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Where quests begin and end

A timid screen version of a strong book
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
December 12th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
All dressed up and nowhere to go. Sir Ian McKellen gives voice to a bear in a film that completely lacks a voice.
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The Golden Compass

Directed by Chris Weitz
With Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards, Sam Elliott, Ian McKellen, Eva Green and Christopher Lee

The desperate race to duplicate the success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy has led studios and audiences into a number of blind alleys, Stardust and Eragon being the dankest. Disney, of course, hoped its Chronicles of Narnia was the answer (to both Rings and the evangelical need to counter the unsuccessfully banned-and-burned Harry Potter), and did well enough, even if its child actors were pasteboard dolls. But it was hardly adult fare.
New Line, the producers of Jackson’s epic, seemed to be on the verge of getting it right by turning to author Philip Pullman’s sophisticated adventure trilogy, His Dark Materials. Pullman’s phenomenally popular books are, like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and Jostein Gaarder’s ingenious Sophie’s World, works of literature aimed at older children and young adults that grown adults can also appreciate.
His Dark Materials is an epic quest like Tolkien’s collected tales, complete with the type of philosophical complexities found in Gaarder, and a young heroine, Lyra Belacqua, who is as attractive a figure as Rowling’s Harry. It’s also the anti-Narnia, as Pullman, a devout free thinker, gives a swift, correcting boot to C.S. Lewis’ cloying Christianity. What’s not to admire?
Unfortunately, much.
The film version of Pullman’s first volume, The Golden Compass (the book is known in the United Kingdom as Northern Lights) has much in its favor. It boasts a strong cast (including a few Rings alumni) and excellent design and computer-generated imagery. Yet the script is a mess, primarily as director/screenwriter Chris Weitz and the powers-that-be at New Line have shied away from much of Pullman’s philosophy, undoubtedly hoping to shepherd the flocks of the righteous toward the cinema and away from their book bonfires.
Pullman’s steampunk multiverse is all here, and the nefarious Magisterium (an admitted portrait of the Catholic Church) is still in control, though here the references to the Vatican have been carefully whitewashed, allowing for some palimpsesting.
In a parallel universe to our own (among myriad others), young Lyra races about Jordan College in Oxford with her friends and their daemons. Daemons are animal soul-creatures, something every human has. When young, daemons are shape-shifters. But, as they mature, each daemon decides on a fitting species to become for its human (owl, tigress, dog, praying mantis).
Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) and her daemon, Pantalaimon (the voice of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Freddie Highmore), play about with the local children connected to the college. They are mostly working class, while Lyra is a ward of her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig). While hiding in a cupboard (Lewis alert!), she sees a brother of the Magisterium poison her uncle’s wine. The Magisterium is unhappy with Lord Asriel’s prying into matters considered “unmagisterian,” particularly something called “dust,” which seems to emanate from other worlds — places where the church has no control.
After Lyra saves her uncle’s life, he embarks on a journey into an alternative Scandinavia to track down this dust, leaving Lyra in the hands of the college master.
Gliding into this scholar’s fairyland comes Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), a woman connected to the church who has a keen interest in Lyra. She coolly demands to take Lyra back with her to the parallel London. There Lyra learns that her new protector is in company with the Gobblers (people who kidnap children for some heinous experiment), and she and her daemon flee.
What follows is Lyra’s attempt to reach her uncle, who is, like anyone devoted to free will, in danger. Her adventures lead her into the company of Gyptians (motley nomads), witches (particularly their queen, played by Eva Green) and the king of the Ice Bears (voiced by Sir Ian McKellen).
Yet, as with the buried questioning of Christianity, Pullman’s characters are never fully revealed. Young Richards is quite good, and Kidman is superb as the cold-hearted Coulter. There are also fine turns from Sam Elliott as a rangy Texan aeronaut (along with his jackrabbit daemon voiced by Kathy Bates) and Tom Courtenay as a Gyptian.
Still, even these talented actors cannot fully flesh out the one-dimensional characters that Weitz has whittled down from Pullman’s.
Rather than fully bankrolling this trilogy, as they did with Jackson’s Rings, New Line decided to wait and see how The Golden Compass was received before continuing on. The quest, then, will probably end here. The Golden Compass, unfortunately, is the dull parallel universe to the book.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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