Dec. 04, 2007 - Issue #633: New Music Model

Golden Compass trades Catholic criticism for CGI

There are several rich pagan-referencing opportunities buried within Chris Weitz’s screen adaptation of The Golden Compass, one example being a polar bear whose loss of identity and alcoholism is attributed to a stolen suit of sky iron armour. His speech to the young heroine Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) addresses several times the vacant state of his “soul,“ and with that his ability to battle the other bears. And this really pisses him off, so he stays drunk all the time in an alley while humans work him to death. It’s a unique melodramatic play between the Apollo-Dionysus model (take a second, google it), enough to make Camille Paglia squeal her knickers off.

But the cantankerous polar bear situation hardly delivers on what’s steaming under the surface of a cavalcade of ordinarily treated fantastical events. The Golden Compass is apparently quite overcautious of its ideological power, keeping at bay the controversial religious criticism of Philip Pullman’s original novel.

Lyra Belacqua is a wide-eyed brown-haired moppet, orphaned and taking refuge amongst stern scholars at Oxford’s Jordan college. A brief visit by Lord Asriel (a bearded Daniel Craig) to the college investigating a substance called “dust” kicks Lyra’s curiosity into gear, then she vacates the school upon the invitation of the mysterious glamazon Mrs Coulter (Nicole Kidman) to pursue an investigation into a child-nabbing laboratory in the cold North. On the way, Lyra meets a bundle of characters prepared to assist her on her journey: Iorek the polar bear (voiced by Ian McKellan), Seraphina Pekkala, the queen of a band of witches (Casino Royale’s Eva Green) and gun-toting traveller Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott).

Lyra, armed with the golden compass in question, otherwise known as the Alethiometer, can use the tool to discover the truth of anything it is asked. One of her biggest concerns is the subject of daemons, frightening little creatures, some with the ability to shape-shift, that accompany human subjects like secondary identities. In a nutshell, a lot of shit goes down in The Golden Compass, and very little gets explained to audiences unfamiliar with the book. And surprisingly, that’s fine, as the fictional wonderland is alluring in its unfettering mystery and senselessness. But the square peg in question is whether the film shies away from precisely what has everybody up in a tizzy over the novel at present, the anti-Catholic subtext that makes its Christian metaphor appear as an oppressive institution.

Despite a few Da Vinci Code moments between some of the Jordan College bigwigs (including an assassination attempt on free-thinker Lord Asriel), The Golden Compass nonetheless occupies itself with Lyra’s big adventure, and therefore all the CGI effects that go with it. The scene of drunken Iorek’s internal struggle is a double-take moment; just when you thought the film was talking animals and snowstorm battles, a cartoon bear reveals what appears like a soul. Not to mention the sensuous vamp characters played by Kidman and Green, whom the script passes over as though their alluring old Hollywood femininity had nothing to do with debunking the myth of Christianity. V

 

Opens Fri, Dec 7
The Golden Compass
Written & Directed by Chris Weitz
Based on the novel by Philip Pullman
Starring Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig

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