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Film & TV

25 August 2023

8 min read

Dear Greta Gerwig: how your Netflix Narnia can be a roaring success

Narnia fan John Kuhrt pens an open letter to a daunted Hollywood director on helping her handle the Great Story.

Jon Kuhrt

Jon Kuhrt is CEO of Hope into Action, a homelessness charity. He is a former government adviser on how faith groups address rough sleeping.

A film director stands next to a camera to look at its screen, while a camera operator looks on

Dear Greta,

Congratulations on being appointed Screenwriter and Director for Netflix’s The Chronicles of Narnia. I really enjoyed your films Ladybird and Little Women and I am seeing Barbie this week as I have been away. It’s great to see a writer/director of your standing getting this crucial job.

I know you feel daunted to take on this job and I am writing to share five thoughts on what you need to bear in mind to make the series a success. I cannot claim to know anything about producing films or TV series. But I do know about Narnia.

Like millions of others, the books have been very significant to me. I read them first when I was a teenager, but I have continued to re-read them into adulthood. They have given me a reference point for some of my deepest questions about purpose, faith, life and death.

Disney/Walden Media’s Narnia series faltered after three films. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) was a huge box-office hit but was followed by less successful adaptations of Prince Caspian (2008) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010). I thought all three films had many good qualities but the abandonment of the project less than halfway through shows the challenges of bringing Narnia to visual life.

So, with all this in mind, these are my five tips for how to create a great Narnia series:

1. Understand the thinking behind the books

The author, C.S. Lewis, was both an academic expert in medieval literature and a high-profile Christian author and communicator. He was a brilliant but complex man. Understanding him, his beliefs and his aims in writing Narnia is fundamental.

The two best books on this subject are Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia: the Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis and Rowan Williams’ The Lion’s World: a journey into the heart of Narnia.

Ward’s book is a highly academic dissection of the hidden ‘key’ which Lewis implanted within each book (it was subsequently published in an abridged and more accessible version as The Narnia Code). The mish-mash of themes and diverse myths and legends in Narnia has puzzled and frustrated academic readers for decades. It was one reason why his friend J.R.R. Tolkein disliked the books so much. But Ward argues that the coherence and distinct atmosphere of each book comes from each being based on a different planet from the medieval cosmos. It is a thesis which has won almost unanimous affirmation.

Williams’ book is very different. It is a short but deep reflection on the theology that Lewis was conveying through the Narnia tales. His opening chapter discusses ‘The point of Narnia’ and he uses Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Augustine to explore the ideas in the stories. He also assesses and responds to the criticism the books have faced.

2. Recreate the distinct atmosphere of each book

No other books have given me such a vivid experience of ‘going into another world’ as the Narnia books have. I now realise this is because of the most fundamental, yet intangible, strength of the books: the atmosphere, mood or tone that Lewis creates.

As Ward writes, quoting Lewis:

“Lovers of romances go back and back to such stories in the same way that we go ‘back to a fruit for its taste, to a region for its whole atmosphere – to Donegal for it Donegality and London for its Londonness.’ ”

Lewis was fascinated by literature which drew the reader into enjoyment of a story by indwelling it: seeing ‘through it’ rather than ‘at it’. Ward coins the term ‘donegality’ to describe this hidden element which establishes an intrinsic quality: ‘…the inner meaning of a romance cannot be flagged up by the author without altering its true nature. It has to remain hidden, woven into the warp and woof the story.’

The challenge for Netflix is that each Narnia book has a distinct ‘donegality’ based on the ancient themes and characteristics associated with the seven planets. This makes them very different to the Harry Potter books, which have a more uniform feel and consistency. Capturing the distinctive essence of each book will be vital to re-create the atmosphere Lewis aimed for.

3. Embrace Narnia’s spirituality

All adaptations of Narnia have to grapple with how they will handle the clear spiritual themes within the books. Faith makes corporations nervous but ‘theological due-diligence’ will be a key part of the creative and strategic discussions. I would advise Netflix to be bold and as true to Lewis’ thinking as possible.

In its 1980s, the BBC airbrushed spirituality out and this was one factor which made it a poor adaption. In contrast, Disney were braver in their films. As one newspaper wrote after the box office success of the first film ‘Disney finds a way to worship both God and Mammon’.

However, Disney never got to attempt some of the most theologically challenging scenes in the series. Narnia’s creation in The Magician’s Nephew and its apocalypse and depictions of heavenly re-creation in The Last Battle will be immensely difficult to convey on screen. These scenes will not work without confidence and clarity about what Lewis was trying to get across.

Rather than seeing them simplistically as allegories of Christian faith, it is best to see the stories as deeply infused with spiritual meaning. Rowan Williams answers the question ‘What is the point of Narnia?’ by saying that Lewis is doing nothing less than ‘trying to recreate for the reader what it is like to encounter God’. He is trying to

‘rinse out what is stale in our thinking about Christianity – which is almost everything.’

But this does not mean being preachy. Williams makes the point that ‘there is no church in Narnia, no religion even’.

Instead the spirituality is embedded within the ‘non-religious’ action: the bravery, treachery, sibling tension, bullying, reconciliation and forgiveness which are jam-packed into the stories. Spiritual truth is embedded and woven within each story.

4. Get the central character right

The character of Aslan stands right at the heart of the books. He is the only character who features in all seven books in the series, he sings the world into existence and presides over its end. He is the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and Omega of the whole story.

Aslan is very obviously an ‘authority figure’ but Lewis’ achievement is to craft a character who is both immensely powerful and enduringly attractive. And the key to this is the subversive nature of his authority. In an age where there is so much questioning of structural inequality and systemic injustice this is an aspect which Netflix should emphasise.

Rowan Williams draws this out with great insight: in Narnia ‘evil is cast as the ultimate force of reaction; we are invited to see ourselves as living ‘under occupation’ and summoned to join a resistance movement.’ Aslan’s wildness, his animality, represents the unpredictable world of grace which opposes the ‘ordered state of sin’ of the White Witch, King Miraz or (most deeply) the prisons we build for ourselves. Williams writes:

‘Transcendance is the wildness of joy; and the truth of God becomes a revolution against what we have made of ourselves’.

This is why Aslan’s victories lead to riotous partying. As Williams points out this is an ‘explosion of liberating festivity’ which (uncomfortably for some Christian readers) includes pagan revelry. At the end of Prince Caspian both the god Bacchus and a drunken Silenus make appearances to celebrate the liberation Aslan brings.

Aslan is the focus of hope not because he ‘saves souls’ but because he is the liberator of people and the whole of creation. Getting Aslan right will be a huge part of getting Narnia right.

5. Interpret it for a new audience

The Narnia books have faced criticism from authors such as Philip Pullman and J.K. Rowling. When Disney released the first film, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee wrote an article titled ‘Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion’.

Rowan Williams engages head-on with the accusations that the books have overtones of racism and sexism and that they glorify violence. Whilst allowing for the fact that Lewis was an author of his time, he accepts the discomfort that modern readers will feel, for example, in how the ‘dark-skinned’ Calormenes are presented.

He also discusses one of the saddest parts of the stories: that former hero Susan is ‘no longer a friend of Narnia’ by the end of the series. Williams fairly defends this plot-line from those who claim it as evidence of Lewis’ misogyny.

More obviously, the old-fashioned dialogue of the children (‘Golly gosh’, ‘By Gum, you’re a beast’ etc) is a turn-off for modern audiences. The Disney films modified this well and used the backdrop of the Second World War at the start of each of the films to provide a more gritty context than conveyed in the books.

If you hold fast to the core of the books (see points 1-4) then stylistic changes and wise handling of aspects which are uncomfortable for today’s audience will enhance the series. All stories needs reinterpreting for a new audience.

The Great Story…

Narnia is a great story, but a key reason for its enduring popularity is because it reflects something of the Great Story of which we are all a part. As Lewis puts it himself in the conclusion of the final book:

“Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

I wish you all the best with the production of the series and I look forward to seeing the result.

Thanks,

Jon Kuhrt, Narnia fan, South London (aged 51).

PS: You might be interested in this talk I gave on The Magician’s Nephew, my favourite Narnia book.

(This article was first published on Jon Kuhrt's Grace+Truth blog in August 2023).

Essay

Character

Culture

Film & TV

Leading

7 March 2025

8 min read

In pursuit of greatness: a prayer for Timothée Chalamet

Fame is the new heaven, and the star is just being honest about getting there.

Roger Bretherton

Roger is a Clinical and Coaching Psychologist.

Timothee Chalamet, wearing light yellow suit reposes in a seat a the Oscars, clasping his hands, his eyes closed.

Chalamet contemplates that Oscar.

ABC.

So, Timothée Chalamet didn’t win the Oscar. I feel sad for him. No one has campaigned for an Oscar more persistently. For the last few months he has been everywhere- popping up on podcasts, cruising with Kendrick Lamar, riding a bike to the red carpet, appearing as Timothée Chalamet in a Timothée Chalamet look-alike competition. All to win the hearts and minds of the academy. Even if his acting didn’t get him an Oscar, his Oscar campaign deserves one.

And Oscar campaigns are big business. Ever since Harvey Weinstein upped the game, every studio has invested vast amounts in getting their film on the podium. The 97th Academy Awards (2025) paused briefly for an emotional reflection on the Palisades fires, a cause for which the Hollywood studios donated somewhere between five to fifteen million dollars. But I doubt they are as keen to a pause on the estimated half a billion dollars they each spent for their film to be at the awards in the first place.

On the night itself, Chalamet lost out on being the youngest ever winner of the best actor award, to the previous (and therefore current) youngest ever winner, Adrien Brodie. Up to that point he seemed to be a shoo-in. The Golden Globe was his. The SAG award was his. And his campaign was charming. Most people, including me, really like him. He was great as Paul Atreides in Dune. And as Wonka in, er… Wonka. And as [insert male character here] in Little Women – or was it Little House on the Prairie? (I always get those two mixed up). And, while I haven’t seen A Complete Unknown yet, the reports suggest he so embodied Bob Dylan on screen that he now needs an exorcism more than an Oscar. He deserves the awards.

But his acceptance speech at the SAG award was informative. He does the usual – thanks his mum, the cast and crew – and then takes an abrupt left turn to address his pursuit of greatness. He acknowledges it is an unusual thing to say but makes it clear that he aims to be like his heroes – Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando, Viola Davis, both Michaels (Jordan and Phelps), indeed Dylan himself. But it is not entirely clear what he means by greatness. Does he mean virtuosity in the craft of acting? Or fame? Or both? If he doesn’t win the Oscar, will he still be great?

Way back when in the mid-1980s, before podcasts and Oscar campaigns, literary scholar Leo Braudy published an ambitious book telling the story of Western civilisation through the lens of fame. The Frenzy of Renown argues that fame as we know it began with Alexander the Great, whose artefacts and exploits were designed to spread his name across the known world. He in turn became the model of godlike fame for Julius Caesar and the Romans.

With the birth of Christianity, things became a little more confused. Fame and renown became ambivalent pursuits in a cosmos where true lasting greatness was conceived as greatness in the eyes of God. This was what allowed men and women to vanish anonymously into deserts and monasteries believing their names would be erased from the world but written in heaven. So many monastics went to their deaths issuing instructions for their writings to be burned, only to be disobeyed by zealous acolytes who disseminated their teaching in every conceivable direction. They must be delighted, gazing down from their heavenly repose, to see the pages they consigned to the flames available with 1-Click on Amazon.

Approaching the modern era though, fame in its old guise returned with a vengeance. The Renaissance rediscovery of ancient Greece and Rome, and the invention of the printing press, allowed images and words to find a mass audience. Even Christians became less enamoured with retreating into monasteries, and more concerned with reaching the public. Thanks to this new technology, Luther in his most productive period produced more literature than all his opponents put together. He was the original early adopter. The church had never seen anything like it- a heretic who would not shut up.

But he wasn’t the only heretic. Many who followed craved his fame but lacked his faith. Over time widespread belief in heaven eroded but the desire for life beyond death lingered. With no assurance of a God capable of remembering us, the only remaining option was to be remembered by others- ideally as many others as possible. By the nineteenth century Nietzsche was re-writing the words of Jesus. ‘He who humbles himself will be exalted’, said the gospels. But Nietzsche added a new cynical twist: ‘he who humbles himself wants to be exalted’. The age of the humblebrag had arrived. Even those who claim indifference to fame were not to be believed, they were simply pursuing notoriety by other means. Only two choices remained: the glories of fame or resentful anonymity. For the ancients immortality lay in fame. For the medievals it lay in heaven. But we live in a hybrid era – fame is the new heaven.

So, when Chalamet speaks of greatness maybe he is just being honest. Maybe he is just saying out loud what most of us keep to ourselves. We fear being forgotten and to be great is to be remembered.

And given that the self is not an object, not really a thing at all, any attempt to sum ourselves up with a tag line or a meme diminishes us even when intended to promote us.

But there is a rarely acknowledged paradox to greatness. A paradox reflected in the way many English bible translations use the word ambition. At face value we could be forgiven for thinking the biblical writers were just plain confused about it. In one letter the apostle Paul warns us against ambition and in another he claims he’s relentlessly ambitious. Ambition is the worst of sins and somehow also the most commendable of attitudes. Make up your mind Paul! Which is it: ambition or no ambition?

When peering under the hood of the English translation, we discover that ‘ambition’ is used to render two Greek terms that couldn’t be more different. One of them (the root word eritheia) is usually translated selfish ambition. Paul says it is unanimously bad. So bad in fact, he tells the Philippians not to do anything out of selfish ambition. It connotes strife and electioneering- the kind of self-interest that creates factions for its own advantage. Not one for the character wish-list.

The other term for ambition strikes a markedly more wholesome tone. Paul uses it for his ambitions to preach and his desire to please God. At root, it’s the word philotimeomai, literally meaning the pursuit of that which is honourable. It forms the basis for arguably one of the most beautiful instructions in the entire canon: ‘Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands’. It speaks of the love, honour and inner stillness associated with the privilege of rising to a task. A contentment with life few of us ever achieve.

Two qualitatively different experiences of ambition. One is the attentiveness that any serious person brings to whatever it is that occupies them. It’s how parents parent, how governors govern, how coders code, how actors act. It is the desire to do whatever we do well. The other is the desire for other people to know about it. When Chalamet speaks of greatness of course he means mastering the craft of the actor, but he also means gaining the recognition for having done so. He, like many of us, collapses two motives into one. The idea of being great without being seen-as-great becomes unimaginable. But being something, and being seen as something, are not the same something.

Just contrast the experience of self we have in these two different pursuits. When we pursue excellence or skill – whether in painting or parenting, surfing or science – we generally achieve a state of self-forgetfulness. We do not think of ourselves but of that which we wish to master. We become absorbed in the challenge of learning the subtle nuances of our craft. If we get good at it, we know we are good at it, not because we’ve formed a high opinion of ourselves, but because we have repeated experience of doing it well. This can lead to something that looks like arrogance. Add a crowd and our performance is likely to improve. Challenge us to show our skill and we’re ready to prove it. We’d be idiotic to deny what we know in our bones.

But in promoting ourselves, we relate to our self in a different way. Instead of forgetting the self in pursuit of something beyond the self, we construct a self to promote. The self becomes an object, a commodity, a list of saleable assets for the market. And given that the self is not an object, not really a thing at all, any attempt to sum ourselves up with a tag line or a meme diminishes us even when intended to promote us.

Even worse, if we get stuck in the mode of self-promotion it can be so vivid and enticing, we lose touch with the moment-by-moment, concrete reality of our embodied existence.

Who we imagine ourselves to be becomes hyper-real, more real to us than who we actually are. Life becomes an unwelcome interruption to our dreams. We gain the world but we lose our souls. It was the fear of this condition that provoked Thomas Merton to profanity in warning against it:

If I had a message to my contemporaries, it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . . If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live.

If I had a prayer for Timothée Chalamet, it would be for greatness without self-consciousness. May he rise to the full magnificence of all he is meant to be without needing to know it. It is my prayer for all of us.

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