2007 / 113 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

Adapting a book into a movie, I’d imagine, is a tricky business. Not as tricky as fighting sharks for a living or circumcising grizzly bears, but still relatively tricky. You have to take the best parts of a book and realize them on screen while sacrificing the things that only work in literary form (i.e. the thoughts and interior monologues of characters, philosophical musings, and things so expensive that showing them would cost more than the average American corporation makes in a year). It’s a precarious tightrope, and a lot of filmmakers that try to walk it inevitably fall to their doom. You have to win new fans to the film (because, let’s face it, only losers and gay people read) without alienating the the schmucks and fags that read the original book. You have to capture the scope and point of the novel, and put its most memorable bits up on the big screen, without getting bogged down in those little nuances and intricacies that make reading such a delight. If you can manage to bring those little intricacies up to the screen (like the makers of “High Fidelity”), hey, so much the better. But most filmmakers either don’t bother to try or fail miserably.

In case you hadn’t guessed, “The Golden Compass” was based on a book. A book that is, allegedly, for children. It’s published by Scholastic, for crying out loud. It’s got plenty of cute animals and witches and noble polar bears in it, so it HAS to be a kids’ book, right? Well…not really, no. The book also has an orphan learning that one or both of her parents may be evil and manipulative, a religious organization that does everything within its power to kill any opposing thought or viewpoint, plenty of killing, and a concentration camp full of children. Reading it as a twenty-seven year-old, I thought all of this kicked an extraordinary amount of ass. But would I read it to my kids? Well, maybe. But I’ll probably also let them watch the Rambo movies at the age of five.

Parents can breathe a sigh of relief, however. Aside from the sight of one polar bear gorily tearing off the jaw of another polar bear, there is very little in the film version of “The Golden Compass” that is going to offend or bother anyone. That should answer the question: is “The Golden Compass” a faithful adaptation of the novel with a resounding “Not Really”.

As a book, “The Golden Compass” was inspired by John Milton’s classic, unreadable epic poem “Paradise Lost”: a story about Satan trying to overthrow God (as are so many classic children’s books, including “Horton Hears a Who”). As a movie, “The Golden Compass” was inspired by Harry Potter and “Lord of the Rings” making a shitload of money. It’s even by the same company as “Lord of the Rings”. The movie has a great cast: Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliott, and, holy shit, Christopher Lee! It also boasts the voice talents of Ian McKellan, Ian McShane, Kathy Bates, Kristin Scott Thomas and Freddie Highmore. The CGI is pretty incredible and definitely cost a buck or two. The alternate dimension in which “The Golden Compass” takes place is rendered vividly and lovingly and the “daemons” (animal spirits representing the souls of the humans they slavishly follow around) and the afore-mentioned ass-kicking polar bears are brought to impeccable life. Many of the events of the novel survive the adaptation process in tact, as does a fair share of the subtext that made the book so interesting. Unfortunately, a lot of that subtext has become text. I suppose that’s understandable. What insinuates itself between the lines in a novel is just easier to spell out explicitly on screen.

But that’s part of the problem. Chris Weitz and his collaborators have brought along all the big set pieces of the novel and some of its charms, but it appears they’ve taken the easy road every time. Instead of letting the film flow and envelop us in its distinctive world, the movie lunges clunkily from one set piece to the next. The connective material is largely missing. In that manner, “The Golden Compass” reminded me of David Lynch’s “Dune”. Both are thematically exciting, vividly imagined novels that were turned into clunky but decent motion pictures. In “Dune” you still see the giant worms, but most of the religious and philosophical overtones are either glossed over or presented in scene after scene of clunky exposition. Replace “giant worms” with “animal daemons” or “warrior polar bears” and that sentence also applies to “The Golden Compass”. Also, in presenting the exposition upfront and matter-of-factly, the movie jettisons the air of mystery and discovery that makes the novel so wonderful. It also, unsurprisingly, jettisons many of the novel’s dark overtones. There are still some dark elements, but they’ve had their edges ground down. Certain revelations are the same in both movie and book, but they don’t sting on screen as they did on the page. And the filmmakers have completely botched the ending. Where the novel ended on a bold, unsettling note of uncertainty, violence and a promise of revenge the movie ends with a sleeping child musing that everything will probably turn out just fine.

But many of you are probably wondering: who cares, is the movie entertaining? And I guess the answer would be sure, it’s fun. The battle sequences are plenty cool (it’s a nice touch to see someone’s soul animal disintegrate when they die), the polar bears kick ass, and the film moves at a brisk pace. To someone who hasn’t read the book, some of the motivations and explanations may not be satisfactory (I found some of them pretty damned murky myself) but you probably won’t care once people start dying and gypsies start holding secret councils on how they’re going to stir shit up. That stuff is still pretty compelling. Enough of “The Golden Compass” survives from the page to the screen to make the movie entertaining. But the movie is harmless fluff compared to a book filled with dark subtext and palpable danger. I could have forgiven the movie if they hadn’t botched the ending. It wouldn’t have been great, but it would have been good enough. But, as is, the movie represents a missed opportunity: a great, stirring tale turned into a pretty good one. It’s a pleasant enough diversion but nothing more.

For those of us who’ve experienced Phillip Pullman’s literary trilogy in its pure form, however, that just ain’t good enough. I can’t believe that the Catholic Church would raise a fuss over a piece of fluff like this. But it does show that they, unlike the filmmakers, recognized the point of this story. The difference between the books of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and “The Golden Compass” lay in their tones and underlying philosophies. The difference between the movies of the two is that in one a girl rides a lion, in the other a girl rides a polar bear.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.