Movie Review: The Golden Compass

3/10

Oh bloody hell.

If you like the books by Philip Pullman much of this movie's runtime will have been spent in incredulous dismay, wondering where on earth the plot, place and excitement went.

Possibly it was squeezed out of the movie in the process of emasculating its atheist, or at least anti church, message.

If you are entirely unacquainted with the very reasonably sized and priced set of books that is the omniously titled "His Dark Materials" trilogy I will attempt to explain the central problems I have with Hollywood's wholesale rape of these without ruining the books for any yet to experience the genius of the first two (and a fair portion of the third).

Do read them though. They are very good. This film, however, is not.

The pretext and context is an acceptance of the "many universes" theory in modern physics, that is to say that there is a potentially infinite number of potential universes, differing in anything from giant amounts to very little. In this particular universe the population are accompanied at all times by animal "familiars" called for whatever reason, Daemons.

Other than that this reality is also a sort of "steampunk" alternate Britain and Europe where enormous zeppelins travel from city to city, and a Cowboy rides a Balloon, rather than a horse.

In the book these are all described in detail and in effervescent realism - so why it was impossible to capture any of Pullman's magic world in the cinema is beyond me. All the technology, while pretty, feels as solid as the CGI that makes it up.

The actors, big names and otherwise, are all trying very hard to tread a fine line between throwing themselves into things wholeheartedly and retaining just enough aloofness to distance themselves from any actual emotion or involvement. The main culprits are of course Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, both playing their stock characters (aloof brit, aloof brit) with about as much conviction as cardboard plays bricks. The child actors do their best, of course, with some success but our leading young lady is clearly a posh lass doing her best "common" voice and this gets in the way of her performance like all bad accent work does. I don't want to get on the poor lady's back though, since this is the beginning of what may be a fine career - so long as she is allowed to play to her strengths in future.

With a movie based on as complex source material as this is made, there is a danger lurking in the background.

There are a lot of characters and a lot going on at any one time.

Lord Of The Rings, in order to manage its movie makeover, cut swathes of events from the story and remains focussed on a central journey in order to avoid a load of disparate events just sitting next to each other like unconnected scenes from different films. The actors spent ages together building up real bonds of friendship, of fellowhip, that really come across on the screen.

The original book here (Northern Lights, or the Golden Compass depending on editions) is nowhere near this level of complexity and yet still the movie fails to avoid this major pitfall. Scenes come and go at a furious pace, many of which serve little purpose - most obvious in the Magisterium (more on them later) scenes, we gain no feeling (as we did in TLOTR) that any of the characters have any idea who the others are. At no time do we believe Derek Jacobi even knows Nicole Kidman is cast as Mrs Coulter in the movie, so little do his scenes flow from the prior ones. Christopher Lee's two second cameo as a nameless, faceless cardboard cut out is virtually worthless; responding to dialogue he probably only read two minutes before he was filmed speaking it.

And this is a good time to assess our evil enemy, The Magisterium. In the book, this is obviously the Catholic Church in parallel world format. In the movie, it's some weird evil government - the equivalent of the faceless paranoia feeding governments in, say the ghastly Fortress or Running Man.

The decision to remove the overt religion from The Golden Compass' villains destroys the sense of the story's central conflict; between the religious conception of what innocence and freedom should be and genuine innocence and freedom.

Of course, they haven't taken all the references out, since the story really wouldn't hold together at all, but is expressed in such a watered down form (someone did something bad and dust came into the world) that the actions of the Magisterium make absolutely no sense at all. Only something as insidiously self righteous as religion can explain the willingness of anyone to carry out this inexcusable plan to "cure" the children of the world of sin.

Only one character comes through the lemon squeezer safe - that of Sam Elliot's Lee Scorseby, though I reckon this is only because the character is basically Sam Elliot in the first place.

There is no character development, replaced with a series of setpiece fights and effects laden sequences that owe little to Pullman and more to Hollywood marketing. The giant fighting bears are well imagined and executed, for sure but they are not convincing as characters, the whole background of their honour system seems to have been distilled into little more than the guidance notes they asked the casting director to follow with the voice actors. Ian McKellen brings, however, much needed gravitas to the role of a giant drunk bear - a character which voiced by, say, Ben Stiller would be a joke in Ice Age 4.

Add to the panoply of dreadful errors of judgement the decision to cut the story short of its hideous conclusion, when a perceived hero shows their true colours and muddies the moral waters considerably, and this film begins to feel like a real stinker.

It did not do well at the box office, people either avoiding it because they are offended by the books controversial reputation or, if not, seeing through its hollow shell. Needless to say the series that would probably have arisen out of this movie if sucessful is not being made, so if you did really enjoy the film (I'm sure many did), in order to get the real story you'll need to read the books anyway.

Unlike the movies of Lord Of The Rings, which felt like a worthy companion to and retelling of the highlights of what is one of the 20th century's greatest works of fiction, The Golden Compass is an object lesson in exactly how to mess the same thing up. Devoid of any of the books depth, either in feeling or character it is impossible to recommend unless you really are bored.

The books (at least the first two) are superb. Read them instead.

Til next time folks, I am as ever...

A