I’m pretty sure I have a crush on Tilda Swinton after watching “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” (2005), and I’m not sure what that says about me.  If this is a Christian allegory, then I can vaguely conclude that her character is the devil … or at least some sort of Winter Chick Anti-Christ.  Theologically speaking, that’s … that’s kinda bad, right?

But she’s mesmerizing, and steals this movie just as she stole “Constantine” (2005) in her role as the archangel Gabriel.  What an amazing talent she has for portraying powerful female villains.  She has a damn hard stare and an exquisite voice and diction.  She takes fairly one-dimensional dialogue here and and makes it sound like Shakespeare.  And she’s frightening — I jumped at her first explosive outburst at the errant Edmund.

My own pathologies aside, this is actually a terrific children’s movie.  It seems like a great way to introduce pre-teens to fantasy and engender an interest in reading.

Yes, there is a Christian subtext, but the movie doesn’t proselytize.  It’s more of an enjoyable allegory than anything else.  (Jesus as Warrior-Lion?  What the hell — it’s more fun than anything I heard in Catholic school.)  The faith-over-reason messages weren’t lost on me (i.e., Susan admonished for “trying to be smart” instead of having faith enough to cross the icy river, the Professor’s willingness to believe).  But the movie doesn’t clobber the viewer over the head with these messages at any time.

The special effects here seem pretty good too.  I’ve always heard that CGI animals are harder to render, because their hair makes it difficult.  These looked great — and the artists also captured human facial expressions for them.  I can’t imagine that this was an easy task.

To the consternation of friends, I have never read C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia.”  I did read Lewis in Dr. David Cain’s fantastic Christian theology class at Mary Washington College, however, and was impressed.  I liked “The Screwtape Letters” well enough, and I thought “A Grief Observed” was wonderful — the latter would actually be a great companion book to Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  This film actually made me want to read the “Chronicles.”

All in all, this was a good movie — I’d recommend it to any parent who wants to interest their child in books.