The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, directed by Andrew Adamson, is based on the 1950 book by the prolific Englishman C. S. Lewis (1898-1963). Although basically a children's story, the hidden agendas are many. When the film begins, German bombers knock out homes throughout London during World War II, resulting in many homeless families, not unlike the effect of Hurricane Katrina. Among the evacuees are the two sons and two daughters of the Pevensie family; the four are farmed out to stay in a large country home owned by a Professor Kirk (played by Jim Broadbent). Almost before the four have settled in, they play a game of hide and go seek. Lucy (played by Georgie Henley), the youngest, finds a wardrobe in which to hide. However, as she goes deeper into the wardrobe, she discover that she is in another dimension. When she returns to the wardrobe, she tries to relate her experience to the others, who are skeptical, but eventually they all go into the other dimension, where they find a story that is an allegory of the events of the birth of Christianity. The children collectively serving as John the Baptist, a witch (played by Tilda Swinton) embodies evil, and the savior is in the person of a lion, Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson). The lion allows himself to be killed to free one of the children, Edmund (played by Skandar Keynes), from bondage to the witch, but later he is resurrected. The oldest, Peter (played by William Moseley), at one point leads a battle against evil. Ultimately, the children, including the oldest daughter, Susan (played by Anna Popplewell), return to the wardrobe and to a professor who is accepting of their story. Lewis, a religious convert during midlife, has written the story to appeal to children evidently because he did not have the benefit of such a vision when he was young. But there are other agendas. Women are negatively portrayed in C. S. Lewis's Narnia tales; although the concept of the witch comes from the Middle Ages, when women who refused to marry were branded witches and burned at the stake, the witch appears to be a Lucifer who beguiles Edmund into making a Faustian pact, from which he is saved by Aslan's sacrifice and Peter's army. The allies of the evil witch appear to be ugly nonwhites, notably Arabs, Indians, and Pakistanis, who were of course among Britain's colonial underlings during most of Lewis's life. Alas, there are other Narnia books, so there may be sequels if the first proves commercially profitable, and perhaps a musical based on Narnia will come to the screen some day.  MH

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The Chronicles of Narnia
by C.S. Lewis

Four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems.