The Golden Compass

Review By: Michael Dance
michaelmdance@gmail.com

I haven’t read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, of which The Golden Compass is the first book, although thanks to the recent controversy surrounding the film I know my fair share about it. Christian groups have accused Pullman’s saga of being anti-religious, and especially anti-Catholic, and have called for a boycott of the film.

New Line Cinema, fearful of the ramifications this will have on the box office, have pointed out for months that the film version of The Golden Compass doesn’t include any of the novel’s more explicit anti-religious sentiments. But that hasn’t been enough: the Catholic League, in their call for a boycott, says that “the film is bait for the books: unsuspecting parents who take their children to see the movie may be impelled to buy the three books as a Christmas present.”

Let’s get one thing straight: the movie was not made to “trick” anyone into buying the books and suddenly becoming an atheist. Like all movies, it was made to make money. New Line Cinema is a business, and they’re trying to turn His Dark Materials into the next Lord of the Rings - that’s their only motive.

Then again, let’s hold on a moment before we judge this as yet another case of crazy intolerant Christians overreacting. No matter how Pullman is trying to spin his story to help the release of the film, he has said, point-blank: “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.” And in the final book of his trilogy, The Amber Spyglass – spoiler alert – the main characters quite literally kill God, who is personified as a frail impostor who never actually created the world but had taken credit for it.

Pullman, obviously, can write whatever he wants, but Christians are fully entitled to complain about it just as much as atheists are entitled to complain about Christians. My own belief is that Pullman is too careless in condemning the beliefs themselves when his real target seems to be the institutions, but he also seems to be a good storyteller, and as I haven’t actually read the books, I’ll leave it at that.

Perhaps the reason I’m spending so much time on the controversy is that I find it more compelling than the film, which in and of itself is quite sanitary and uncontroversial. But if for some weird reason you came here to actually read a review, here it is. The Golden Compass is solid and professional entertainment, but it does feel very much like one-third of a story. This worked for The Fellowship of the Ring, of course, but The Golden Compass runs barely over an hour and a half, which makes it fairly hard for the film to muster up any kind of epic sweep.

We’re introduced to the world with a voice over that’s too brief to be helpful and thus is unnecessary ...