Fine fantasy

>> The Golden Compass is a largely faithful
and captivating adaptation of Philip Pullman’s brilliant, heretical novel

by MARK SLUTSKY

I have to admit right off the bat that I feel a little possessive about Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and this colours the way I see The Golden Compass, Chris Weitz’s movie adaptation of the first book in the trilogy. I was knocked out by the series when I first read it a couple of years ago: how it wove strands of Milton, Blake and secular humanist philosophy with an utterly compelling and emotionally resonant fantasy story featuring flying airships, armoured polar bears, cowboys and witches.

It’s a great series that I would recommend without reservation. But could a movie adaptation do it justice? There’s certainly a lot that is cinematic about the books, but also a great deal that’s not: part of the books’ pleasure is the way Pullman gradually introduces you to his worlds, and how they’ve been conceived with a depth beyond the fantastical images.

The Golden Compass is set in a world that somewhat resembles our own, with some very big differences. There isn’t science per se, but a sort of scientifically rigorous system of magic. Every human has a “daemon,” an animal companion that functions as a sort of extension of the person’s mind, body and soul.

Though there are many groups and factions—those witches and bears being just two of them—the world’s greatest power is the Church, or, in the movie, the Magisterium. You see, Pullman is an avowed atheist, and the religious authorities are really kind of the bad guys of the series, a fact which has unnerved quite a few. Thus the language the movie uses to refer to them has been softened, though the film still has a pretty sharp heretical streak (can’t wait to see how Weitz plans on dealing with the last book in the series, which is amazingly, even shockingly antinomian).

Newcomer Dakota Blue Richards, who’s a perfect fit for the role, plays the film’s heroine, Lyra Belacqua, an orphaned scamp who lives in Oxford University’s (fictional) Jordan College. When a sinister lady named Miss Coulter (a glitteringly evil Nicole Kidman) takes her away, a rich and complicated adventure to the north, involving a magic divining device called an alethiometer—or golden compass—begins.

The movie looks amazing. Weitz and his crew have clearly taken great care with the visuals, from the sumptuous art deco-inspired interiors to the gorgeously bleak Arctic vistas that frame the movie’s second half. And for the most part, it feels like an honest and faithful interpretation of the book. But some things niggled at me a bit; even though the daemons speak in the book, it didn’t quite work to see them talking here. Cute talking live-action animals in movies are always going to be a hard sell for me, I think. There are also some ideas that Pullman conveys with a beautiful subtlety that Weitz hands over much more blatantly, which the nature of an under-two-hour movie demands. You can’t quite blame him for it, but some things get lost in the transition.

I have some misgivings, but I think The Golden Compass is pretty much the best you could hope for in an adaptation of this particular novel. I don’t think it quite touches the book’s excellence, but as one man’s take on the source material, it’s a captivating journey.

The Golden Compass
opens this Friday, Dec. 7

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