more than one story.

As with the first film (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), the principal characters in Prince Caspian are the Pevensie siblings - Peter (William Moseley), Edmund (Skandar Keynes), Susan (Anna Popplewell) and Lucy (Georgie Henley). The children divide their time between World War II-era England and Narnia, a place accessed by various means. In the first film they got there by accident. In this, they are summoned by the title character, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), heir presumptive to Narnia.

Like Hamlet, Caspian is an inconvenient prince, and gets crossways of his nasty, ambitious uncle, Miraz (Sergio Castellitto). An attempted assassination leads to his escape, which leads him to resort to a “magic” hunting horn, which brings the Pevensies to the rescue. In England, they’re just four normal schoolkids. In Narnia, they are prophesied kings and queens, destined to free the land from tyranny.

So we have the set-up, which Adamson neatly dispatches in about the first fifteen minutes, doubtless assuming we’ve seen the first film. You really do need to see the first one, or you’ll have to bring along someone like the guy that was seated behind me - in a nearly full house. He was a genuine Narni-Nerd, obliviously doing the Human Footnote routine with geeky zest, until silenced by someone in another row. For a second, I had a flashback to my days in New York, where it’s worth your life to talk in a movie theater. By the way, I saw a David Mamet movie last week - same theater - and there were only two of us. Welcome, summer.

C.S. Lewis is well-known - often pigeonholed - as a “Christian” writer, and he certainly has a shelf-full of books on faith, grief, the Bible and other subjects now mass-marketed as “inspirational.” A distinguished Oxford professor, Lewis was deeply educated in the classics and in the magic and lore of the British Isles. His appeal - and genius - lies in the way he blended Christian orthodoxy with universal themes of struggle, heroism, and just plain page-turning adventure. If you’ve been led to think that well-read, intelligent people can’t be Christians, read Lewis.

In this film you will encounter centaurs and minotaurs (Greek myths), dwarves (German-Irish fairy tales), Arthurian knights, sorceresses, and even a pack of swashbuckling mice-keteers (Alexander Dumas and Walt Disney). At the center of it all is Aslan, the omnipotent, strangely melancholy lion whose allegorical counterpart is nothing short of celestial. If you don’t care for that, just enjoy Aslan’s voice, provided by Liam Neeson.

At 2 1/2 hours, Prince Caspian demands attention. What do you expect from a film that has the word “chronicles” in the title? There’s a large cast and plenty of epic set-pieces like battles, sieges, etc. There’s even a Shakespearean set of bad guys, the Telmarines, a group of humans that have conquered and oppressed Narnia for 1,300 years. They look, dress, speak, and fight like Elizabethan-era Spaniards, and are fun to watch. It’s a nice change of pace to see movie villains that aren’t Arabs or Asians.

The roles are well-cast. The Pevensies are sharp, appealing and genuinely nice kids. As Prince Caspian, Barnes gets to brood and kick butt, an unbeatable teen combination. Actor/comedian Eddie Izzard relishes his voice-role of Reepicheep, the Errol Flynn c.g.i.-mouse king, grinning slyly as he hog-ties cats and skewers grown men. “You’re a mouse!” says one of his foes. “Don’t you people have any imagination?” says Reepicheep, thrusting home.

Prince Caspian has its share of violence, though much of the blood spilled is implied, not seen. There’s murder, betrayal, war, bereavement, loyalty, loss of faith and recovery of faith. There are also some last-minute miracles that will look familiar to those who remember Sunday school.

Bottom line: Take the kids, but stick around yourself.

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