The Golden Compass [2]

Well, after rattling on about it last week, I sort of had to go and see it didn't I?
Actually, I'd been planning to go and see The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford, but the overpriced tinkertoy railway that passes itself off as a transport system in London swallowed me up and didn't spit me out again until long after that'd started, so I was left with a choice of Golden Compass or Fred Claus.
No choice, then, really.
After I'd sat through to the end, I turned to my cinemagoing companion and said; "So, what did you think?"
She looked back at me with a sort of glazed expression and thought for a moment. "That was complete gibberish. Completely incoherent", she said.
I nodded. "I'm glad it's not just me thinking that."

Ever since CGI virtual environments became sophisticated to the point that filmmakers can now put absolutely anything on screen in nigh-photorealistic quality, it seems like the trickier bits of things like script and plot are being sidelined in favour of spectacle*. The three big-budget toyselling blockbusters I've seen this year - Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Spiderman 3 and Golden Compass have all had the same problem; utterly gorgeous design and feel but incomprehensible plotting.
Golden Compass is really very pretty indeed. I didn't hang round through the credits to find out who did the design work, but they well and truly earned their money. The world presented is as consistently and credibly realised as anything in Lord of the Rings, referencing the real world to be recognisable but different enough to be otherworldly whilst maintaining the difficult task of making everything look like it exists as a part of a single culture.
Within the film, there's a lot to like; the sequence in the Polar Bear King's palace is one of the best pieces of cinema I've seen this year, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig's) piece of identifying music being a musical joke on the Bond theme got a laugh out of me, Christopher Lee's cameo, and it's difficult to watch the Lyra riding Iorek Byrnison across a snowy wastelend sequence without realising that every single child in the audience will want the talking polar bear toy for Christmas.
Even the daemons are well-realised, with CGI-interaction with humans being skillfully done and the type of daemon a person has being a shorthand for personality (Dogs, cats & birds = good, insects, snakes & wolves = evil). This could easily come across as hokey, but instead it works well and serves as plot exposition without speech. A neat touch.

But...But.
There's a few problems with the film.
First is the character of Lyra. As in the book, she's an unlikable child. Selfish and decietful without the charisma or sense of humour to carry it off in a Jack Sparrow sort of way. It's hardly the actress' fault - the character is as in the book. She just isn't likable enough to engage the sympathies of the audience.
Second is that there's way too much going on. Northern Lights is a thick book and if you haven't it, you're likely to spend a lot of time saying "Hang on...?" as things leap from plot point to plot point without a break and without the space or running time to fill out the detail.
Thirdly, by stripping out Pullman's "Religion is bad, mm'kay?" subtext and ill-considered metaphysics, they've rendered the plot utterly incomprehensible as there's no reason for anyone to be doing the things they're doing. There are a few nods to the book's subtext but when you can sit through the film with a highly educated and intelligent catholic and they miss the single oblique reference to original sin and so have no idea what's going on, then you have a problem with the scripting. As it is everyone runs around making a lot of noise and there is no reason why the bad guys taking away a child's daemon is any worse than just taking a pet off them, which makes all the drama seem rather...hollow, really.

Of course, the audience of children who this is firmly aimed at will miss all of that. They'll see the talking animals, airships and polar bears and be caught up in it. If I'd wanted my plots to make sense when I was little, I wouldn't have loved Disney's The Black Hole quite as much as I did. Because, really that's what Golden Compass is; it's a jumbled plot-mess of SFX glory. It's this generation's The Black Hole.
Considering that I saw it in a central London cinema two days after release and the cinema wasn't even half full (and the irritating kids beind me spend a long time fidgetting with boredom at the long exposition scenes), I'm not sure they'll even make the heavily-flagged sequel (by heavily-flagged, I mean that the film literally ends mid-scene with no resolution to anything - as if the film had broken).
If you can turn your brain off, you'll probably get a lot out of Golden Compass. It's not a film I'll bother seeing twice, though.

^{*More than they already were, that is.}