By Matt Zoller Seitz

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Directed by Andrew Adamson

Kids want catharsis, too. The movie version of C.S. Lewis' Christian-tinged fantasy The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe delivers, introducing a pivotal character worth loving and admiring, then killing that character in a horrific second-act set piece and letting its aftershocks saturate and intensify every moment that follows. The killing is circumspectly depicted, with no visible blood and only a hint of what, exactly, is being done. Yet the deed pierces as few movie deaths do, because the character is so beloved and the killing so inexorable (and for children, so incomprehensible). The emotional effect is on par with the deaths of Bambi's mother, Simba's father and the title character's demise in The Red Balloon (which, like Lewis' heart-wrencher, is essentially a crucifixion by a gang of thugs, followed by a coded resurrection). To watch The Chronicles in a theater full of children is to witness a defining moment in a generation's movie-going life. The film reminds us why darkness and pain belong in entertainment: to let us publicly confront shared fears in a controlled environment.

The Chronicles affords many such chances. Between the central murder, the images of menace, abandonment, betrayal and Tilda Swinton's primordially scary performance as the film's villain, the White Witch, The Chronicles gives children (and some adults) a chance to get close to dark feelings rarely touched by so-called "family entertainment" and then sort through their tangled reactions. These are substantial achievements. Yet I'm not sure how much credit to assign The Chronicles director, Andrew Adamson (codirector of the Shrek films). Here he demonstrates a knack for deceiving kids without making them feel like chumps and a four-square visual simplicity that serves the material. But I kept wanting more—that feeling of continuous, helpless, almost narcotic bedazzlement you feel when a great filmmaker sweeps you along in a river of images (like Caleb Deschanel in The Black Stallion, Majid Majidi in Baran and Spielberg in almost anything)—the sense that you're in the hands of an artist speaking his own language.

Adamson's plain direction (he favors tight, tv-friendly compositions) was just right for the Shrek movies, which were kin Jay Ward's "Fractured Fairy Tale" (surrealist, morally instructional vaudeville) and had no pretense of splendor. But the approach is wrong for The Chronicles, which needs and deserves a splash of epic grandiosity. There are striking moments scattered throughout—the first transition from the wardrobe to Narnia; a chase across an expanse of ice; gibbering, murderous creatures gathered around a stone table to sacrifice an innocent. But there's no sinuous undertow of visionary confidence, just a succession of plot markers. It's as if Adamson is trying to make the material more "relatable" by making it smaller and blander.

The movie's curtain raiser, which introduces us to the Pevensie family as they're being bombed to rubble in World War II London, is a near botch, with no real sense of visceral danger. It should have provided stark contrast to the Narnia scenes, but it feels very Xbox-like; the effects feel like effects, and not good ones. And even after the Pevensie children have been sent to wait out the blitz in an old professor's country home, Adamson and his coscreenwriters fail to define them as sharply as they deserve. The actors are beguilingly ordinary, but until we're fully immersed in Narnia (about 40 minutes into the movie), the characters don't rise above the level of traits with names: controlling elder brother Peter (William Moseley); skeptical older sister Susan (Anna Popplewell); impetuous and gullible younger brother Edmund (Skandar Hanes); and Narnia's first human explorer in eons, kid sister Lucy (Georgie Henley). These kids aren't just human warriors prophesied to liberate Narnia from evil; they're our surrogates and friends. They should pop off the screen the second we meet them. But except for Lucy—Lewis' Alice-through-the-looking-glass character brought to naturalistic life by Henley once she passes through the magic wardrobe closet and into Narnia—they just kind of sit there. It's as if they're waiting for Adamson to call out their numbers so they can be interesting, too.

Such irritations subside (but never vanish) once we've settled in fantasyland and Lewis' peculiar mix of writerly traits (professorial loftiness, grandfatherly wisdom, boyish impetuousness) asserts itself. Adamson doesn't make the fatal mistake of asking the actors portraying mythical creatures to ham it up; they err on the side of understatement, whether playing a shy, sweet-faced but deceptive faun (James McAvoy's Mr. Tumnus), a couple of long-married beavers (voiced by Ray Winstone and Dawn French) or a sly fox who might be playing both ends against the middle (Rupert Everett, purring like James Mason). It was probably inevitable that Liam Neeson would provide the voice of Narnia's resident Christ figure, Aslan the Lion; Neeson has become a theological combatant par excellence, the unofficial inheritor of Max von Sydow's career—and you accept his spiritual and patriarchal authority without question.

But not even Neeson's strength can eclipse the power of Swinton's White Witch, an exquisite creation that ranks with the finest villainous performances in movie history. It's not what she does that scares you; it's who she is. Rather than outwardly stylize the character – make her broader, more theatrical—Swinton pushes inward, applying psychological insight to the Witch's actions. Swinton plays the Witch as if she were a real-world monster—a cult leader, a serial killer, a molester, a stone sociopath bereft of decency and immune to shame. When the Witch tricks Edmund into deceiving his siblings, she takes no delight in fooling the boy, nor does she indicate contempt for the boy's naïvete; she's just a witch doing her thing. There's a spark in her eyes, but it's a cold spark. Her soul is dead; only the pursuit and acquisition of power makes it come alive. In the movie's battle-clogged third act, which finds Aslan's army of magnificently beautiful creatures facing the Witch's herd of drooling, jabbering, leathery, hairy-slimy beasts, Swinton becomes something still more imposing: a warrior queen wading into the thick of it, eyes fixed on the threat at hand, head held high—an anti-life-force. To stare into the Witch's dead eyes is to sense what The Chronicles could and should have been: not just effective and sometimes moving family blockbuster, but a terrifying and astonishing work of pop art. (Swinton's performance reminds me of the "immaculately frightful" phrase from Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row.")

Adamson at least deserves credit for walking a fine theological line. He recognizes both the universal mythological elements in Lewis' fiction and its specifically Christian origin. He doesn't de-Christianize the material, nor does he overemphasize it to the point where you feel you're being preached to; he simply lets it stand there and be recognized. It is impossible to look at the Pevensie children in their knightly armor without recognizing militant Christianity's transformative effect on Western psychology and politics, the still-unstable mingling of forgiveness and vengeance (or "justice"). In Narnia, the Pevensies are literally engaged in a children's crusade against evil (and a very pagan-looking one at that). Their efforts are shaped and validated by Aslan, a theological symbol combining New Testament mercy and Old Testament fury: a decent, even-tempered, socially constructive warrior; Shane with a mane. This lion is just all right, but to watch and absorb its images is enlightening. You sense where our society came from, and perhaps why we are where we are.