Pass the Turkish Delights...

Christmas is a magical time, which probably goes some way towards explaining why fantasy films are so popular at this time of year, that and the fact that it is bloody freezing outside. Still there is definitely something to be said for watching an escapist movie at christmas, which is precisely what I intend to do this festive season.

The question is, what to watch? The obvious contender is King Kong, which despite my misgivings (I adore the original) looks like it will live up to Peter Jackson's love of the old b-movie flick.

However, King Kong, whilst it is fantastical isn't exactly fantasy in the same way that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is and seeing as we no longer have those installments to look forward to (at least not until New Line and MGM / Sony decide to resolve the rights issue so Jackson could film The Hobbit) then I guess I will have to find an alternative.

Pickings were looking thin until I came across these clips and trailer of The Chronicles of Narnia and I was blown away. It looks like a perfect Christmas movie and seems to have captured the magic of the books which I so much enjoyed hearing read to me by my Mum when I was a kid.

So my Mum and I have resolved that we are going to go and see this film together when I return to the UK, which is something I am really looking forward to.

However, it is curious that I should be so excited about going to see this movie because there are many flaws in the books, not least of which is the rather heavy handed Christian allegory which is at the heart of Narnia. I am not alone in thinking this way, as Peter Bradshaw wrote in the Friday's review this week, "many adults like me, who after loving the book as children went through a long post-adolescent phase of hysterically repudiating it after the Christian-humanist parable was explained."

As a Christian, I myself have problems with CS Lewis somewhat clumsy allegories, as Alison Lurie wrote in the Guardian this week,

"Lewis, however, had a preference for what used to be called "muscular Christianity", which recommended a strong and even militant faith, and the portrayal of Christ as athletic and super-masculine. This may have been responsible for his choice of a beautiful but terrifying lion the size of a small elephant as his allegorical figure of Jesus, rather than something nearer to the traditional innocent, meek and mild Lamb of God."

That's not all, charges of sexism, militancy, racism have also beleaguered the land of Narnia in recent years, which is probably why it has taken movie producers so long to bring it to the big screen. Whilst it is true that The Chronicles of Narnia isn't without its faults, it is what it is and it is of its time and is therefore subject to the beliefs and prejudices of its time and place. However, there is no denying that is a cracking good adventure story, a flight of the imagination which children of all ages can loose themselves in. On this matter I think I should let Alison Lurie, she states that we should:

"forgive Lewis's faults because of his occasional moments of imaginative triumph, some of which also involve incongruous juxtapositions. The scene at the beginning of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for instance, when Lucy walks into a wardrobe full of fur coats and comes out into a snowy winter landscape lit by a London street lamp, demonstrates even to a critic that sometimes anachronism can be magical, if only temporarily."