Fridae

CS Lewis is all things to all men. The young may know him as an author of children’s fantasy adventures. Teenagers discovering young adult fiction may know him as the author of a series of swashbuckling space opera novels. When they are older, they might even share his satirical look at everyday life with his delightfully subversive Screwtape Letters. It is as an adult, though, that I was told by a friend from Focus on the Family (which has produced audiobooks of the Narnia and Screwtape series) that CS Lewis was an excellent Christian apologist who wrote Christian allegories in the genres of fantasy or science fiction.

Some people – like Philip Pullman, for example – would feel an enormous sense of betrayal and lapse into a state of shrill, barely disguised anti-religious fervour that comes across as a dark mirror of Lewis’s shrill, barely disguised religious fervour. I, for one, choose to remember that I was very much entertained and thrilled as a child reading The Chronicles of Narnia – and that the entire series could stand on its own merits as children’s fiction.

The film adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is in the able hands of veteran British director Michael Apted. Previously responsible for The World is Not Enough, Apted puts on a classy action movie that looks more expensive and competently composed than the previous two Narnia films. The 3D conversion seems a little dark but whatever action setpieces we see on screen make the 3D worthwhile.

As a relief to parents who were shocked at the kill count in the previous film, Apted opts for a Saturday morning children’s cartoon approach to the adventures of Lucy, Edward, Eustace and Caspian (who must have lost his Spanish accent when he became king) – no blood is ever spilled despite the return of Reepicheep, the talking mouse who slit throats in Prince Caspian; here, baddies are simply knocked unconscious.

The overarching theme in this film may be dealing with temptations, but Apted never forgets that Narnia is first and foremost an entertainment for Catholic and other non-Christian children. In this the film, the temptations come across as those a hero might face on a quest rather than the Christian concept of temptation. And thanks to his experience in the Up! series of documentaries, Apted has a fine secular sense that helps to moderate Lewis’s tendency to proselytise – making him my favoured director to complete the rest of the series.