The Golden Compass [2]

[davywavy]

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.}

Comments

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Hey - they made sure the film was still strongly anti-Catholic Church. There was just no reason WHY the film was so anti-Catholic.

Without the Original Sin plot, all you got were four looming men in cassocks with a collection of ominous daemons (which makes you wonder how the Magisterim recruit people - "what's your daemon, sir?" "Oh - it's a fluffy bunny rabbit" "Go home! You sir?" "It's a rather icky looking preying mantis" "Come right in...") who seemed to wander in, kick some puppies, mutter darkly about testing Mrs Coulter, trying to rule the world, and wanting to kill anyone they didn't like, and then walk away again with no real reason for why they were being so evil at all.

Unfortunately this all backfired hideously and at least one person I've spoken to was last heard of asking where he could join up. Apparently it's the combo of black robes and airships that did it for him...

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The uniforms were great, weren't they?
I don't think that it was strongly anti-catholic, as the catholic I saw it with missed that bit entirely. I don't suppose that if it weren't for Mr. Garrison Phillip Pullman going round insisting it was anti-catholic, anyone would have noticed.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Mrs Coulter, in one throwaway line, explaining the plot: "Once upon a time our ancestors disobeyed authority and that's how dust came into the world". If you don't know that this means Fall from Grace/original sin/free will then you probably won't get it, and without getting it not a lot makes sense really.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Well, y'see, 'dust' is kinda free will/sin, which is why the church both denies it exists and tries to make people afraid of it. 'Dust' interacts with people through their daemon/soul and gives them ideas.
The 'other worlds' that 'dust' comes from are allegorical to the 'other worlds' of ideas and imagination and it doesn't interact with children for some reason. Maybe because children have no imagination or ideas of thier own, or something. That's never explained.
Anyway, the church wants to stop children growing up to have ideas from 'other worlds', so it's evil.

So, religion is bad, mm'kay?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

One thing that struck me later is that the Magisterium wants to conquer 'all worlds' and bring them in line, and it really does beg the question of how they plan on doing so. I mean, they have airships and rifles and we have nuclear weapons, Strategic Air Command, and John Wayne.
I don't give them very good odds.

[(Anonymous)]

And Chuck Norris.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't forget the extra bad guys though, Sauron leading legions of Space Nazis, to name but two.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That was the great missed opportunity of The Last Action Hero.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I assumed they had desperately added in the Bad Stereotype Catholic Priests as a marketing strategy. They saw the film, realised what they had done and decided that their only hope was to aim for some kind of condemnation from the Catholic Church. That would definitely bring all those edgy secular types into the cinema.

A desperate measure, but I could see why they went for it.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I can see the conversation now.
"Who shall we get to play the evil priests? We want them to be really unsympathetic and hateful."
"Derek Jacobi and Christopher Lee?"
"Brilliant! There's no chance of anyone finding them charismatic, especially if we dress them in really natty uniforms."

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I think he saw the rest of the cast and realised that a strong authoritarian hand was what was needed.

I've got say, considering the intelligence of the rest of the adult cast (Lee Scoresby - "well, hi there my polar bear friend. I've been trying to figure a way of bustin' you out of here, but I was flat out of ideas. Lucky I found this twelve year old child wandering around..."), he may have had a point...

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

That said if I'd've seen this film as a child, I would have wanted to grow up to be Lee Scoresby. Sam Elliot has the most fantastic voice and demeanour.