Catholic Film Office lauds Prince Caspian

The director of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting has lavished praise on the soon to be released “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.”

“At a time when many parents and adults are worried about the content and style of modern films, it is refreshing to encourage people to see a fine film. And you don’t have to be familiar with either CS Lewis’ seven-book Narnia series or even the first film of them, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to enjoy this second installment”, Fr Leonard said. 

“Prince Caspian has more action sequences than the first film, with fewer earnest speeches, with locations, cinematography, editing, special effects, sets, art direction, costumes and sound design of the highest order. This makes this film the most accomplished spectacular film released so far this year. It should be, too, because its reported and unconfirmed budget was $180million, that’s almost $1.3million a minute, which represents the best value for money for your movie-going dollar this year.”

Many Christians have particularly enjoyed CS Lewis’ Narnia series, seeing in them a Christian allegory. C S Lewis rejected this commentary because he was so precise with language. He is on record as saying that the Narnia series was not allegorical but suppositional. “Let us suppose that reality contained different parallel worlds, and that in one of them the Son of God, as He became Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen,” Lewis once wrote.

“We can certainly say that in Prince Caspian the supposition we explore is the nature of faith: faith in a God we cannot see, faith in those we can see, converting to a new faith and discarding faith that is rotten to the core. But what makes the film all the richer is that it is entirely possible to enjoy this movie as a vivid fantasy film or see it as an allegory about the defeat of Nazi evil in WWII or even about the medieval Christian crusades to reclaim the Holy Land (Narnia). But whatever way we enjoy it there is something for everyone here”, Fr Leonard said.  

“There are only two notes of warning. In the long tradition of vivid children’s stories, some of the violence in the fight scenes, bloodless though they are, could disturb some younger viewers and it is unfortunate that in a world when we are trying to build bridges with Muslims that the evil “Oriental Calormen” are Muslims by any other name.

“Some film reviewers are anxious about how the cinema can graphically and glamorously portray the darkest realities in the world, it is, therefore, a pleasure to recommend this multilayered film to the whole family,” Fr Leonard concluded.