The Golden Compass
December 7, 2007
Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 113 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
It would appear that Hollywood is finally getting a clue about movies based on works of Fantasy. For decades the studio heads would never let directors run loose with a good fantasy for fear of sinking massive amounts of money on a big screen bomb. But thanks to the bravery of one studio (New Line) and the dedication of one man (Peter Jackson), that began to change. The monstrous success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has shown other studios that ‘high fantasy’ can be profitable even if you let loose of the purse strings a bit. Not all fantasy movies since LOTR have been successful, of course. Some have been downright awful, in point of fact. But, good or bad, most have been unfettered by paranoid bean counters.
The latest in the trend is The Golden Compass, a rather ambitious affair based on the literary works of Philip Pullman. On thing it immediately showed that it had going for it was a young lead actress that was NOT obnoxious or overly precocious. Newcomer Dakota Blue Richards does an exceptional job in the lead role of Lyra Belacqua, a young girl that becomes the focal point of a world-wide conflict in a universe that is similar to…but not quite like our own.
Imagine that things on earth progressed more or less the same up to the late 1800’s. But then, instead of an industrial revolution based on new technology, the newest advances were due to the harnessing of magic-like energies. “Primitive” cars and zeppelins roam the streets and skies of the cities while the elegant spires and ornate exteriors of the buildings make for a beautiful cityscape.
At the heart of the conflict is a mysterious device called a Golden Compass. There used to be several, but now there is only one. Young Lyra comes to be in possession of the device which is purported to be able to provide answers to any question posed to it. At roughly the same time, her uncle Asriel (Daniel Craig), a thorn in the side of the political leaders of the time, is captured and held prisoner in the far north. He believes that there are infinite parallel worlds to their own and they can be accessed via a special particle that is simply called ‘dust’. To the political establishment, however, these statements are pure heresy.
Lyra meets a beautiful but very cold woman named Marisa Coulter (Nicole Kidman) who, its later found, is working with the magistrate but who also has a secret much larger than that. Along the way, Lyra meets other groups and individuals, including Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott), a Texan who happens to own a powered airship and Iorek Byrnison, a HUGE but alcoholic polar bear who works as a blacksmith in exchange for liquor. Then there is Serafina Pekkala (Eva Green), one of hundreds of witches who enter the conflict and John Faa (Jim Carter), the king of the Gyptians.
Needless to say, this is some high adventure. But despite some good (and sometimes brilliant) performances and a very cohesive vision of the world of Pullman’s imagination, it has its flaws. The biggest one is perhaps the film maker’s willingness to gloss over some fairly important material from the book. It’s not a fatal flaw, but had there been much more of it, then parts of the movie would have been incomprehensible. As it is, I’m left with the very distinct feeling that I am unaware of some vital information that would have been present in the book.
But all-in-all, this is a very good film that deserves a look if you get a chance. If nothing else, you’ll need to see this one in order to know whats going on in the sequels. What? You didn’t actually think they’d have a nice, tidy ending with everything resolved, did you?
Seen it? How many stars do you give it?
(4 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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I really enjoyed this film, too. I have to agree with your assessment that the movie glosses over key parts of the book, however. Having read the His Dark Materials trilogy, I had the background to fill in the narrative gaps. The wrinkle, of course, is how to put it all in and not lose people over the films inevitable 3 hour running time.