The Golden Compass C-

In Theatres, 113 Minutes, PG-13. Trailer.

The Golden Compass is a muddled, star-fueled mess. Ostensibly a family fantasy film along the lines of Harry Potter, writer/director Chris Weitz (About a Boy) adapts source material from the first book of Philip Pullman’s children’s trilogy known collectively as “His Dark Material.” Evangelical Christian and Catholic groups have been blasting this film from its inception as atheism for kids. Unfortunately for both the fans of the source material and those that love to loathe it, Weitz tries to please everyone and ends up with a mish-mash of visuals from the Potter, Narnia, and Lord of the Rings series and no coherent story. Click below for the rest of the review.

Here’s the deal, in a parallel universe, souls (called daemons, pronounced “demons”) exist outside their humans in the form of animals—a visual treat, actually. When children are young, their daemons change shape ceaselessly, but about puberty their daemons solidify into the animal form they will retain permanently. The story centers around Lyra Belacqua, an orphaned ten-year-old left at Oxford to be raised by scholars (or something like that. The film is embarrassingly vague about who is actually caring for the girl). Lyra is played by a luminous Dakota Blue Richards, the high-point of the film and a real acting find. The scholars of Oxford, lead by Lyra’a uncle Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) are in a row with The Magisterium (bad guys) about freedom of thought and something called “Dust” which seems to be part of the creative process and descends on children when they enter puberty, wreaking havoc (although what dust is and how it’s good/bad is never really explored). Enter a stunning (and recently collagen-injected) Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter to rescue Lyra from her humdrum existence and take her north to see the armored ice bears. Alas, Marisa is a Magisterium leader in charge of a secret organization that kidnaps certain children and separates them from their daemons. Once Marisa has Lyra in her grasp, her evil nature shows itself and Lyra escapes, heading off to find her kidnapped friends.

Let it suffice to say that there are giant talking, fighting bears, flying purple and gold zeppelins, and other stunning visuals. Oh, and there’s a golden compass from which trained individuals can derive absolute truth. Lyra acquires this compass, and, because she’s the “prophesied about” one, she can read it without training. In some ways this feels like the first of the Harry Potter movies in which the director was scared to cut anything out of the book and ended up with a series of small conflicts, but no major plot thrust. Lyra here runs from mini-adventure to mini-adventure, but nothing holds them together but endless talk about dust and the Magisterium. The supporting players here are stellar. Beyond Kidman and Craig, Eva Green (Casino Royale), Sam Elliott, and Christopher Lee all have traditional role, with Kathy Bates, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Ian McCellen all adding voice work. They do the best they can with horrible, stilted dialogue, but the characters are all one-dimensional—completely good or completely evil—with either no recognizable faults or no redeeming qualities. The problem, I presume, is that these books (which I admit I haven’t read) are allegories, and allegories tend to paint things with a fairly broad brush so that the reader/watcher can pick up on the parallels to real life. But, as mentioned above, the original allegory for these stories in which the Magesterium=the church was considered too controversial for a $150 million film. So, they watered it down. I’m sure the dust symbolized something and the daemon-removal surgery did as well. Unfortunately, the plot and symbolism is now too vague to be interesting as allegory even as the characters are too one-dimensional to be interesting as people. I was actually quite disappointed. Considering the uproar around this film, I assumed the original book had some teeth to it. Alas, the film does not. C-

A word to concerned parents: Your kid will not figure out the “hidden” meaning in this first film. Once you (as an adult) know that the Magisterium symbolizes the church, you may be upset about what the film is actually implying (the Catholic Church have every right to call “foul” on this book. They are portrayed in the most unsympathetic way imaginable), but you’re kids won’t catch it. What they will note, however, is that words and beings that are almost always negative (demons being the most obvious example) are here recast as positive things that help people along. If you’re not a Christian, I don’t know why this film would be particularly bothersome. If you are, I think you’d be nuts to take your child to see it. The stories we choose to tell our kids do, after all, matter

Theological note: This film doesn’t even work as good atheism. One of the primary differences between a theistic worldview and an atheistic one is that theists believe that history and human existence is going some place (a telos) and that place is determined by God. Any atheist worth his salt doesn’t buy that for a second. The universe is random and natural selection, here on earth, is what moves things forward. So, any reasonable narrative of atheism can’t include prophesies or children who have special roles to play or anything like that. There is no prophecy where there is nothing that exists outside of a created order that could look into that order to see the future. There is no “role” anyone is suppose to play because there is no “supposed to.” All Pullman and Weisz do is set-up a different telos and take potshots at the Church. That’s not even bad atheism.