The Golden Compass
Well I’m back and a happy new year to you all. I’m going to throw some brief thoughts at you concerning my final cinema visit of the year, ‘The Golden Compass’ and then I’ll get busy writing up my exploits in Stockholm and Estonia – two quite different travel experiences.
As you may have gleaned, I always enjoy visiting the cinema in foreign climes if only to get to see some amusing adverts and trailers – my cinema experiences in Japan were particularly baffling and amusing in comparison to the usual car and mobile phone adverts you get in the UK. In Sweden there is a similar set-up to Japan with trailers for domestic films that commonly wouldn’t get a release in foreign markets followed by the main feature being projected in English with the subtitles of the host country. Unlike Japan the patrons in Sweden were a reasonably rowdy lot, content to talk (albeit quietly) through some of the slower parts of the film whilst consuming a seemingly inexhaustible supply of popcorn and sweets – not ideal.
Anyway, I digress – ‘The Golden Compass‘ centres around Lyra, a spirited young orphan girl in a magical parallel earth where all the human beings have daemons, shape shifting animal familiars that settle into one final form of animal as the child reaches adulthood. This alternative fantasy world is ruled by the Magisterium, a ruthless religious cabal who tolerate no dissention from their beliefs and ideals. As the film opens in an alternative Oxford Lyra overhears a plot to poison her guardian Lord Asriel who is mounting an expedition to the north pole to investigate ‘dust’, a mysterious entity that challenges the Magisterium’s claims for there being only one world, one god and one true faith….
For the first twenty minutes or so I was impressed. They have nicely captured the feel and look of para-Oxford and most importantly got the Daemon’s perfect which really is essential for the films success. Dakota Richards is well cast as the headstrong and mischievous Lyra, Daniel Craig is solid enough as Lord Asriel and Nicole Kidman is appropriately menacing as the mysterious Mrs. Coulter. However the optimism does not last – as Lyra begins her journey we are presented with a succession of important characters without any context of who they are, where they’re from, or why they are important to Lyra and her quest. The film begins to feel rushed, with scene after scene successively failing to capture the imagination or drive the story coherently on to it’s climax.
I was less concerned about the ejection of the religious overtones of the novel as I was about the subtexts of growing up, losing your innocence and realising your parents are fallible – the whole Daemon concept is Pullman’s ingenious metaphor to explore these themes and this is what I think in the final analysis made the novels so popular. It’s all gone in the movie I’m afraid, there is absolutely no sense of the connection between Lyra and Pan, no scenes where she confesses her excitement, her fear at the journey she is on and as such later on when the threats become very real and dangerous to both her and her companion you simply don’t care.
This all culminates in two dreadful CGI sequences with the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison fighting to reclaim his kingdom and a final battle which has absolutely no soul, no sense of dimension, location or suspense whatsoever – quite honestly it was a relief when it finished. Just goes to show what happens when you award a dense fantasy project to a director with two comedies under his belt – a regrettable mess which really does no service to the source novels.
So, for the sense of completion and my mild OCD, this takes my final total to 41 for 2007 as I neglected to include ‘Oceans 13’ and ‘Zodiac’ in my final count as they were buried away as passing comments in another post. I’m glad I broke the ’40’ mark but this does pose quite a challenge to beat for 2008. I think I’ll kick off the year with either ‘I Am Legend‘ or Ang Lee’s ‘Lust, Caution‘. Lee is one of the most versatile and intriguing directors working at the moment who seems to effortlessly tackle intricate stories in every genre he turns his hand to, the film went down a storm at Canne last year so it seems like a good start…
Minty's Menagerie 
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