Film Review - The Golden Compass

I've been looking forward to this for a while now. Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" has been one of my favourite reads of recent years so I was rather hoping that Hollywood would turn out a good film, after all they did a pretty good job with LOTR and they have got those CGI fur subroutines working really well now so the daemons would surely look good.

Yeah, then they gave it to Chris "American Pie" Weitz to direct and gave him a little under an hour and a half to tell a deep, complex story and under no circumstances was he to piss off the religious people; bums on seats laddie, bums on seats.

Anyway first the good stuff. Visually it's great, the daemons' (people's souls which accompany them in the form of animals) are superbly rendered, especially Pantalaimon and Mrs Coulter's golden monkey - if you didn't know you would swear the monkey was real. The film makes a credible character of the ice bear Iorek as well, an aspect I thought the film would stand or fall on. The feel of the setting is pretty much right on too, a sort of brass and carved wood "steampunk" world of victoriana run riot with modern tech and it captures the familiar but otherworldliness you get from the book. Acting wise I was impressed with Dakota Blue Richards who puts who puts in a sterling performance for a newcomer, Nicole Kidman is a convincing "baddie" with just the right air of menace without being over the top and there are fine supporting performances from Tom Courtney (Fader Coram), Sam Elliot (Lee Scoresby) and my all time favourite actor Derek Jacobi, fresh from playing Dr Who's nemesis The Master, as a charming and sinister Cardinal Ratzinger Magesterial Emissary.

OK so on the Catholic Church all up in arms don't-go-and-see-this-it's-written-by-an-atheist boycott nonsense well sure Pullman is an atheist but certainly in this film (and by and large in the book as well) the Magesterium is a cypher for any organisation that sets itself up as an arbiter of the truth and what can and cannot be spoken about, and yes that includes the church but not really a church I recognise too much in this day and age. In many ways the film representation reminded me more of our dear Labour government, or any socialist government to be honest, especially in Mrs Coulter's speech about "People need to be told what to do, it's better for them." The later books, especially The Amber Spyglass, are more explicitly anti-clerical so it remains to see what happens there. Oh and althogh my classics knowledge is a bit rusty these days I remember that "daemon" derives from the word for "wise" or "knowledgable" in Greek and the daimones were minor spiritual beings between gods and men... souls you could call them. The use of the word "demon" to mean a malevolent spirit came later and the use of the word "daimon" to mean "automated UNIX sub-process" a bit after that (although anyone who has had to repair a crontab at 3 in the morning will tell you that these daimons are definitely malevolent!)

So where did it all go wrong. Well about 10 seconds in, in fact. On comes whoever it was who plays Serafina Pekkela and gives us the Lord of the Rings "I feel it in the air. I feel it in the water" prelude and gives away the fucking whole plot in the first thirty seconds. Jesus, we are not idiots Hollywood, we do not need everything explained by some sodding 21st century Greek Chorus; we are used to plot and narrative so please can you just let the story tell itself. After that everything seemed to be rushed as though the whole movie was an excuse to rush to the big battle scene at the end. Huge chunks of the book which develop the characters and Lyra's world and what "dust" might actually be are missing and the relationships between people and their daemons which is so vital to the story is largely skipped over and they just end up being like particularly loyal and chatty pets. And then there is my pet peeve, when Serafina turns up at the final battle and lands in front of Lara, Lara goes "Serafina Pekkela!" Yes we can see it's Serafina Pekkela you cunts, she was on screen not half an hour ago. I do have a memory span longer that that of a pissing goldfish you bastards.

Oh and the closing credit music. Fucking hell what a dirge! I had to stick the remainder of my popcorn in my ears just to stop from setting fire to the theatre.

OK so there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half (and it was free which was a bonus) but given a Peter Jackson and an extra hour this could have been so, so much more when you consider the source material.


Firey Dragon Rating - Lukewarm