Bringing out the boy in him
Narnia director sets out to rekindle wonder he felt reading the books
When he was 8 years old, Andrew Adamson discovered C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series, losing himself in the fantasy world of talking animals, mythic creatures, epic battles and high adventure.
“ The main way they affected me was they spoke to my imagination,” recalls Adamson, the director of Shrek and Shrek 2, who used his childhood love for the books as the foundation for his screen adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Adamson directed and co- wrote the screenplay for the movie, which opens Friday.
Speaking from his L. A. office last week after flying in from his native New Zealand ( and celebrating his 39th birthday twice with cake on the trip, thanks to crossing the International Date Line), Adamson recalled how he read all seven books in the series over and over again. So when he started work on Narnia, his first live- action film, he wanted to recreate the wonder he felt as a boy.
“ I remember I got to those last pages ( in the book) very reluctantly. I was trying to recapture that memory,” he says, adding he wanted his version of Narnia to be as true to Lewis’s words as he could make it. The book follows the four Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, who are sent to live outside war- torn London at an eccentric professor’s country estate during the height of World War II bombing. They discover the fairy- tale kingdom of Narnia by stepping through a magic portal in a long- disused wardrobe. What they find is a land paralyzed by endless winter, held prisoner by Jadis, the White Witch ( played by Tilda Swinton), who has wrested the kingdom from the majestic former ruler, Aslan ( a digitally created lion, voiced by Liam Neeson).
Before turning back to the book to write the script, Adamson listed his clearest childhood memories of the story. “I remember the Turkish delight,” he says with a chuckle, recalling how Jadis tempts young Edmund Pevensie ( Skandar Keynes) with a great mound of the sugar- dusted confection she makes appear with the use of a magic potion. In fact, he says, Lewis saves his most detailed accounts of Narnia not for battles, but for food, something Adamson suspects had a great deal to do with enduring wartime shortages. But Adamson’s favourite image, and one he wanted to recreate most faithfully, was Mr. Tumnus, the shy, forest- dwelling faun ( James McAvoy), who first appears picking his way through the falling snow, umbrella in hand. He meets Lucy ( Georgie Henley), the youngest of the Pevensie clan, beneath a flickering gas lamp. When Adamson shot that scene later, “ I knew the film would work,” he says, explaining he was suddenly confident he was creating the film from his childhood memories, something that would ring true to the millions of Narnia series readers. “ Watching that scene play out was magical.” Working with the young actors ( three were in their early- to mid- teens during filming) had its challenges, Adamson says, but they were unavoidable. Over the 10 months of shooting ( the film took 31⁄ years in all) the young cast members were physically maturing. So Adamson opted to make the movie in chronological order, allowing them to “ grow up” on screen.
His actors weren’t the only ones to experience changes. Adamson became a father — twice — during the making of the film. His daughters are now aged 21⁄ and 2 months.
“ It was the thing I was most terrified of doing,” he says of working with the young actors. “ When I started the film, I didn’t have my own children. I hadn’t been around a lot of teenagers and a lot of kids of that age. I really came to love the kids. We sort of formed a little family.”
Besides his devotion to the Narnia books, Adamson had a literary link to the past on the set with him. Lewis’s stepson, Douglas Gresham, was co- producer on the movie.
“ Douglas and I saw eye to eye on a lot of things and when we didn’t, he made his objections known,” Adamson says with a chuckle. The only change he insisted on from book to script was the scene where Father Christmas gives the children magical weapons. Originally he skips the girls, saying weapons are ugly when women fight, something Adamson identified as “ sexism in the book.” In the film, both girls are armed, even little Lucy.
“ My previous films were empowering for girls,” Adamson points out.
There have been suggestions that the film may be too intense for young children, especially the pivotal stone table scene, where Aslan faces Jadis.
“ When I got to the stone table sequence I found it very emotional,” he says.
“It should be emotional, it should be traumatic. The key is not to let ( children) exist in that state for too long.”
And, he adds, this is a movie of the book and he was determined to be faithful to it. “ It was difficult when reading the book,” he points out. “ I remember being in tears when reading the book.” And then there’s the next book in the series, Prince Caspian, which brings the four Pevensie children back to Narnia. Does he have plans to make that movie next, bearing in mind his young cast won’t stay that way much longer?
He’s given it some thought, Adamson admits, but nothing has been confirmed. And he has more pressing plans for the time being. “ My main priority right now,” he says, “ is to have a vacation.”