"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is a magnificent feat of movie making, for whiwch everyone in front and behind the cameras deserves praise.

From beginning to end I was captivated. I was almost never aware that I was watching the feature-length (2 hours, 20 minutes) realization of a book I have read countless times over the past 38 years. I have never seen a movie twice in 24 hours until this one; I did so in order to write a careful review. And because I was the guest of a local theater, I got to see three more times the section that causes me to lament.

Movie magic: Yes, indeed!

Aslan is entirely believable and lovable, as well as awe-inspiring. His facial expressions as he talks and as he gazes are "lionish." The other talking animals are just that, true animals that talk! My favorites are Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, who steal nearly every scene they are in; their "very married" banter is hilarious.

None of the special effects was a distraction. I loved seeing Narnian summer dances in the flames of Tumnus' fireplace. It was a treat to see the badgers wander behind the scene of the children awaiting the result of Aslan's parlay with the witch. Terrific touches everywhere!

The centaurs and other mythological beings are wonderfully realized. The best among these is the faun Tumnus (played by James McAvoy). And the human actors are uniformly excellent; Georgie Henley's Lucy deserves supporting actress consideration.

The screenplay by Ann Peacock, Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely --- not just the words but the images and gestures --- set up striking parallels that improve the original book. They establish the war-time context for the story with a gripping opening scene of the WWII bombing of London, echoed later in the bombing (with stones) of the witch's army.

I also appreciated the homages Adamson paid to Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy of films: The three children and the two beavers in heroic tableau on the land bridge rhymes with the similar scene of the fellowship of the nine heroes on the journey to Mordor; their hiding in a hole from what they assume to be the witch reminds us of the hobbits hiding from the black rider; and Peter's sword driven into the ice floe parallels Gandalf's staff severing the bridge in Khazadum.

Deeper Magic: I'm Afraid Not

Before I saw the film, I worried that some Christians would turn the film, as they have "The Chronicles of Narnia," into Christian code. What many well-meaning Christians are doing, in their enthusiasm for the Chronicles, is obliging children to feel about Aslan and the other characters and adventures in the Chronicles, and thus perpetuating the very situation that Lewis wrote the Chronicles to avoid.

To the Children's Book Section of the Nov. 18, 1956 New York Times Book Review, C. S. Lewis contributed an essay, "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said":

"I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion since childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But suppose by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could."

I think that the best way to read the Chronicles and to see the movie, for children and adults, is to enter into the feelings evoked by the stories. When reading or listening to the books, they should pay attention to the color words --- verbs, adverbs and adjectives. When viewing, they should surrender to the portrayals of the talking animals and mythological beings, they should shiver with the cold of Narnian winter and soak in the colors on Narnian spring, they should resound with the musical score which accompanies the film.

But I have a deeper worry: The writers have unwittingly become watchful dragons themselves. By overemphasizing the Deep Magic verbally (in three scenes) and visually (the dramatic killing of Aslan) and deemphasizing the Deeper Magic (no delightful resurrection romp; perhaps it's on the cutting room floor?), they have evoked a theory about the at-one-ment that non-Christians --- and Lewis himself when he was a non-Christian --- call immoral and silly:

"God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form. What did he come to do? Well, to teach, of course; but as soon as you look into the New Testament or any other Christian writing you will find they are constantly talking about something different --- about His death and His coming to life again. It is obvious that Christians think the chief point of the story lies there. They think the main thing He came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed.

"Now before I became a Christian I was under the impression that the first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what the point of this dying was. According to that theory God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this theory does not seem to me quite so immoral and so silly as it used to; but that is not the point I want to make. What I came to see later on was that neither this theory nor any other is Christianity. The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many different theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians are agreed on is that it does work.... Theories about Christ's death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works....

"We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself" (Mere Christianity, Book II: "What Christians Believe," Chapter 4: "The Perfect Penitent").

Three times during the film (looking out over Narnia, Aslan introduces the topic with Peter; at the parlay between Aslan and the witch; and at Aslan's execution) but only the latter two (and the last only in passing) in the book the Deep Magic is discussed.

If Lewis had left this to stand on its own, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" would be immoral and silly. But in Chapter 15, "Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time," Lewis takes pains to describe what happens as Susan and Lucy rejoice at the sight of Aslan:

"Oh, Aslan!" cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.

"Aren't you dead then, dear Aslan?" said Lucy.

"Not now," said Aslan.

"You're not --- not a ---?" asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn't bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.

"Do I look it?" he said.

"Oh, you're real, you're real! Oh, Aslan!" cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.

"But what does it all mean?" asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards. And now ---"

"Oh yes. Now?" said Lucy, jumping up and clapping her hands.

"Oh, children," said the Lion, "I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can!" He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. Then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table. Laughing, though she didn't know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him. Aslan leaped again. A mad chase began. Round and round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind. And the funny thing was that when all three finally lay together panting in the sun the girls no longer felt in the least tired or hungry or thirsty.

Without this resurrection romp, as I call it, the glorious Deeper Magic cannot dislodge the dreadful Deep Magic from the imagination of the reader of the book and the viewer of the movie. C. S. Lewis wrote this gorgeous scene to help us feel the exhilaration of Christ at his resurrection and the joy we would feel if we had been privileged to experience this pivotal moment in the history of the universe. Anyone familiar with the near ecstasy of the last chapters 14-16 of Lewis's book, Miracles (the book which directly led to his writing of the Chronicles), knows that all life dies. But what we have in the resurrection of Christ, remythologized by Lewis, is Life reborn.

Even if we see the resurrection romp restored in the extended version on the eventual DVDs, real, but I am sure unintentional, damage has been done. It makes me very sad indeed.

Paul F. Ford, Ph.D., professor of systematic theology and liturgy at St. John Seminary, Camarillo, is an internationally recognized expert on the life and writings of C. S. Lewis and author of the award-winning book, "Companion to Narnia" (now in its fifth edition) and of the "Pocket Companion to Narnia" (both HarperCollins, 2005). His website is http://www.pford.stjohnsem.edu/; he recommends the Internet's best website on all things C. S. Lewis is http://cslewis.drzeus.net/.