Spiritual Health in a Movie:

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe: Everything Gibson's "Passion" Was Not

by Josh Day

(Warning: movie spoilers abound)

Disney's film adaptation of C.S. Lewis' classic The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe should have been the movie the American fundamentalist machine chose to hype and trumpet and laud as "the ticket" to Christianity. Unlike Mel Gibson's horrendous slasher flick of 2004, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe conveys a much deeper and truer "passion" of Jesus Christ.

The kingly lion Aslan, who portrays Christ in Narnia's fantastical world of talking animals and mythological beasts, crushes Jim Caviezel's scourged, beat-up, bleeding-like-Bruce Willis depiction of the New Testament messiah.

When the lion sacrifices himself for the traitor Edmund, you'll feel what you should have felt in The Passion. Aslan's humiliating walk to his death after he leaves Lucy and Susan in Narnia's Gethsemane and treks to Stone Table (Narnia's Golgotha) carried more impact and intensity than any of the gratuitous blood and guts and scourging whips in Gibson's disgusting farce. When the witch orders the lion's mane shaved, it's devastating to watch, unlike anything in The Passion, which throws scene after scene of Rob Zombie-style violence at you.

I didn't care once for Mel Gibson's existential, postmodern Christ who had no meaningful life before the movie opened and only had ten seconds after his resurrection. And why should I have cared? Gibson sure gave me no reason to, other than a disjointed flashback about carpenter Jesus making the first sit-down table. Was that supposed to be funny or add a touch of lightness to the film? I don't know what Mel was trying to do, and he probably doesn't either, but it was like putting one chocolate chip in a biscuit of razor blades.

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was everything The Passion was not. Enlightening where The Passion was dark and ignorant, rich in meaning and symbolism where the other was blunt and pointless, and a beautiful and healthy and exciting movie where The Passion was filthy, ugly, and as wholesome as getting hit in the head with a two-by-four. Repeatedly.

A Wonderful Children's Movie

I've never read any Narnia books so I can't say how the film compares to the original work. However, my wife and I watched the BBC version of LWW and I was happy to see the new movie incorporated many elements (like dialogue and the way certain scenes are shot) from the older miniseries. Like the 1988 adaptation, this one remains a wonderful children's movie. Kids will love the mythical creatures and talking animals, as well as the snowy, enchanted forest and the bright and sunny final battle.

All in all, it's a terrific movie that succeeds on a secular level as a great fantasy story and also as a beast fable-turned-parable of the gospels. Because this other-world is anchored to a recognizable Judeo-Christian platform, it's much easier to believe in Narnia, as opposed to Tolkien's less familiar Middle Earth.

The reason for this lies in Lewis' use of extended metaphor and allegory.

It's widely known that Lewis and Tolkien were friends, and also that Tolkien despised allegory. J.R.R. hated it when people drew parallels between Middle Earth and World War II and wanted his Lord of the Rings tales to be taken at face value.

But C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, embraced allegory and drew his world around rich and deep symbolism.

Watching LWW, I thought of Paradise Lost and The Faerie Queene. Both John Milton and Edmund Spenser utilized mythology and fantasy to create their incredible other-worlds, each paralleling the Old and New Testaments in their own allegorical ways.

Mel Gibson could learn a thing or two from Milton and Spenser. Hell, he could even take a couple from Dante and get a better understanding of Christianity, even if he only read the torture scenes in The Inferno. Imagine what The Passion could have been if Mel had stepped back and appreciated the whole picture, instead of just scourging and blood and pain without any antithesis. We would have had a much different movie, and it might have actually been good.

In the middle ages, a monk walking in his garden would admire a rose and see the red flower for Christ's blood, the thorns for his pain, and the green stem and fresh buds for his resurrection and new life. Unfortunately, many today would like to transform the world back to the darkest times of the medieval age, but symbolism and allegory would be replaced with literalism and determinism.

Gibson's perverted vision of Christ sees a rock for only a rock, and he can't see the forest for all the trees.