Bridge to Terabithia masks spiritual overtones

By Peter Chattaway and ChristianWeek | March 1, 2007

There are fantasies, and there are stories about children who fantasize. The film, Bridge to Terabithia—about a boy and girl who create an imaginary kingdom for themselves, as a sort of refuge from the travails of home and school—is most definitely the latter. But the Disney studio has gone out of its way to promote the film as if it were an actual fairy tale.

The filmmakers themselves blur the line a little by bringing the children's fantasies vividly to life, using all the latest special effects. Sometimes the world of Terabithia even seems to take on a life of its own. For the most part, it is possible to imagine that the creatures the children encounter there are projections of their own imaginations. But at times the children are surprised—and at one point, even saved—by the actions of these imaginary beings.

Those quibbles aside, the film is still a reasonably faithful adaptation of Katherine Paterson's original novel, which won the Newbery Medal for children's literature in 1978.

The story concerns a boy named Jess Aarons (Josh Hutcherson), who has both artistic and athletic aspirations: he loves to draw, and he wants to be the fastest boy in school. Jess doesn't get along with the other boys at school, and at home he is surrounded by girls: two bossy older sisters, a clingy younger sister named May Belle (Bailee Madison), and a baby. As Jess puts it at one point, "I've got four [sisters], and I'd trade them all for a good dog."

No sooner has the school year begun, though, than Jess meets a fellow misfit: a girl named Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb) whose parents recently moved in next door to the Aarons family. It isn't long before Jess and Leslie start hanging out. When they discover a rope dangling over a creek, they use it to swing across to the forest on the other side.

Leslie, ever imaginative, suggests that she and Jess pretend this forest is a kingdom named Terabithia—a name that is probably subconsciously derived from the land of Terabinthia in C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. (In Paterson's novel, Leslie is a fan of Narnia and gives Lewis's books to Jess, to help him imagine what their kingdom should be like.)

There, in their dilapidated treehouse "fortress," Jess and Leslie devise ways to cope with the various problems in their life, such as a domineering bully named Janice Avery (Lauren Clinton). They also forge a friendship that is so close and compelling that you really feel the shock and the loss when tragedy strikes—not in Terabithia, but in the real world.

The film taps into spiritual themes, though not as well as it could have. Paterson herself is a former missionary to Japan, and she has written a few books on religious matters with her husband, a retired Presbyterian pastor, so it is not surprising that Bridge to Terabithia also includes hints of religious awe, especially in a scene where Leslie visits Jess's church.

In the book, Leslie's enthusiasm for the story of Jesus—which she has never heard before—is explicitly linked to her love of the Narnia books, and implicitly rooted in her own spiritual sensibility. When she and Jess pretend that they are king and queen of Terabithia, they "pray" to the "spirits" there, as part of their imaginary duties. While some parents have objected to these scenes, they do suggest that Leslie's fantasy life is rooted in something deeper.

The film, however, leaves the "spirits" out altogether, so when Leslie visits church and takes a sunbeam back to the forest with her, it almost gives the impression that churches and stained-glass windows are little more than nice add-ons to an already active imagination.

Despite its flaws, Bridge to Terabithia is still a decent adaptation of Paterson's novel, and one of the more mature children's films in recent memory. It's not the movie that I envisioned when as an 11-year-old kid I bought the book with my paper-route money, but on a certain basic emotional level, the film gets much of the story right.