Saturday, December 8, 2007

Movie review: The Golden Compass

Remember the one about "all that glitters?" Hold that thought.

By John P. Meyer

The Golden Compass

Based on author Philip Pullman's bestselling and award-winning novel, 'The Golden Compass' tells the first story in Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy. 'The Golden Compass' is set in an alternative world where people's souls manifest themselves as animals, talking bears fight wars, and Gyptians and witches co-exist. At the center of the story is Lyra, a 12-year-old girl, who starts out trying to rescue a friend who's been kidnapped by a mysterious organization known as the Gobblers and winds up on an epic quest to save not only her world, but ours as well.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is a sprawling, sparkly, ice-crystal-coated kid's story brought to glorious CGI life through the agency of big production megabucks and TimeWarner (via New Line Cinema). It's also been the subject of email and media-fanned furor in regard to the film's (and the sourced book's) purported anti-Christian agenda. If you walked into the theater without any preconceived notions or media-padded baggage whatsoever, you might go away wondering whether this rather ho-hum fantasy material warrants further exploration (there are two remaining parts to the trilogy), but not questioning whatever religious beliefs you might have had 113 minutes before - whether you're an impressionable youth or not.

What's fascinating to contemplate is that the book (published as Northern Lights in Britain and - for some ad agency-warranted reason - changed to The Golden Compass here in the colonies) has been on school library shelves since 1995, what with it being a Carnegie Medal winner and all. With the advent of the movie, some institutions are getting rid of them because they're now afraid - get this - that kids who see the film MIGHT ACTUALLY WANT TO READ THE BOOK! (It's apparently O.K. to have a book on the shelves as long as it isn't generating any interest. I just love this stuff!) I suppose this says something about the power of film.

Putting aside the use of the term Magisterium for the autocratic governmental agency that holds sway over the story's alternate reality society, you could as easily read these events as a diatribe against an imperialistic secular regime as a religious one. (I'm referring to the kind of place where you either support the dictates of the administration, or you support the terrorists.)

This is the kind of world in which Lyra Belacqua (newcomer Dakota Blue Richards) has grown up, as a ward of the psuedo-Oxfordian Jordan College. Her uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig), an academic scientist/explorer, defies the Magisterium by proposing a trip to the Arctic to discover whether something called "dust" has some kind of magical cross-universe mind-expanding properties. The powers-that-be declare dust to be a "corrupting influence," presumably because it opens people's third eyes to some kind of truth that they don't ascribe to. It's the parallel-world equivalent of Galileo's sun-centric planetary orbital regime, although it sounds (and looks) more like something one might snort from a cosmic spoon.

"According to this we should have turned left at that last iceberg."

Here's the thing about Lyra's world that practically ensures rabid ticket sales among the animal-loving portion of the population (i.e., everyone besides serial killers): the spirits of the human population are represented by animal daemons, who prance (or fly) around outside their bodies. Kind of like witches' familiars. Which must seem like a cool and cutesy gimmick, until you consider all the tedious poop scooping that would come with the territory.

Lyra's daemon is a cute little black-footed ferret named Pan (voiced by Freddie Highmore) that occasionally morphs into a tabby cat or a sparrow. Other characters have other sorts of daemon spirit familiars, such as Asriel's noble tiger and Mrs. Coulter's menacing rhesus monkey. (One of the leaders of the Magisterium has a snake as a familiar, just in case there was any doubt about what sorts of chaps were in charge of that fine organization.)

Speaking of Mrs. Coulter, she's played by Nicole Kidman, who's making every possible effort this season to get filmgoers to take her seriously as a bad, bad person, with this role being a prime example. Mrs. Coulter is a devious, elegant, globe-trotting agent of the Magisterium with her own decorator zeppelin who decides to take Lyra under her slender alabaster wing and train her to become another self-indulgent wastrel socialite who performs the occasional act of espionage for The Big M. Such as kidnapping street urchins in order to turn them over to the Oblation Board, whose members are affectionately known as "gobblers." Not the sort you'd choose to invite to the family Yuletide gathering.

Shortly after zeppelining over downtown parallel-universe London, which has a very Jules Vernian-Victorian-steampunk vibe going for it, Lyra discovers Mrs. Coulter's connection to the gobblers (who've spirited away a friend of hers) and jumps ship.

Who booked this cruise?

To make a long story as short as humanly possible, she (Lyra) ends up voyaging with a crew of Gyptians (who are more like Gypsies than Egyptians) to the far northern realms where ice bears hold dominion. On the outskirts of this frosty land she joins ranks with two powerful allies: a disenfranchised ice bear monarch named Iorek Byrnison (Ian McKellen) and Sam Elliott in a streamlined Stetson armed with a Colt revolver, a '76 Winchester rifle and a takedown airship. (His character goes by the moniker Lee Scoresby, but it's plain to see it's just Sam Elliott, lanky and laconic, playing himself as usual.)

More stuff happens involving travel across beautifully-rendered and treacherous icy terrain populated by various groups of (mostly antagonistic) people in variously-colored furry animal skin coats (don't they know how CRUEL that is?), culminating in a battle between whoever happens to show up on the grounds of the evil experimental lab where the Oblation Board boys are doin' their oblatin' thang. In the midst of this pitched skirmish we're reminded once again of the importance of controlling the airspace over the battlefield, as a gaggle of swooping witches (led by the lovely Eva Green as Serafina Pekkala) and Sam Elliott (in his now-assembled airship) cut loose with arrows and .44 slugs, respectively.

What the... how'd Sam Elliott get here? (Nice hat, though.)

As the central character of this extended tale, a lot is riding on the shoulders of young Ms. Blue Richards, and I can find no fault in her very natural performance. She is an expressive and camera-friendly young lady who interacts successfully with her fellow actors both real and computer generated, and thus should have a solid future ahead of her. Whether this projected fantasy trilogy cements the foundation of her budding career or simply serves as a springboard to meatier roles will be determined by the box office.

It would be pointless to conclude a review of the film without saying a few words about the titular instrument itself, especially since the marketing folks went to the trouble of changing the title to give it prominence. The device - presented to Lyra just prior to her leave-taking of Jordan College - is something called an alethiometer, which looks like an oversized pocket watch whose dial employs a variety of cryptic symbols in place of numbers. The idea is, you set three hands to project your question into the guts of the magical clockwork machine and it returns its answer by pointing to one of the symbols. In operation, those of us without the mystical (dust-empowered?) connection to the device enjoyed by Lyra are left pretty much clueless, but it's clear (via the dusty visions displayed onscreen) that she intuits the meaning behind the symbolism. More power to her.

I'm pretty sure that those with an emotional investment in the books will find a great deal of satisfaction in their translation to the screen. Speaking purely from a film watcher's viewpoint, I frankly can't see what all the fuss is about.

CONGRATULATIONS!: "Apparently you're impossible to educate, a miscreant and a liar." - Asriel to Lyra

SOUNDS FAMILIAR: "It keeps things running by telling people what to do." - Mrs. Coulter, describing the Magisterium to her young charge, Lyra

THANKS TO GLOBAL WARMING?: "War is the sea I swim in." - ice bear Iorek Byrnison

Related stories

• New on DVD: Bella, The Hottie…, I’m Not There - and more! (May 6, 2008)
• Academy releases Oscar noms (Jan. 22, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Arts > Movies / Film > Mainstream Movies

Comments