C. S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia

It is widely accepted that the task of bringing the creative spawn of C. S. Lewis to the silver screen is a daunting one. The Chronicles of Narnia has faced the nuances and criticisms of several generations, and has steadfastly endured as a bestseller for nearly fifty years, yet the question has remained: can it be successfully put on film?

But if taking an artist’s literary creation to the screen is a difficult undertaking, then capturing the life and spirit of the artist—exploring the mind and soul that produced such a work of art—is monumental.

C. S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia attempts such a feat—and succeeds. While docudramas are frequently vague on the “docu� and heavy on the “drama,� Beyond Narnia reveals the character of a real man—one whom we might wish to know better. Contributing significantly to this honest depiction is writer/director Norman Stone’s skillful use of substantial excerpts from Lewis’ non-fiction works as the foundation for the underlying narrative. By using Lewis’ own words, documentary meets drama in a very pleasing, intelligent, and engaging way. Quotes from Mere Christianity, A Grief Observed, Surprised by Joy, and The Four Loves, among others, offer the audience the confidence that what they are hearing is, indeed, Lewis—not a paraphrase, not an interpretation, but his own words, expressing his own thoughts and experiences and feelings. The breadth of Lewis’ work lends itself well to such an approach, and is molded into a beautiful, balanced piece of art and understanding by Stone.

With the strength of Lewis’ own words as the cornerstone of the script, the story of Lewis’ life as expressed in Beyond Narnia finds a resonance and candor that are frequently lacking in biopics. Though the movie itself is only sixty minutes, the audience follows Lewis through numerous influential experiences, beginning with his “idyllic� childhood, which was brutally disrupted by his mother’s death and his father’s subsequent withdrawal. From there we journey with him from his rejection of God through his coming to faith, and finally from his nearly euphoric romance with Joy Davidman through his almost fathomless grief over her death. Without flinching, Beyond Narnia delves into the profound crests and canyons that Lewis traversed, without over- or underplaying any single event. Rather, it is a full depiction of some of the most profound experiences that shaped Lewis into the man he was.

Finally, complementing the strength and depth of Stone’s script is actor Anton Rodgers’ immensely accessible, erudite portrayal of the man Lewis. While Lewis himself may have been somewhat less emotionally available than the depiction in the movie, Rodgers certainly offers a stirring performance of a man whose love and loss the audience intimately shares. Despite the genuine tragedies in Lewis’ life and his subsequent crises of faith (first in the existence and later in the nature of God), Rodgers maintains a sense of British propriety and reserve, while still successfully conveying the intensity of Lewis’ heartache and doubt.

C. S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia brings us “further up and further in� to the life of the creator of Narnia, offering the audience a glimpse into the heart of the man whose wisdom and insight still holds influence in literary, philosophical, and theological discussions forty years after his death.

Just Friends

I guess for many people, the holidays are a time to dread family get-togethers, revive sibling rivalry, and generally be reminded of who they once were (and maybe are still, behind the self-fooling veneer of adulthood).

Chris Brander has spent the past decade rebuilding his life from the adolescent rubble. An overweight, retainer-ridden teen, his final experience of high school was the humiliation of having his heartfelt “let’s-be-more-than-friends� yearbook entry for his widely popular best friend, Jamie, read to a crowd of rather typical juvenile buzzards, circling the soon-to-be-dead.

Ten years have done a lot for Chris—now a fit, hip chick-magnet in the music business, he directs his adolescent angst over being relegated to “The Friend Zone� to use women for his own ego boosts.

But ten years have passed since that fateful humiliating graduation party, and by chance he runs into his old Best Friend (and secret heartthrob) Jamie, at a bar in their old hometown.

Has he learned anything?

Well, in a word, no. Rather than picking up with Jamie where he left off, Chris launches into full-blown name-dropping impress-the-girl mode, which does nothing to endear him to the young woman sitting in front of him. Crossed wires and miscommunications rule, and Chris makes a good show of the jerk that he has become.

The movie begs us to ask ourselves a few questions: first, why does the past often have such a tenacious hold on us, despite the pain and debasement often involved? How can we move on from those experiences without sacrificing the core of who we are? And the final question that begs to be answered: why do the holidays represent some magic time where all these questions can be miraculously answered between November 24 and December 25?

As I said, the movie truly begs us to ask ourselves these questions, but does very little (if anything) to answer them. Through a rapid-fire onslaught of lewd sexuality, raunchy language, and Home Alone-style pratfalls and pranks, Just Friends begs us more to relive the pains and horrors of our collective adolescence than grow into some semblance of mature, if a little tattered, adulthood.

But why choose the holiday season as the setting for all this mayhem? I think the makers of Just Friends needed the abundance of relational hope generally applied to the holidays as extra fuel for the hope that Jamie will finally come around and see Chris as a man freed from The Friend Zone. However, the pretense of the holidays and the prevailing tension and negativity they provoke serve more to feed the pessimism than inspire any true romance.

Just Friends offers the audience the chance to review its own passage from high school until now, regardless of the length of time passed. It also urges us to ask important questions about what the holidays truly mean to us, rather than what we want them to mean, or what we try to make them mean in spite of ourselves.

In the end, the best advice offered here is sung tunelessly by Chris’s somewhat vapid mother: Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself.

And maybe, as trite as it sounds, that’s the best way to embrace the past and still move forward into becoming someone better—as long as you insist on trying to do that without divine help..