CS Lewis | Bouquets & Brickbats

25/10/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

As someone who grew up watching the fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen, I’ve long had a soft spot for stop-frame animation – that slow, painstaking process where little model figures are shot and subtly manipulated one frame at a time until persistence of vision gives the semblance of actual motion. Wallace and Gromit? Yes, bring ’em on!

But the release of Laika Animation’s Coraline in 2009 announced the arrival of significant new players in the game. With each successive release, their abilities have grown ever-more sophisticated, ever-more assured until, with Wildwood, they have achieved something jaw-dropping: a fantasy adventure on such a scale that it feels at times as though it’s about to burst out of the screen – a film so full of urgency that it’s sobering to reflect that it represents sixteen years of work for its huge team of animators.

This contemporary tale is set in in Portland, Oregon (where Laika is actually based) and it’s the story of Prue McKeel (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a truculent teenage girl who lives with her ex-hippie parents in a house on the edge of the titular forest, a place she’s expressly forbidden to visit. She’s often charged with looking after her baby brother, Mac, and is told to ensure that he “stays in the house.” But one day, with her parents away from home, she can’t resist the impulse to take him out on the back of her bike for a hair-raising ride around town – and we start to get a feel for the scope of the film as we see a pretty accurate representation of the Pacific Northwest’s coolest city. Along the way, Prue bumps into Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) a video-game enthusiast she has always dismissed as an annoying nerd. He insists on tagging along with the siblings when they go to visit a local playground.

It’s at this point that Mac is abducted by a huge flock of crows and carried off into the forbidden woods. Prue and Curtis have no other option than to follow in hot pursuit, and it’s here that they discover an entire world of talking animals…

And if, so far, this sounds like yet another Narnia-influenced tale, well don’t be misled. Wildwood has a dark, disturbing narrative and the film has a 12A certificate. Parents expecting a joyful Pixar-style experience should be warned that some younger viewers may find much of what’s on offer here quite unsettling. For example, the film begins with the suicide of a young boy – he’s the son of Alexandra, the dowager governess (voiced by Carey Mulligan), and the sequence provides the key to unlocking the adventure. What’s more, some later scenes involve a massive battle in the forest between the various factions that dwell there and some of the close combat is unapologetically savage in nature. So if you’re taking youngsters along, please ensure they can handle it.

What makes Wildwood stand head and shoulders above what’s gone before is its epic sense of scale. We are dazzled by incredibly realistic model work depicting vast landscapes, aerial views of towns and cities and labyrinthine underground lairs. And this time out, Laika, under the direction of Travis Knight, have used CGI to augment the traditional stop-frame. Where previously we could only have a limited number of animated figures in any particular shot, now there can be hundreds, thousands of them, each one rendered so perfectly that at times I feel that I can’t possibly be looking at beings built from modelling clay, but at real characters with movements and expressions as complex as anything in our world. (Anyone sitting near me during the screening I attended must have heard me gasping aloud every few minutes. Sorry, but I just couldn’t help myself.)

It’s been a long road to get to this point but I suspect that Laika have just set a new gold standard for stop motion. The film has a budget of a hundred million dollars and I don’t know what chance it has of ever earning earning back that investment, but all that dedication, initiative and experimentation is up there in every frame. I urge everyone reading this to go and see this incredible film at your earliest opportunity. The word ‘masterpiece’ can sometimes be overused but in this instance, I can’t think of a more appropriate word. I just wish Ray Harryhausen had lived long enough to see it.

Oh, and if you’d like a quick glimpse at how such wonders are achieved, stay in your seat for a little while as the credits roll.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

08/02/22

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

And, we’re back!

After the disappointment of seeing the King’s Theatre close its doors shortly after the launch of the Christmas pantomime, it’s wonderful to return once more to the stalls of the ‘Old Lady of Leven Street’ – and what a fabulous offering to kick things back into motion! I’ve seen several adaptations of CS Lewis’s celebrated book over the years, but few have handled the material quite as skilfully as in this powerful show, directed by Michael Fentiman and based upon Sally Cookson’s original production.

The four Pevensie children – Susan (Robyn Sinclair), Lucy (Karise Yansen), Peter (Ammar Duffus) and Edmund (Shaka Kalokoh) – are sent away from home as evacuees and, in a brilliantly staged opening , find themselves whisked off by train to a remote house somewhere in the wilds of Scotland. Here they meet their host, Professor Kirk (Johnson Willis), the owner of a curious cat and an ancient wardrobe that provides a convenient portal to the forever-winter world of Narnia…

From the outset here is a production that dazzles with enchantment. There’s a big cast, all of whom are given their chance to shine as they dance, play music and slip from character to character with apparent ease. This isn’t so much a full blown musical as a play with songs and the occasional burst of foot-tapping music. Of course, all the familiar faces are in place. There’s the imperious white witch (Samantha Womack), the messiah-like lion (Chris Jared), the flute-tootling faun (Jez Unwin) and the two of rebellious beavers (Sam Buttery and Christina Tedders), intent on returning Narnia to the way it used to be, before the snow began to fall.

There are several moments here that actually make me gasp in surprise: simply but effectively staged flying sequences; genuinely mind-twisting magical effects; and a brilliantly engineered set, where circular panels move smoothly aside to reveal fresh wonders, looking for all the world like Renaissance paintings. The audience sits spellbound as the performers leap and whirl across the stage in a riot of sound, colour and spectacle. The character of Aslan, simultaneously a real actor and a huge puppet, is an absolute masterstroke.

If you’ve been missing the buzz of live theatre, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe offers a feast of delights for all the family – and, if you’ve been waiting for just the right production to lure you back, this must surely be the one to do it.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney