Blog Yellek

MeLo and I took the MLKs to see The Golden Compass last night interested to see what they had made of the book that we had just finished reading. Armed with copious quantities of popcorn and caffeinated beverages we settled in to our local megaplex to view what has to be one of the more hyped Boxing Day releases this year. Alas we were sorely disappointed.

Gone are the days when we could look forward to the latest installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy to add to the Christmas experience. I remember the anticipation and excitement that we used to feel to the point that when we heard that music start we were instantly transported into a rich and detailed fantasy realm for the duration and only emerged to wish that we could do it again. The Golden Compass is not one of those experiences.

Where do I begin? On the plus side the anti Christian message so prominent in the last three chapters of the book is missing. Given that the mainstream culture in the US is largely sensitive to Christian morality there was no way that a movie that misquotes scripture and twists its meaning, even in a fantasy setting, could have even begun to be commercially successful. Despite any protestations to the contrary this was a purely commercial decision. True the costumes of the servants of the evil Magesterium look a lot like the robes of the catholic church but the relationship is understated and easily overlooked.

Also a plus was Nicole Kidman. I thought her acting in this was one of only a very few highlights in this movie along with the CGI shots of Mrs Coulter’s airship and the Magisterial Seat. I think that without her this movie may have gone straight to video.

On the minus side the movie totally disregards the plot of the book to the point of nonsense. Many of the background details that go to creating Philip Pullman’s fantasy world are missing from the movie and yet there are scenes that reference those missing details. Take for example the scene in which the staff at Bolvangar grab Lyra’s Daemon Pantaleimon. In the book the taboo of touching another’s daemon is reiterated over and over so that when this happens there is a sense of moral outrage. In the movie Lyra reacts strongly when this happens but we never know why.

Gone too are a number of the shocking moments from the book that lend it at least some artistic value and pathos. The death of Tony Makairos after being separated from his daemon is replaced by one of the Gyptian children who is united in the arms of his mother and never seen again. The death of Roger at the hands of Lord Asriel to open the gate between worlds never happens which removes any need for Lyra to agonize over her guilt. All of this sugar coating makes a mockery of the original story line until what we are left with is a disjointed series of set pieces that do little to create the fantasy world that Philip Pullman envisaged.

Given that the title of the movie is “The Golden Compass” you would also expect that the treatment of the compass or aletheometer would be central to what is going on. Instead we are left with very little explanation of what the aletheometer is all about, how Lyra learns to read it or even much idea about how it works. We are given a series of cut scenes where the camera flies through the face of the aletheometer to a world where orange dust motes outline images in pictorial form. We are never left with the sense of struggle that Lyra has to interpret the aletheometer in the book nor with any sense of increasing skill with the device as the plot proceeds.

And then there are the gaping logical voids. At the beginning of the movie we are shown on a map that the location of Svalbaard, the kingdom of the bears, is Iceland in the parallel universe of the movie. Trollesund in Norway is where they meet the bear Iorek Raknison and Bolvangar, the location of the experimental station, is some days journey over land from Trollesund. In the book Lyra travels by ship to Trollesund, goes by sledge towards Bolvangar where she is then taken by Samoyed raiders, flies in Lee Scoresby’s balloon to Svalbaard and then journeys north to the magnetic pole by bear to the climactic scene with Lord Asriel. In the movie Lyra and the Gyptians somehow travel by sledge all the way from Norway to Iceland (good luck doing that without getting wet in the North Atlantic Ocean) for the bear fight (the only part of Svalbaard to really make it into the movie) and then Lyra somehow walks, assisted for part of the way by Iorek Raknison, from Iceland to Norway on the return journey! Never mind the fact that this reorders the events in the book to the point of nonsense so that they can stage the climactic battle scene outside Bolvangar and avoid having to deal with the very nasty end of the book north of Svalbaard.

All in all this adaptation of the book is very poor, especially when compared to the gold standard of all book adaptations, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Couple this with the decidedly anti Chrisitan slant of the book and I would definitely find something else to take the kiddies to these holidays.