Last weekend I went to a preview of The Golden Compass, the New Line film of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, fully prepared to love it. The trailers were terrific, and the casting of Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig was inspired. I’d heard Pullman’s insistence that cutting out all references to the Magisterium as a religious authority didn’t matter, because the Magisterium represented totalitarianism in all its forms. I didn’t buy it, but thought the film could still be worthwhile. Oh dear.
The adaptation of the story was clunky and simply concertinaed the plot into verbal asides. There was none of the cleverness in shortcuts or substitutions you sometimes see when a scriptwriter finds a novel way to explain background or the lore of the book. (There’s a lot of lore to explain, especially about daemons and missing children.) Friends who hadn’t read the books found the quick explanations and plot surges utterly baffling. Everyone agreed that the actress playing Lyra was superb, and Nicole Kidman pulled off the sexy, driven, ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ chutzpah of Mrs. Coulter. But the magic of Gyptians, bears and witches was completely lost in the rush of events. When the battle in the arctic kicked off no non-readers could tell why anyone was fighting the far-from-home Tatars.
The big story before the film came out was how all the references to the specifically religious character of the Magisterium were ripped out to avoid offending American Christians. The logic seemed to be that if you took out all the God stuff, it would mollify the lunatic fringe who don’t read anyway, and more people would be watch the film and ultimately be led to the books. Nice try, except we all know there’s no negotiating with fundamentalists.
The story now the film’s out (as of later today in the US) is that the Christian lobby is calling for a boycott. More accurately, it’s the ultra-Catholics who are offended that someone has had the cheek to make a film out of an ‘anti-Catholic’ book. (The conservative Protestant churches seem to have missed the part of Pullman’s alternative history where Calvinism was absorbed into Catholicism to create the corrupt Magisterium.) So the evangelicals are leaving the protests to the Catholic Union of Permanently Outraged Mothers of Twelve, and so on. The moral of this story is there simply is no appeasing these people, so why take out the butcher’s knife and gut an inspired story about humanism and quantum theory when it wouldn’t help anyway?
It’s not surprising that the essence of Northern Lights was lost. In the tortured process of creating the film – Tom Stoppard’s treatment dropped in favour of Chris Weitz’s unsolicited one, Wetitz being fired, another director coming on and being fired, Weitz’ return, New Line’s insistence on dropping the voice actor for Iorek Byrnison in favour of a marquis name in fantasy film, Ian McKellen – the one continuous theme is the rationalization by the creatives of studio power. Weitz says he “grew” a lot between being the first and third director of the film. Presumably the creative differences just stopped bothering him. And public atheist Pullman says he isn’t perturbed at all by the complete excision of theocratic corruption in the film because all forms of totalitarianism are the same.
Except they’re not. Life in a theocracy means everyone – not just members of the Communist party or the military junta – must live out the philosophy of the rulers every day of their lives. There is a peculiarity to a complete absence of the separation of church and state that doesn’t prevail in a communist or a fascist state. When there is no distinction between religious and secular power, it’s not enough to obey the rules, you have to believe in them, too. Theocracies are obsessed with sexuality in a way that common or garden totalitarianism is not. Women get a spectacularly raw deal in a theocratic state, which is what makes Mrs. Coulter such a notable character; she plays the religious hierarchy at their own game and wins, albeit at a terrible cost.
Cutting out the special viciousness of theocratic totalitarianism from His Dark Materials is its own form of intercision, the books’ term for an operation that separates children from their daemons and cleanses them of original sin. The evil at the heart of the Magisterium is its abuse of religious power, its need to ‘free’ children of their sexuality by surgically removing their souls. For a children’s story, His Dark Materials is deft and courageous in taking on the idea of pre-adolescents as sexual beings. Its seamless invocation of quantum theory’s multiverse and beautiful treatment of a life after death that doesn’t require a singular soul are what make His Dark Materials linger in readers’ minds for years. They are the engine of the books, just as an unattractive, flawed and female lead character with an inborn knack for rallying society’s outcasts is the heart. Cutting out the central and challenging ideas of the books infantilises the viewers. Without them, HDM is just another in the current wave of fantasy films aimed an audience of children and adults, appealing to the lowest common denominator of both.
The current crop of fantasy films is purely a function of the development of CGI and its associated technologies’ ability to render the worlds the stories live in. Now the fantasy classics, old and new, are being consumed in a single binge-sitting, along with junk food pastiches like Spiderwick, Harry Potter and Eregon. But the concentration of capital needed to make these films is still enormous, (The budget for the Golden Compass was double that of The Fellowship of the Ring.) which means they can’t be made without a firmly mainstream audience in mind. Perhaps in another decade or so, production will be cheap enough to allow a revisionist take on the deeper, darker stories. Maybe our kids will chortle at today’s hopelessly off key takes on classic tales the way we sniff at early Hollywood versions of Jane Austen or Robin Hood.
Chris Weitz’s protestations aside, it’s not ‘grown up’ to shrug off burying the uniqueness of a story, or an unpleasant truth, or an unpolitic belief so as to get along with the powers that be. The whole point of His Dark Materials is to get right up the noses of people who say there’s no point fighting against the establishment, in whatever form it takes.
So, if you want to see a film of a book that challenges you to consider the insidious mind control of theocratic rule, or one that has interesting things to intuit about the many worlds idea in quantum physics, save your money. On the other hand, if you’d like an enjoyable and plotless romp with great special effects, fabulous gizmos, battles, talking bears and a plucky and not always button-cute heroine, it’s a wonderful film.
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Matt 12.07.07 at 8:30 pm
If only you’d posted this a few hours earlier I might have saved the money I’d just spent buying tickets on-line. Oh well. At least they were for a matinee.
JP Stormcrow 12.07.07 at 9:04 pm
I also saw it last weekend and I thank you for giving voice to some of my own relatively inarticulate misgivings about the treatment. Our party was two readers and two non-readers, and the latter relied heavily on the former to fill in a lot of detail on the drive home.
HDM is just another in the current wave of fantasy films aimed an audience of children and adults, appealing to the lowest common denominator of both.
This was brought home pointedly to me by the three previews at that preceded our showing: Prince Caspian (the next Narnia movie), something based on the Loch Ness monster, and Inkheart*. The Golden Compass seemed to be just another film in that sequence. They would almost be more honest just to make a series of films like the early Cinerama ones to show off the new capabilities with no pretense of storyline.
*This last looked to have some promise – but as noted above, a trailer is not a film.
richard 12.07.07 at 9:06 pm
an enjoyable and plotless romp with great special effects, fabulous gizmos, battles…
When did you last see a movie that cost more than $50 million that did not fit this description? Even the LoTR films, for all that they’re wonderful adaptations of difficult material, don’t do much heavy lifting in the psychology or characterisation departments.
David Weman 12.07.07 at 9:14 pm
Hi Maria. It’s hardly just the fundies that would object to the anti-christian slant.
fred lapides 12.07.07 at 9:40 pm
Why go to a film of a book you liked–certainly not my sort of read–and expect it to live up to the book? You see the film and you like it or not.
hermit greg 12.07.07 at 9:59 pm
When did you last see a movie that cost more than $50 million that did not fit this description? Even the LoTR films, for all that they’re wonderful adaptations of difficult material, don’t do much heavy lifting in the psychology or characterisation departments.
For that matter, neither did Tolkien.
matt mckeon 12.07.07 at 10:04 pm
I really enjoyed the Golden Compass, and the two sequels as well. As I read them, I never thought a mainstream movie could be made from them because of the anti-religious slant(forgetting that mass audience versions for radio had been made in the UK). Surrendering to the hype and advertising, I allowed myself to get excited at the thought that, hey maybe somebody pulled it off. But your review, I’m afraid, is probably pretty accurate.
A couple of observations: first anti-Catholicism, as opposed to anti-religion, can and has been a mass culture seller, in the U.S. anyway. I’m thinking of the “Da Vinci Code.”
Second, whether a theocacy is worse than a totalitarian government, I don’t know. Iran is pretty bad for non believers(or rather, different believers), but is it worse than Stalin’s Russia? Puritan New England was a theocracy, but can it described as on the level of a totalitarian government? Theocracies worship their version of God, while totalitarian governments(of the 20th century anyway) worship power.
Leaving aside that is sometimes seems to amount to the same thing, I think as a generalization it breaks down in the particular cases.
mel 12.07.07 at 10:07 pm
It’ll still be fun to see — and thank you for making that distinction between expectations in the end.
Comment 4 makes a very good point but must not have read the full post. It’s a mass-market film, toned down (sadly) to buffer against the mass-market’s vulnerability to fundy mind-control methods. Without the constant battle waged by religious extremist, I suspect the mass-market would have been free from religion long ago.
As it is, this film is yet another skirmish in the battle. And I agree, Maria, we have to do better. But this film, in America, in December … that’s some encouraging progress.
matt mckeon 12.07.07 at 10:09 pm
I forgot that great anti religious best seller “Elmer Gantry,” made into a whiz bang movie with Burt Lancaster. At the end of the film(not the book), he turns away from his huckster fundamentalist scam, quoting “I put away childish things.” Religion being a childish thing, apparently. The atheist reporter, who sincerely describes Jesus as a “great teacher,” but not the son of God, is the voice of conscience.
JP Stormcrow 12.07.07 at 10:56 pm
For that matter, neither did Tolkien.
I agree. My initial reaction to the film was that its relation to the book was about the same as that of the LoTR films. However, I think more is lost in this case, given the grater development of ideas and characters in the HDM series.
Maria 12.07.07 at 11:32 pm
I didn’t include it in the post, but a particular annoyance was where they chose to end the film. I won’t go into detail as it’s a plot spoiler, but a great strength of Northern Lights/The Golden Compass is that it ends on a wretchedly sad event that changes Lyra forever.
A big problem for the writers of the next two films is going to be how to present the subsequent story with God cut out of it. That doesn’t just affect the meaning, but it will make the plot almost impossible to retain.
Charlie Whitaker 12.07.07 at 11:36 pm
No one’s going to be calling Philip Pullman a great stylist, though:
“The Master’s daemon had the form of a raven, and as soon as his robe was on, she jumped down from the wardrobe and settled in her accustomed place on his right shoulder”.
If the the Amazon.com preview is a reliable indicator, the HDM books are stuffed with grammatical pratfalls. Which is a shame: a family Christmas looms and a few hundred thousand words of engaging escape fiction would be welcome.
yoyo 12.08.07 at 12:01 am
So your complaint about the movie is mostly that it is insufficiently offensive?
matt mckeon 12.08.07 at 12:20 am
Well, if a movie about Gettysburg ended in Pickett’s shouting match, then I feel it wouldn’t have captured the essence of the event.
Or if Santa Anna had stormed the Alamo, and given the defenders a stern lecture, six months probation and 200 hours of community service. Less offensive perhaps, but still somehow lacking.
Heather McDougal 12.08.07 at 1:24 am
What stuns and amazes me more than anything is that ANYONE could turn down a script that Tom Stoppard wrote and think they were improving something. Not only is the guy brilliantly intelligent, and an amazing plotter, but what about box-office hits like Shakespeare in Love? Do they count for naught? Sheesh.
Zeno 12.08.07 at 1:33 am
Since Pullman’s trilogy is about the soul-destroying power of a tyrannical theocracy, the movie adaptation certainly pulls the teeth of the novels by turning the monolithic church into a more vague “magisterium”. There is, however, no point in soft-pedaling the theme, since fundamentalists and ultramontane Catholics see the watered-down movie as a sinister ploy: a subtle knife to prick the interest of innocent children, who then get sucked into the novels for a big dose of uncut anticlericalism. Since they see the hand of Satan in everything, it doesn’t occur to them that the decisions of cowardly marketing managers could be anything other than sly snares for the unwary.
shtove 12.08.07 at 2:14 am
“The conservative Protestant churches seem to have missed the part of Pullman’s alternative history where Calvinism was absorbed into Catholicism to create the corrupt Magisterium.”
Jansenism? Hardly alternative. Think of the destruction of the Jesuit order.
The story sounds like a load of tosh, from beginning to end. Of course, I haven’t read it – buhwahaha! Why waste time?
Fiction engages kidults so much – why? Grow up, suffer taxes and death, and in the meantime learn to grumble about the spread of “-ism”s. That’s corruption you can sink your teeth in to.
rm 12.08.07 at 5:01 am
Shtove, please consider RTFB — reading the book — before joining the fray. Really.
I speak as someone who hates the books, and who was the anti-Pullman troll last time this came up, who tried to give a Christian perspective on the books, but . . . I think this thread has drawn some commenters with a mission. Don’t parachute in and troll.
For the record, Pullman is a very, very good stylist much of the time, and his fiction has a lot of complex, serious ideas. I don’t like them, but I have to respect the talent. Also, Charlie, what was wrong with that sentence? —— ?
It is a shame that the movies dumb it down.
Maria is right on about the current binge of CGI fantasies; most of them have eviscerated their books. I am so much in agreement there that I won’t even say anything to defend the HP books (which have some serious ideas, unlike the movies) or Tolkien (who DID TOO have characterization ffphb bb#^#@#^@#$%!!!). Her point is so important that it’s not even worth getting sidetracked into a silly argument about totalitarianisms (which pretty much all demand thought control, I mean . . . ) I do hope someday we have intelligently made fantasy movies.
SGEW 12.08.07 at 6:16 am
Just to throw in my film snob two cents:
My bottom-line problem with the film? Terribly, terribly edited. Really, just a horrific hack-job. No pacing, no transitional breathing space, no emotional sweep or punch or bounce, and absolutely no flow whatsoever. At certain points I almost sensed a decent movie in there, and then: whoops! Next CGI sequence, stat!
Really, even if script was top-notch (and managed to adapt Pullman’s magnificent series into screenplay format, somehow), it wouldn’t have had a chance under this butcher’s knife.
Also: McKellan totally phoned it in. Seeing as how this was a voice-over job, that might actually be literally true.
knox 12.08.07 at 6:25 am
Everyone who let the idea that religious authoritarianism is meaningfully worse than the nationalist or socialist variety pass without comment needs to stop reading Pullman (as good as he can be) for a week and check out Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer.” That will quickly dispel you of any of those notions, and we can all get back to arguing about CGI bears.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, isn’t the film adaptation that’s as good as the book really the exception? Is anyone really surprised this was a hash up?
I don’t think it was bad exactly, but the pacing of the story was off and the editing only compounded the problem. Things were changed that I don’t think needed to be, including (I won’t spoil it) one point that really weakened Iorek’s characterization for me.
SG 12.08.07 at 7:37 am
Hey rm you didn’t reveal you hate the books on the other thread!
I agree about cgi fantasies. What shits me is that LoTR and Serenity have shown it is possible to have good cgi and good plot, etc. It’s incredible that so much money can be thrown at some of these movies and they still come up wanting…
Alison P 12.08.07 at 8:16 am
I felt that the message about religion came through loud and clear from the film. I was surprised how blunt it was about religious authority harming the soul, not just of those excised. I love the books, and I was prepared for the film to simplify – it had to – I thought it conveyed the overall arc of the plot. Of course much was lost; it had to be.
Also, Lee Scoresby is a wonderful character, and I think he was very well portrayed by Sam Elliot.
Kramer 12.08.07 at 8:34 am
fyi. The current issue of the Atlantic Monthly contains a pretty interesting account of how the movie got made by Hanna Rosin (she talks at length with Pullman) – http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/religious-movies
re #7 and the analogy code to The Da Vinci code more generally. Rosin makes the point that the Da Vinci code was significantly more popular in the US than HDM and that this fact spooked New Line from allowing a more explicitly anti-Catholic (or more generally anti-Christian) stance to emerge in the film.
edmund 12.08.07 at 10:49 am
what i’m sure the HOlocuast victims were really glad they wern’t under a theocracy-then their way of life might have got interfered with ! What a stupid point
see
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/12/seriously_1.php
novakant 12.08.07 at 10:54 am
My bottom-line problem with the film? Terribly, terribly edited.
Really? No flow? The editor was Anne Coates. But then editors have to work with what they get and what the director/studio want. I’ll check it out.
the witch from next door 12.08.07 at 11:43 am
Anne V. Coates is one of three listed editors. This suggests a rush-job to me, which would also fit with the stories circulating about how the film was finished only a week or two before the release date. I’m inclined to agree with segw on the pacing and flow, incidentally. I think partly this was because they decided to keep most of the plot in, but didn’t have the LOTR-like three hours required to serve it properly, so they had to rush a lot it.
rm 12.08.07 at 12:59 pm
SG, I love some things about them but hate others, which makes my overall reaction worse. Why couldn’t the guy I disagree with be a bad writer? Why does he have to be so talented and brilliant? Damn it. “Hate” is a shorthand for my problem with Ebtre’f zheqre naq vgf hafngvfslvat sbyybj-hc.
rm 12.08.07 at 1:11 pm
Heck, Toy Story showed that you can gave good CGI and a good story, that in fact you must have a good story.
It sounds like the movie is mildly bad, but not Beowulf-bad.
Barry 12.08.07 at 1:22 pm
edmund: “what i’m sure the HOlocuast victims were really glad they wern’t under a theocracy-then their way of life might have got interfered with ! What a stupid point”
You’re right – you’re point is stupid.
Matt Weiner 12.08.07 at 2:11 pm
Ebtre’f zheqre naq vgf hafngvfslvat sbyybj-hc.
Myes, as the person who supported you on the other thread (though I’m not a Christian), I had a problem with that too, or at least I thought it was half fantastic and half wtf; given what happens at the end of the trilogy I felt as though the moral was that lbh pna’g znxr na bzryrggr jvgubhg xvyyvat n srj puvyqera.
James Kabala 12.08.07 at 2:33 pm
Didn’t Orwell (or rather the character of Winston Smith) say just the reverse – that the Inquisition only cared about external behavior, whereas Big Brother wanted to control your thoughts as well?
Ray 12.08.07 at 3:27 pm
I remember when I read the first book, being struck by how fast things were moving, and how much was being crammed in. It’s a feature of kids’ books – children are slower readers, and more interested in plot, so the plot often moves very quickly. So I’m not surprised that the film is a hard-to-follow mess.
Matt Weiner 12.08.07 at 4:20 pm
…rm & others already talked about my concern in the old (spoileriffic!) thread.
Jonathan Edelstein 12.08.07 at 4:54 pm
There is a peculiarity to a complete absence of the separation of church and state that doesn’t prevail in a communist or a fascist state. When there is no distinction between religious and secular power, it’s not enough to obey the rules, you have to believe in them, too.
With apologies to #19, I have to take issue with this statement. Totalitaran governments of the communist and fascist varieties also demand total mobilization and commitment from the population: why else mandatory youth groups, public ceremonies with a cast of thousands, political “education” in the workplace and similar measures?
On the other hand, your basic point stands, because it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to argue that totalitarian societies are theocratic. Ideologies like Nazism and Soviet state communism took on many of the aspects of religion – including a messianic future and racial or economic tenets that had to be accepted on faith – and sought to regulate areas of human life (not excluding sexuality) where secular politics wouldn’t normally be expected to go. Nominal separation of church and state doesn’t matter that much where the state is the church.
abb1 12.08.07 at 5:49 pm
#34, theocracy, fascist nationalism and statist communism all have a bad reputation (and understandably so), but the other popular ideology – market liberalism – is, in fact, no different. It regulates all areas of human life as well, including, of course, sexuality – by turning it into a series of commercial transactions (“prostitution both public and private”).
Sebastian Holsclaw 12.08.07 at 5:50 pm
I’m not sure I can precisely identify why, but the movie just isn’t fun. And just for the record, I find it annoying that this bleh movie got bang-up marketing, while Stardust (which is very fun) got practically noting at all.
Nabakov 12.08.07 at 6:16 pm
“a marquis name in fantasy film”
Not wanting to pull rank here but perhaps you meant marquee?
Jim Vandegriff 12.08.07 at 8:47 pm
I enjoyed the movie when I saw it yesterday. I think it works as an adventure story, the acting is excellent especially from Dakota Blue Richards and Nicole Kidman, and the production was filled with art deco touches I thought lovely. I agree that the film suffered from trying to put too much of the book in such a short time, but I also thought that they did a good job of getting to the essence quickly in some scenes (the meeting of Lyra and the witch queen for instance). I was moved in some scenes, excited in others, and while it isn’t a great movie, it is a good one. Sign me satisfied (even as a great appreciator of the books). Jim
JP Stormcrow 12.08.07 at 9:05 pm
I will give credit for one element that I thought was very well done and which does highlight the versatility of CGI. I thought the treatment of the daemons was great (maybe it was a gimme).
matt mckeon 12.08.07 at 9:27 pm
abb1,
Was comment 36 a little trollish? New England Puritans, 21st Century Iran, 21st Century Canada, Stalin’s USSR, Hitler’s Germany are all the same? Because there was prositution is all those societies? Not getting the picture.
abb1 12.08.07 at 9:51 pm
21st Century Canada is not ideological, it has a mix of all three: a bit of liberalism, a bit of nationalism, and a bit of egalitarianism. I’m saying that classical liberalism in its more pure form, like, say, the US in the 1920s or Europe around 1900, has the problems attributed by #35 to Nazism and Stalinism as well.
Jeff D. 12.08.07 at 10:23 pm
The same requirement of belief, though, obtains even in secular totalitarian states that have ostensibly eliminated religion. In such a state, the good citizen believes in the “new man/woman”, the triumph of the proletariat, or some other historical apotheosis; if one fails at this, there are “re-education camps” to bring one around. The type of coercion of faith you see as the primary theme of Northern Lights and The Dark Materials as a whole certainly isn’t limited to theocracies.
I’m with Alison at #23 and Jonathan at #35.
You do note, somewhat derisively, that “public atheist Pullman says he isn’t perturbed at all by the complete excision of theocratic corruption in the film because all forms of totalitarianism are the same.” In this case the author is, I think, right.
Jeff D. 12.08.07 at 10:33 pm
Oops, I see that the comment editor dropped some text from my previous note because it was included in angle brackets it interpreted as HTML tags. My bad.
The note should have begun with a quote of the sentences in Maria’s review that I responded to:
“Life in a theocracy means everyone – not just members of the Communist party or the military junta – must live out the philosophy of the rulers every day of their lives. There is a peculiarity to a complete absence of the separation of church and state that doesn’t prevail in a communist or a fascist state. When there is no distinction between religious and secular power, it’s not enough to obey the rules, you have to believe in them, too.”
And “the good citizen believes in the ‘new man/woman’ should have read “the good citizen believes in the ‘new [insert name of preferred ideology here] man/woman'”.
Sorry about that.
Jeff D. 12.08.07 at 10:36 pm
And I’m definitely with jp stormcrow at #40; the dæmons were beautifully done.
Claire 12.09.07 at 12:06 am
We saw the film last night and were fairly impressed. It looked great, and the casting was wonderful.
I think it could have been better if it had been a half-hour or so longer, as things definitely felt very compressed, but it covered the high points and did so well enough that the audience (suburban/rural SoCal folks) seemed to be following the events and to be involved enough to be thrilled and horrified at the appropriate points.
I also think that — despite the dumbing down — the Magisterium still comes across as a religious organization. The costumes, the jewelry, and the word choices (e.g., “heresy”) made it very clear, even if it wasn’t as clear as in Pullman’s books.
As for the ending — the film was clearly made for and is being marketed to an American audience. had the film ended the way the book did, I suspect that most people would have walked out of the theater stunned, horrified, and with no interest at all in seeing the next installment. As it stands, they stopped on a high point, and can start the next film with a nasty shock for everyone that they can address as the film goes on.
I know that I was remembering the book (which I read several years ago) as the film headed towards its conclusion, and I remembered what happened next and realized that they were going to end it where they did.
marc sobel 12.09.07 at 12:45 am
I liked it also. I kept on thinking that I was amazed that the changes made kept to what I considered the spirit of the book. I think it could have been made as a 3 hour LOTR but that at 113 minutes, it could have been a little longer.
Jonathan Edelstein 12.09.07 at 1:30 am
@36, 42:
market liberalism… regulates all areas of human life as well, including, of course, sexuality – by turning it into a series of commercial transactions
The examples you give – the US in the 1920s, Europe circa 1900 – didn’t demand total consumer or labor mobilization in the way that Nazism or Stalinism demanded total ideological mobilization. People had a certain amount of autonomy as to the transactions they performed, and had at least partial leeway to opt out of the system and form non-transactional relationships. Granted, there were penalties for not following social norms (as there nearly always are) and these societies had official and unofficial methods of brainwashing, but equating them with totalitarian controls seems a bit much.
Andrew 12.09.07 at 7:12 am
My 10 year old daughter, who’s been waiting 9 months for the film to come out, was greatly aggrieved by the ending – they missed the best bit, in her opinion.
I desperately wanted to love the film, and just couldn’t. The daemons are great, Kidman’s solid, some of the transpositions and adjustments work well. Jack Shepherd is a superb Master.
But some of the dialogue is astonishingly clunky. McKellern is wrong for Iorek Byrnison. Farder Coram is completely short-changed, and the alethiometer reading is Psychics 101. And the whole Bolvangar sequence is all “with one bound she was free.”
Sigh… it’s not the compromises they made to get it filmed. It’s that they just didn’t make a good film in the process.
Adam 12.09.07 at 7:23 am
I must disagree. I thought the movie was just fine. Is it a perfect adaption of a wonderful book? Of course not. I’d say the only perfect adaption of a book is The Princess Bride.
Yes, all the overt religious references have been removed in an ill-advised attempt to placate religious whack jobs. GET OVER IT. The fact is, had they gone with the heavyweight nature of the books the movie would have flopped and most likely the other two films would never see the light of day. There are still subtle clues as to the true nature of the Magisterium, and that is good enough for me.
I for one felt that the casting was wonderful. Ian McKellan was a bit iffy, but the rest of them were great. I thought Kidman had a good feel for Mrs. Coulter, who is torn between her lust for power and the love for her daughter. Daniel Craig, while not enjoying much screen time, managed to pull off Asriel’s regal demeanor rather well.
My point is that it is far from perfect. But it is a good start to a franchise that could possibly butt heads with the Christian propaganda piece Narnia. While it is flawed in many ways, we should support it to the best we can because otherwise the others might never be made, and a generation of children might not ever know of Pullman’s genius. That is the true goal of this exercise. If we get even a small number of children to pick up the books and open their minds, does that not more then make up for the changes and errors made in the film?
My answer is yes.
If any fans of the series wish to speak with me regarding the film, feel free to e-mail me with something about the movie in the subject line. I would be glad to have an intellectual conversation regarding my position, since I get the impression it will be an unpopular one.
Adam H.
abb1 12.09.07 at 10:07 am
48, It’s arguable. The ideology of market liberalism is completely controlling the lives of millions of factory workers in China right now, as we speak. They are locked in their factory compounds, working 80+ hours a week, not much autonomy there. The workers do it voluntarily (for the most part), hoping to save money for some other transaction, buying a house or whatever. They are ‘ideologically mobilized’. And I seem to remember reading about 19th century silk weavers in Lyon (for example) who were just as mobilized. It’s common.
Matt Weiner 12.09.07 at 1:20 pm
I also think that—despite the dumbing down—the Magisterium still comes across as a religious organization. The costumes, the jewelry, and the word choices (e.g., “heresyâ€) made it very clear, even if it wasn’t as clear as in Pullman’s books.
I agree; what I think isn’t (at all) clear is that it’s the Christian church. And this was an actually an improvement for me, because it makes the movie slightly less of a sledgehammer screed than the books were. But I was one of the people who was put off by the preachy tone of the books, so I can see where the books’ biggest fans wouldn’t like this.
OTOH, I did think that the movie rushed along too quickly — and it didn’t even get to the end of this book! The next movie will have to rush along even quicker to get everything in.
4jkb4ia 12.09.07 at 3:17 pm
This weekend I reread “The Golden Compass”. There is now an unbreakable bond between Philip Pullman and Hanukkah, since “The Amber Spyglass” came out about that time. I could actually see the Hollywood movie in it, which I couldn’t do for LotR. I am sorry to intuit that they didn’t make that. But the first time I read through it, the ideas of daemons, and of what Dust was, moved you through the story. You need a clever screenwriter to get through all of the plot and have some idea of what Pullman is doing with the descriptions.
Andrew 12.09.07 at 3:58 pm
adam: happy to do so, but you’ll need to find some way of putting up your eMail address (you can reach me at fables3@yahoo.com).
FWIW, I’m a bit uncomfortable with the idea of “supporting” film b1, the first in a series B, because series A is supported by my political/cultural opponents, and I want to get people reading the books on which b1 is based so that we may prevail in a long cultural struggle…
I’m comfortable enough that lots of people (particularly those that haven’t already read the books) can make up their own minds about a film without my dissembling about its merits.
The movie isn’t a complete loss (the production design is magnificent), but considering the source material, all three of us (parents and daughter) who saw it couldn’t help but be disappointed.
And that’s not because of the religious blurring, or because they left out that bit in the book I really liked – it’s because things that make a movie really good weren’t there.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan 12.10.07 at 3:30 pm
“What stuns and amazes me more than anything is that ANYONE could turn down a script that Tom Stoppard wrote and think they were improving something.”
Aw, come on. Stoppard’s plays are the cultural equivalent of Chinese food. Make you feel smarter when you’re watching them, but no emotional depth. An hour later you’re wondering what the point of the play was other than to show how clever Stoppard was. (I’m thinking of “Arcadia” in particular here.)
Alison P 12.10.07 at 4:55 pm
I really loved the invented scene (not I think in the book) where Mrs Coulter smacks her own psyche in the face. A truly upsetting scene, utilising the fantasy imagery to get across a point in a compact way. I know one scene doesn’t make a film, but when I saw it I thought it indicated that the director got the concept.
Keith 12.10.07 at 5:29 pm
Aw, come on. Stoppard’s plays are the cultural equivalent of Chinese food. Make you feel smarter when you’re watching them, but no emotional depth. An hour later you’re wondering what the point of the play was other than to show how clever Stoppard was.
I’d take that over the broken-neck kludge that was the film I watched.
Anyone who liked the film, feel free to explain to me why the Samoy hunters delivered Lyra to the Bears, instead of to the Magisterium, who they were working for. Because all I can figure is, well, it was time for the bears segment and they needed to move Lyra there.
And way to gut one of the most interesting sections of the story, about the Bear king’s sad desire to be so human that he caries a doll and forces his fellow bears to wear feathers and gold and live in a palace. There’s a real commentary on totalitarianism, stripped out completely and reduced to a plot point delivered as an aside during dinner conversation.
Mike 12.10.07 at 7:48 pm
I’d say the only perfect adaption of a book is The Princess Bride.
It is ideal when the book’s author is also an accomplished screenwriter, and the book is the apple of his eye.
Still, I’d add The Maltese Falcon and Rosemary’s Baby, at least among faithful adaptations. Coppola improved The Godfather almost beyond recognition.
a very public sociologist 12.10.07 at 9:31 pm
How the hell are they going to handle the war against God that takes place in the third book?
Miriam 12.11.07 at 1:05 am
How the hell are they going to handle the war against God that takes place in the third book?
Given the film’s so-so performance at the box office, I suspect that they’re not going to handle anything from the third book.
Keith 12.11.07 at 5:15 pm
Still, I’d add The Maltese Falcon and Rosemary’s Baby, at least among faithful adaptations. Coppola improved The Godfather almost beyond recognition.
There are a handful of films that are as good or better than their source material.
I think the 1931 Dracula is better than the book and has the distinction of being an adaptation of an adaptation, as it was base don the stage play. What’s even weirder, the Spanish version of the 1931 Dracula, shot with the same sets and script, just different actors (and a notably better film stock) is just as good if not better in the second act.
I’d also argue that the Fight Club film works better then the novel, and the author pretty much conceded that on the commentary track with him and the screenwriter.
Keith 12.11.07 at 5:19 pm
Oh, and Guy Madden’s Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary is the best version yet and it’s an expressionistic silent film based on the ballet, based on the movie based on the play based on the novel.
All that’s left is for someone to do a graphic novel adapted form Madden’s film and it will have come full circle.
Walt 12.11.07 at 7:29 pm
I don’t have a strong opinion about the fact that they downplayed the religious aspect, but when I am World Dictator, there will be a large death-ray satellite that vaporizes anyone who types GET OVER IT on any subject whatsoever on the Internet. Also, free bacon for everyone.
Walt 12.11.07 at 7:30 pm
Also, any variant of “didn’t do this years ago?”, at least until the Complete Omniscence About Everything Said Or Written Ever implants come on-line.
Tim 12.11.07 at 9:52 pm
Trapped and oddly bored on a Yank warship in the Med, as good a time to catch up on your blogging as ever. Pleased to see that you haven’t lost your touch for a well argued opinion. Tóg é go bóg é.
SG 12.12.07 at 3:28 am
Walt, will their be bacon re-education camps for the Muslims amongst your loving citizenship, who refuse to eat bacon? Or will you already be everyone’s god?
Walt 12.12.07 at 3:36 am
People don’t have to eat the bacon. I’m not a monster.
Bob 12.12.07 at 6:41 pm
“So your complaint about the movie is mostly that it is insufficiently offensive?”
Perhaps some people need to be offended, yoyo. I’m sure there are still people left on this planet who would be offended if you told them the earth were round and not flat.
But as for Yahweh’s Willing Executioners* – of course, they should be offended. Maybe some more offense and a little less caving into their religious kookery will eventually bring them around.
*Anyone who believes in and worships a god who would punish others eternally for the “sin” of not believing in “Him”
Cheers!
Rod Blaine 12.13.07 at 1:40 am
Yep, Pullman nailed the Catholic Church all right. Crazed monks itching to carry out forbidden scientific experiments on young children, with atheistic university dons their only opposition. Really sounds like the planet Earth I live on.
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