Movie of the week: Shaun de Waal reviews The Golden Compass, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.
Right-wing Christian groups and the Vatican have objected in advance to The Golden Compass, which is enough to make one immediately feel positive about the film.
The Vatican is offended because, in the story, there is a religious power called the Magisterium that attempts to keep a stern hold over people’s minds. It polices the world for any heresy that might threaten its dogmas. That could echo much from the old Soviet Union to many a government in the world today, but of course the Vatican is the original model for such attempted global ideological control. So the Vatican’s ideologues are right to be miffed; they are being pilloried. Not that they had seen the movie by the time they sent out their press releases.
The other Christians who are alarmed have been circulating emails throughout Christendom (without having seen the film either) warning that The Golden Compass is atheist propaganda. They are worried because Philip Pullman, author of the original novel, is known to be an atheist, or at least a freethinker. The books in the trilogy of which The Golden Compass is the first certainly make an enemy of blinkered religious beliefs.
The filmmakers have denied pushing the atheist angle terribly hard in the movie and they do soft-pedal it, but it is inescapable that part of Pullman’s message is the need to think for oneself — and to defy authority if necessary. In fact, the God figure so frequently quoted by the Magisterium in aid of its ideological project is called The Authority, so the signals couldn’t be clearer.
The young rebel in The Golden Compass is Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards — feisty, charming and attractive in an unusual way). She is an orphan living in an Oxford that is both like and unlike the Oxford of our familiar world. In this world people’s souls are externalised in the form of animals (a lovely idea) and weird airships sail the sky above stylised retro cities. But we are also made aware that this is one of many possible worlds, which is a key idea underpinning Pullman’s complex universe or multiverse.
Lyra’s uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), is her protector and role model: he’s a courageous explorer and scientist who has discovered something the Magisterium would not like the world to know. He’s a sort of Galileo, Columbus and Darwin in one. Lyra instinctively sides with him, though she is also somewhat seduced by the glamorous agent of the Magisterium, Mrs Coulter (Nicole Kidman). All this while the poorer children of Lyra’s Oxford are disappearing, kidnapped by dark forces called, by the kids at least, the Gobblers.
Lyra’s natural tendency to think for herself and her unswerving loyalty to her friends will take her on a journey to the icy far north of this world. On that adventure she will be assisted by the gypsy-like boat people, the ‘gyptians”, and she will encounter great armoured bears, an oddball aviator (Sam Elliott) and the prophetic witches of that region. Her secret weapon is the golden compass itself, the ‘alethiometer”, a truth-telling device that the Magisterium is very keen to take from her and destroy.
The film’s storytelling is swift and convincing, though the business of the externalised souls or ‘daemons” is perhaps over-explained rather than allowed to emerge through the storytelling. (At the premiere last week an awkward speaker felt obliged to explain all that ahead of the screening, too.) The daemons in the movie tend to be a little too cutesy, but that is a reflection of this kind of filmmaking, heavily reliant as it is on computergenerated imagery, with all its cartoony smoothness, and intended as it is for younger viewers. I have no doubt that such audiences will find The Golden Compass engrossing and thrilling, but I hope that ultimately the film will lead them to the book (originally called Northern Lights in our non-American world) — for, in truth, anyone who has read the book is likely to find the film a somewhat pale redaction of it.
The film also defers the final confrontation of the novel, probably keeping it for the next movie, The Subtle Knife, in an attempt to draw viewers into episode two. That decision removes some of the potential emotional punch of the story — in fact, the book’s ending as it stands is a very powerful incentive to read the second novel. (Once I had started the first book, I had to cancel engagements until I was done with all three.) The full trilogy, His Dark Materials, is unquestionably best read as a single story. Unlike the Harry Potter saga, it is not a series of repetitive variations on a formula but an integrated whole. It is also infinitely more thoughtful, provocative, exciting, moving and better written.
And, by the way, I could have done without the overripe tones of Ian McKellen as the fighting bear, Iorek Byrnison, in the movie. Does the Sainted Sir have to be slipped into every post-Lord of the Rings fantasy? This year we’ve already had him doing the narration in Stardust, as if to lend it some Gandalfian gravitas. There, at least, his stagey BBC-Shakespeare diction made some sense; here it would have been much better to offer the Scandinavian-style bear the voice of, say, Max von Sydow. Given his recent appearance in Rush Hour III, he needs a rather more dignified role.