I love that the quote from Gerwig indicates that she's OK with doing crazy stuff like Father Christmas and Bacchus! (Disclaimer: I don't consider those characters' appearances in Narnia crazy per se but I know some people do.) But to be honest, I think I'm going to prefer Adamson's approach to visualizing Narnia. While The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is certainly very whimsical what with things like fauns wearing scarves and carrying umbrellas, it also feels very solid and real with all those little realistic details C. S. Lewis mentions. 

“Stop!” said the Lady, and the dwarf pulled the reindeer up so sharp that they almost sat down. Then they recovered themselves and stood champing their bits and blowing. In the frosty air the breath coming out of their nostrils looked like smoke...

And after the thaw had been going on for some time they all realised that the Witch would no longer be able to use her sledge. After that they didn’t hurry so much and they allowed themselves more rests and longer ones. They were pretty tired by now of course; but not what I’d call bitterly tired — only slow and feeling very dreamy and quiet inside as one does when one is coming to the end of a long day in the open. Susan had a slight blister on one heel.

I don't believe a super dreamlike Narnia would feel like the books to me though, of course, it could be good in its own right. 

The worst interpretation of Narnia I've ever seen was a stage production in London in late 2019, one that — according to the director's notes in the programme — brought out the fantastical elements of Narnia that this director had always loved from childhood. (I forget who it was and I don't think I kept the programme.) It was, in effect, an almost psychedelic rainbowy extravaganza involving in-the-air ballet sequences (including when Edmund is longing for more Turkish Delight and dancing among giant colourful sweets), a giant Aslan puppet with glowing empty eyes and butterfly wings (hovering over the head of the actual actor playing Aslan's voice — a guy in a furry suit), and at the coronation of the four Kings and Queens, crowns that looked like flower pots on their heads. It, er, really didn't capture the spirit of the books very well at all.  

I don't know if "euphorically dreamlike" is an appropriate way of describing Narnia or not; it's one of those quotes that could mean different things depending on one's interpretation, so I too will be very interested to see what Gerwig means by it. I also hope it won't be anything like, well, what I just described above. I don't like the 2005 Walden version of LWW for a huge host of reasons, and I've never bothered watching the other two, but one good thing I will say for it is that visually it was excellent. I don't think Adamson captured the "feel" of Narnia very well at all — not in anything like the way Peter Jackson did with Middle-earth in the LOTR trilogy a few years earlier (which is why, having loved that, I was so crushingly disappointed with this new Narnia film) — but he at least made a visually appealing and believable fantasy world that was beautiful and exciting without being overdone. My complaints about the film were far more to do with the scripting and pacing and characterisations (and with Aslan being appallingly ugly and unlikeable) than with the general look of the setting!

Although I agree that the phrase “euphorically dreamlike” could probably be taken in a wide range of interpretations, I don't think I would necessarily equate the phrase to mean "unrealistic", or hyper-stylised, or to imply any other form of abstract heightened reality.

To me, the movies that I would describe as "euphorically dreamlike" would be the films of Terrence Malick, a director I've probably referenced a fair few times on these forums recently. There are probably other filmmakers with similar styles, but when Terrence Malick is doing movies like "The Thin Red Line", "The Tree of Life" or "The New World", the story and plot mechanics often play a very distant second to the feeling and emotion of the visual composition.

I've heard people often describe these films as "tone poems" in the sense that its more about how you respond to the visuals and the music, and the emotions that they conjure up, rather than about the specifics of who is doing what in the plot (even though those elements are still present and well done). His films tend to be joyful, sad, and transcendental experiences about life, nature and humanity - and yet the one thing they rarely are is unrealistic. He shoots almost everything on location, lights everything with natural light, and often uses CGI to a bare minimum.

I guess which is all a way of saying that i believe a movie can be "euphorically dreamlike" and still have realistic visuals, just as Andrew Adamson crafted a world which (in my opinion) was highly realistic in its own internal logic and rules (or "schematic" to use Greta Gerwig's phrase) but still presented in a larger-than-life, slightly cartoony even, Disney sanitised colour palette with flat lighting where nothing ever looks quite real.

Anyway, here is the trailer for the Tree of Life. Not my favourite Malick film by a long way, but even just the trailer on its own is thoroughly euphoric and dreamlike in my opinion, so should give you a good idea of what comes to mind for me when i hear that phrase:

THE TREE OF LIFE Official HD Trailer (youtube.com)

Well, one thing that's worth noting is that (according to the article's author) Gerwig is referring to the quality of Lewis's writing when she says euphorically dreamlike, not necessarily Narnia itself — even though the paragraph continues with her talking about Narnia being a mythological mishmash.

When I first read the "euphorically dreamlike" quote, my mind went to scenes like the arrival of spring and the ride with Aslan in LWW, Lucy in the woods at night and the celebration in PC, the Wood Between the Worlds and the creation scene in MN, those final sun-filled chapters of VDT, et cetera. The really atmospheric, joyful and/or peaceful scenes that just stick with you.

But this does make me wonder exactly what Gerwig's Narnia will look like, as opposed to Adamson's version! I definitely hope that it doesn't feel like some sort of dreamland. Narnia is fantastical, but it's also meant to be absolutely real.

I found it very difficult to glean any insight from Barbie on how Greta Gerwig might approach Narnia because they are such different projects, but the one part that stuck out to me was how stylized Barbieland looked. Barbieland is different from Narnia, of course. One is fake, a land of plastic and children's imaginations; the other is a very real universe with different laws of nature. But it did show Gerwig presenting a different world looking, well, differently from our world. I don't think Narnia will look fake like Barbieland did (which was a good thing given the context), but I think there's a good chance it will have it's own vibe distinct from the earth parts of the story. And I mean that beyond obvious things like medieval buildings and clothes, mythological creatures etc.

Making Narnia stylized in comparison to earth runs the risk of making it feel fake, but the payoff if successful is that it would make Narnia look like an entirely other world. It can be overdone - I wouldn't want Narnia feeling like an alien planet or something - but I would like a Narnia that feels more stylized than the Walden version.

@reepicheep775 

I think perhaps the better Greta Gerwig movie to look to in this instance might be Little Women.

Of the two timelines presented in the movie, the childhood timeline is presented in a bright and cosy colour palette, with a lot of warm tones used in the image grading. Conversely, the adulthood timeline is presented in a dark and dreary colour palette, with a lot of cold tones used in the image grading.

I can perhaps imagine she might do something similar with the cinematography of the Narnia and Real World scenes, but equally, she doesn't necessarily seem like the sort of director to repeat the same trick twice, therefore perhaps she'll do something completely different altogether.

An interesting thought though.

If my last post in this thread sounded super negative, I should say that I'm not fretting about the visuals of Gerwig's Narnia yet. I'm not particularly optimistic either because there haven't been any movies directed by Greta Gerwig where I've totally loved the visuals. (Barbie's come the closest and I can't even say I love that movie's look except for maybe a few individual visual gags.) I see her as more of an ideas person than a person who is great at executing her ideas but I'm not going to make a huge judgement on the look of her Narnia until I see promotional images or at least hear her specific plans. I just thought I'd give my specific thoughts on the quote since Fantasia started a thread on it. 

I would not like what Icarus suggests and I don't think Gerwig would either based on this quote from C. S. Lewis she mentioned in a recent interview. 

(A child reader) does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.

I'd like a director to make the professor's house in the country just as marvelous as Cair Paravel and Polly's tunnel through the rafters as creepy as Charn. Since Greta Gerwig cited that quote as one of her guiding principles for bringing Narnia to life, I assume that's her goal too. 

@col-klink creepy in the roof of terraced houses?  Old, dark, and only safe to walk on the strong beams. But a contrast with Charn, surely?

@coracle Maybe not so much the location but the situation (in the characters' minds anyway.) They're making their way through a dark space by candlelight and they're planning on breaking into a house in which no one's lived for years and they're imagining finding criminals or ghosts there. 

@col-klink right, it's perception. I would enjoy little flashed scenes or stills from Polly's imagination, such as when she's in her pirate cave, of the possible things going on in the empty house, and what they might find on their journey through the attic corridor. 

A similar idea comes to mind, using flashed stills of ideas in the children's heads in later parts, such as 'mad' Digory who hadn't rung the bell, and eternally young Digory who had eaten the apple, but then older Digory (looking like the Professor!, and the picture the witch paints in his head of his curing his mother.

EDIT: Greta, help yourself to these ideas!  - and do a good job, please!

Posted by: @rose

Well, one thing that's worth noting is that (according to the article's author) Gerwig is referring to the quality of Lewis's writing when she says euphorically dreamlike, not necessarily Narnia itself

I guess that's true, but I still figure that if you thought that Lewis' writing was uniquely dreamlike in its prose, then you would probably also want to adapt his work for film in a style that was similarly dreamlike in its cinematography.

As such, over the last week then i've been trying to think about what makes a movie "dreamlike" to me, and I think i've finally settled on something of an answer.

Other than the films i mentioned before, the one recent film that really stands out to me as being uniquely "dreamlike" is another film i've mentioned a lot in other threads on this forum - David Lowery's "The Green Knight" from 2021.

I've also mentioned before that i don't really consider heightened realities or exaggerated abstract worlds, such as say "Alice in Wonderland", to be dreamlike in nature, and i think the reason for that is because these sorts of fantasy worlds purposefully draw too much attention to the weirdness. The larger-than-life fantastical visuals in these sorts of worlds are supposed to seize your attention and make you take notice.... and yet that to me is not how one experiences dreams.

The Green Knight however is a film which is utterly realistic in its presentation. It is shot in real locations, with real mud, and real dirt.... but when there are fantasy elements within the story, the cinematography doesn't really draw any undue attention to them, and the director never really feels like he needs to explain their presence. You as the viewer just roll with it, and accept it, because everything else about the presentation is real.... and that to me is what dreams are like. Dreams can include all of the most weird and wonderful things going on around you, but when you are in the dream your brain treats it all as the most normal thing in the world... its a sort of surreal normality, rather than a heightened fantasticalness. 

I think that logic then also extends to the Terrence Malick films i cited earlier. They are dreamlike because despite all the very realistic detailed world being presented, he will often use non-continuity editing to cut to a shot of something unexpected, like a bird, or a leaf, and then dwell on it for just long enough that it forces you to think about its meaning.... or the way the camera seems to float through the scene, defying the traditional rules of camerawork and editing, making you as the viewer feel like you are a disembodied presence floating through the scene, rather than just an audience member watching a functional exchange of dialogue between two actors on screen. It's subtle directorial work, such that most people wouldn't really even notice the technical aspects, other than the general sense of ethereal unease which contributes to it's dreamlike quality.

Again though, the one thing they are not is unrealistic in their presentation, and for me that absolute sense of reality is a critical aspect of being dreamlike. If anything, its about making the audience absolutely buy into the reality of the world, and then present weird and wonderful things within it as if they were the most normal things in the world, and yet without going down the route of heavy-handed exposition to justify it all (again, "non-schematic" to use Gerwig's phrase). 

There is a scene maybe half-way through the Green Knight where the camera performs a very slow 360 degree rotation in the woodland that probably best captures what i mean. Its maybe the most dreamlike scene of the entire movie, but you will know what i mean it when you see it.

Posted by: @icarus

@reepicheep775 

I think perhaps the better Greta Gerwig movie to look to in this instance might be Little Women.

Of the two timelines presented in the movie, the childhood timeline is presented in a bright and cosy colour palette, with a lot of warm tones used in the image grading. Conversely, the adulthood timeline is presented in a dark and dreary colour palette, with a lot of cold tones used in the image grading.

I can perhaps imagine she might do something similar with the cinematography of the Narnia and Real World scenes, but equally, she doesn't necessarily seem like the sort of director to repeat the same trick twice, therefore perhaps she'll do something completely different altogether.

An interesting thought though.

Interesting. I haven't seen Little Women yet, but I plan on it soon. I could see colour grading being a simple way of accomplishing the different vibes of the worlds, like a more subtle version of what Victor Fleming did in the Wizard of Oz. And heck, if she's doing MN, maybe Earth, Narnia, The Wood Between the Worlds, and Charn would all have distinct looks, whether achieved through colour grading or some other means.

Posted by: @icarus

Dreams can include all of the most weird and wonderful things going on around you, but when you are in the dream your brain treats it all as the most normal thing in the world...

I'd assume this was the main thing Greta Gerwig meant since she cited characters and creatures from unrelated mythologies coexisting in Narnia. 

Well, I will say that Greta Gerwig will certainly have her own creative vision for Narnia! It was actually nice to see Andrew Adamson's creative vision of Narnia, though I wouldn't say his adaptation was perfect! I can't expect Greta Gerwig's to be perfect either, but she will certainly have to do her own interpretation! It's not a good idea to do a replica of previous adaptations anyways!