An age-old battle commences

In the weeks leading up to the release of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the entertainment press has sometimes seemed so preoccupied with matters of allegory as to resemble an advanced seminar in Renaissance literature.

It has never been a secret that C. S. Lewis, who taught that subject and others at Oxford for many years, composed his great cycle of seven children's fantasy novels with the New Testament in mind and with some of the literary traditions it inspired close at hand. To the millions since the 1950s for whom the books have been a source of childhood enchantment, Lewis's religious intentions have either been obvious, invisible or beside the point.

Which is part of the appeal of allegory, as he well knew. It is a symbolic mode, not a literal one -- there are, after all, no talking beavers in the Bible -- and it constructs distinct levels of meaning among which readers travel of their own free will. An allegorical world is both a reflection of the real one and a reality unto itself, as Lewis' heroes, the four Pevensie children, come to discover. The story of Aslan's sacrifice and resurrection may remind some readers (and now viewers) of what they learned in Sunday school, but others, Christian or not, will be perfectly happy to let what happens in Narnia stay in Narnia.

The supposed controversy over the religious content of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe may be overhyped, but a particular question of faith nonetheless hovers around the movie, which was produced by Walden Media and distributed by Disney. Anyone who grew up with the Narnia books is likely to be concerned less with Lewis's beliefs than with the filmmakers' fidelity to his work, which was idiosyncratic and imperfect in ways that may not easily lend themselves to appropriation by the shiny and hyperkinetic machinery of mass visual fantasy. But if a few liberties have been taken here and there, as is inevi-table in the transition from page to screen, the spirit of the book is very much intact.

The movie, directed by Andrew Adamson, does not achieve the sublimity of, say, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy (which had the advantage of working from a richer allegory by an even more learned Oxford don), but it does use available technology to capture both the mythic power of Lewis' tale and, even better, its charm.

Adamson, who directed the rambunctious Shrek movies at DreamWorks, has nicely adjusted to the technical demands of mixing live action with computer-gener-ated imagery. He also manages a less jokey, more earnest tone and temperament. Stocked with an estimable cast of actors -- some doing voice-over, some appearing in wild costumes -- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe suggests that, at least in Hollywood, there is no such thing as too much Englishness. British children are especially prized, and little Georgie Henley, who plays Lucy, the youngest of the Pevensie children and the first to discover Narnia, is both winsome and indomitable, with a wide smile and a priceless accent (though not quite the same one as that of the actors playing her siblings).

Lucy is sent off to the country-side to escape the Blitz, along with Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes), a fact mentioned in passing by Lewis and given more thorough treatment here. The opening sequence -- German bombs falling on London neighborhoods, sowing panic and destruction -- is a premonition of the climactic battle in Narnia, and also a reminder that the war between good and evil is not merely a metaphorical conceit. Exiled to the home of an eccentric scholar (Jim Broadbent) and his stern housekeeper (Elizabeth Hawthorne), the children spend their time playing and squabbling, during which the essential aspects of their characters emerge.