The End and The Beginning

Late last night I finished rereading The Chronicles of Narnia in anticipation of seeing the movie over the next few weeks.

My two favorite quotes:
First, from  Book 2 - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, p. 86

    "Is--is he a man?" asked Lucy.
    "Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion--the Lion, the great Lion."
    "Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he--quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
    "That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."
    "Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
    "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

And then the end, from Book 7 - The Last Battle, p.228

"The dream is ended: this is the morning."
    And as He spoke He longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Comments

[stephanie]

I went to the matinee yesterday and shared the theatre with many years younger than me. It is a great movie. I loved it.

[Beth]

I just saw it. I'd give it a B.

[Heather]

We loved it - other than a few minor things it was very true to the book.
just starting book six, can't wait for book seven.

[Wes Roberts]

...wish we could be there to see the movie with you and your bride. It is a wonderful movie...and faithful retelling of a great story...and I would give it an A. Prince Caspian is probably next in the series...from the contacts you know I've got with the series. I did learn that Narnia did over $67,000,000 in three days...so that is quite an opening...as Walk The Line (another good and different flick from Narnia) took four weeks to get to $77,000,000. Funny...but I haven't heard of any churches or religious groups promoting Brokeback Mountaiin. Oh well.......

[Scott]

I am an avid reader. In this case, however, I am glad that I saw the movie first. It left me free to judge whether the movie was as good as the book. I went there as a child but with the knowledge of the greatest story that the book was portraying. The movie wiped me out as I saw metaphor after metaphor...the meaning of what the wardrobe is, what the magic potion portrays (watch what Lucy does after she sees what it does...she runs...I'll leave it to your imagination to guess what she is going to do with it because that is what the makers of the film do). I didn't go to this movie to be a critic. I went to become convicted and there was nothing more convicting than the words the professor speaks after they start rolling the credits. I'll leave that to you to imagine. An awesome movie whose subtle messages are being missed by everyone that I talk to about it. I left the theater numb.