flowrs4ophelia | Film Review: "The Golden Compass"

In my childhood and preteen years I read Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass multiple times and for a long time considered it my favorite book. I was not quite old enough for the anti-religious themes not to go right over my head; a friend of mine was forbidden to read this antithesis to The Chronicles of Narnia when her aunt discovered she had borrowed the evil thing from me and I couldn't understand this. But I could appreciate it merely for its characters and ingeniusly imaginative fantasy world.

I have dreamed of this film being made for half my life, once picturing actresses as the main character who are now much too old for the part, but now that it has been so long since my last reading of the His Dark Materials trilogy, my memory of the story is not the sharpest. For how big a fan I am I went to see this expecting I would not be the pickiest and hardest one to please in the audience. My sister, who has just re-read and fallen in love with the books again, had complaints about differences from them. But for me, seeing this made me truly relive the magical experience of reading this story a long time ago, and the way it captured the qualities of it that I had actually completely forgotten were what made me love it so much I think indicates more than anything that it is a very good adaptation.

In addition to that, it is simply a good movie on its own, taking place in an alternate world that is so comfortably established that the film can be surprisingly accessible even to those who aren't familiar with the book (as far as I can guess). The many strange and original concepts in this world like daemons take a lot of words to try to explain in writing, but the film sometimes has brief shots that can let everything suddenly make perfect sense without any of the characters even behaving like this is something that needs to be explained rather than second nature.

The young heroine is Lyra Belacqua, an orphan who lives at the Oxford College of a world that is very much like our own with some great differences. Where this Oxford is, people's souls reside outside of their bodies in the form of animal companions called daemons who are always near them. Someone's daemon can change into different animals until puberty when it settles on one form that fits the person's personality, a change Lyra's Pantalaimon hasn't undergone yet. When someone dies, their daemon instantly vanishes into gold dust. When the way there are cute animals following everyone around like they're walking their dogs could make the movie seem extra kiddie-oriented, this particular aspect of this world actually sometimes adds to the unflinchingly dark tone; usually if an unimportant someone falls in a fight scene it is not so clear when or even if they die, but the first time we see people's daemons disappear it somehow emphasizes the seriousness of how someone very young has just seen death. There is no blood shown in this movie, but by the time there are large battle scenes with this visual effect occuring everywhere, it almost feels like it makes it deserve its PG-13 rating more than anything.

Lyra's uncle is Lord Asriel, who is connected to the college and an enemy of the Magisterium, the highest authority in this world, for his heretical studies of a mysterious material called Dust. Lyra, a very daring and undisciplined girl with a talent for lying her way out of anything, gets into trouble when she learns about these things that are not for a child to be interested in by listening to a meeting where Lord Asriel explains why he wants to go north to advance his study (he believes the Northern Lights are a portal to another world through which Dust flows). But soon Lyra has every reason to want to know more about Dust, as it seems to have something to do with an organization that is abducting children and her friend Roger is one of the orphans who has disappeared.

Lyra eventually joins some Gyptians, gypsy-like sea people, on a mission to the north to try to rescue the kidnapped children. A scholar at Oxford has entrusted her with a valuable instrument called an alethiometer, a compass that can be used only by those gifted with the ability to use it to know the truth. Lyra finds she is able to read it and believes she needs to find her uncle in the north and bring it to him. On the way they employ a Texan aeronaut named Lee Scoresby (played delightfully by Sam Elliott) to transport them in his balloon and Iorek Byrnison for protection, in a sequence that reminds me just a little of the introduction of Han Solo in Star Wars, the scoundrel shunned by society who will join a good cause only for the right price. Iorek is a giant polar bear with the gruff and dignified voice of Ian McKellan, an exiled prince of the panserbjorne or armored bears. He has been tragically deprived of his armor, which seems to signify about the same thing as it did for a man to have his hair cut off in ancient China, and is full of anger and intimidating, but after he first refuses to help the Gyptians Lyra is so unafraid of him she easily convinces him in a way no one else can.

The wonderful casting of this film, I believe, has already set it far apart from other children's fantasy franchises like Harry Potter and made it more comparable to The Lord of the Rings. Dakota Blue Richards, previously a complete unknown, is incredible and spot-on as Lyra, playful and mischievous but nobody's fool, with a quality of inner hardness and determination like a girl who will grow up to be a blood-splattered warrior princess. Her complete confidence and maturity makes situations work seriously that could otherwise just look like a child actor playing grown-up for the entertainment of other children like the young heroes of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe wielding swords in battle. One aspect of the book I was especially happy that the film preserved well was the strange and poignant relationship between Lyra and Iorek, who is fiercely protective of her not because she is a helpless and innocent child but because he respects her like an equal. Without Richards's performance bringing what was needed to her character, it would seem almost comical how a little girl has so much power over this killing machine rather than feel genuine. But in a scene when she fearlessly dares to suggest that Iorek let her ride on his back, she does not simply seem naive to be asking it at all.

If it weren't for the wide range of talent among the actors of all ages, Nicole Kidman would completely steal the picture with her performance as Mrs. Coulter, the beautiful Oford patron who takes Lyra under her wing as an assistant and pampers her like a daughter. Her daemon is a scary-looking golden monkey who looms around her like a devil on her shoulder talking into her ear, making you wonder how it is nobody sees this woman's intentions are obviously bad. She can be seductively sweet and motherly one moment and chillingly evil the next, but it seems both sides of her may be real rather than one a facade, as is memorably hinted in a somewhat cringe-worthy scene that shows a private moment of her alone with her daemon.

After being marketed as the next great epic fantasy adventure, you would think the first of this new series would at least have a run time even slightly comparable to LotR movies, but at under two hours its slightly rushed pace is where it falls short. It takes no time to stop and breathe. I was very excited about Alexandre Desplat composing the music and was looking forward to this having a good score if nothing else, but there are not many quiet and meditative moments for background music or even room for development of major musical themes.

Even as this is a few shades darker than most Potter flicks and doesn't have the many moments of comedy that you can expect in most family movies, there are several ways some might say the screenwriters may have "chickened out" by changing things from the original story. A child character who has been hurt in an absolutely evil and crippling way does not die from it in the film as he does in the book, though I thought the general concept of his fate is maybe severe enough as it is. There is not even that much reason for Christian parents to get into an uproar over this movie because the power and control of the Magisterium is not clearly stated as having anything to do with religion but simply an antagonism against free will. But these kind of changes do not even seem to be the ones, if any, that fans of Pullman's books are complaining about the most. On the whole, I find it to be very true to the vision and spirit of the book. It seems that my childhood dream has come true.