The Golden Compass (Movie)

Movie : The Golden Compass (Theaters - 2007; DVD - 2008)

Rating : PG-13 (113 minutes)
Genre : Young Adult; Fantasy

Our Rating : B+

This Weekend I Watched...
Young Lyra Belacqua (aka "Silvertongue") is the chosen one. What it is that she's chosen for is not fully explained to her, but she has her daemon (Pantalaimion), a strange truth-telling device (the Alethiometer), and a kick-a$$ polar bear (Iorek Byrnison) to help her out.

In the meantime, she has to figure out whether Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are good guys or bad guys; end the spate of child-nappings plaguing her world; avoid the nefarious designs of the Magisterium; and journey to the top of the world (north of Norway) to accomplish all this.

What's To Like...
There's a wonderful and complex plot to keep you focused. The movie sticks reasonably close to Philip Pullman's book, and it helps if you've read that beforehand. The cinematography is great, and the fusion of live actors with computer-generated images shows how far that art has come since Roger Rabbit.

Although The Golden Compass (both the book and the movie) is just the first part of a trilogy, there is enough of a sub-story to bring this portion of the overall tale to a satisfying conclusion.

What's Not To Like...
Much of the reasonable criticism has to do with the deviations from the book itself. The plot is "brightened up" a bit. In the book, the little boy who lost his daemon is doomed to wither and die; here he is simply turned over to his parents. In the book, Lyra's friend, Roger, also meets an untimely end; here the story ends before that event happens. There are several other places where the film strays (in the book, this is not the sole remaining alethiometer), but if you aren't a nit-picking bibliophile, you won't mind.

Then there's the fundies, who claim this movie will turn its viewers into practicing Satanists. I tried it on Liz; it didn't work. Nor will this movie have you searching for your personal daemon (think : animated soul). Sorry folks, it's just a well-told fantasy story.

Finally, and worst of all - either Nicole Kidman is aging entirely too rapidly, or else she really needs a better make-up assistant.

So what's with all the fuss?
The fundies' silliness notwithstanding, this movie also provoked the ire of organized religion as a whole. In fairness, TGC has nothing nice to say about the Established Church's equivalent here - the Magisterium.

However, the biggest "threat" to organized religion here is the overriding philosopihcal question being asked. Do we, mere commoners, have a right to search for answers, knowledge, and the truth on our own - or is that something to be left to the Church?

If you depend on your local pastor/priest/guru to tell you how to think about everything, you should probably pass on this movie. OTOH, there are some who find that the Church today concentrates far too much on acquiring money and power, and not nearly enough on meeting the spiritual needs of its congregation. For those of us who feel that way, this film is a welcome treat.

But I digress. In the case of The Golden Compass, the book is better than the movie; but the movie is still quite good. We'll give it a B+, and try to find time one of these days to write a review on the books themselves.