Film - General Release
reviewed by By Mary Hoffman
(WARNING - contains SPOILERS for film and books)
Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Susan Cooper and now Philip Pullman. There is always a danger when children's books much loved by thousands if not millions are turned into films. Existing fans even if overwhelmed by the marvels of 21st century CGI feel a pang every time the screenplay departs from a text they are certain to have read more than once. But the newcomer, tempted along by the hype and the books' reputation, without ever having tangled with the actual printed version, needs a coherent and gripping story that will fit into a couple of hours.
The basic plot used is that Lyra Belacqua, an orphan placed in the care of Jordan College Oxford by her uncle Lord Asriel, must find her missing friend Roger, the kitchen boy, who has been kidnapped by Gobblers. For this is not Oxford as we know it, but one in a parallel universe, where all people have their own personal daemons, animal manifestations of their inner core.
The wicked and beautiful Mrs Coulter is co-ordinating the capture of pre-pubertal children, to take them to an experimental unit in Bolvangar in the icy Northern wastes, to separate them from their daemons.
There is much to admire in Chris Weitz's adaptation of Northern Lights into the all-star movie of The Golden Compass. First and most important is the casting director's great good fortune that Dakota Blue Richards showed up for the audition. If only the Harry Potter films had shared in his luck! Dakota Blue (DB from now on) is not quite how I had imagined Lyra to look but she is a natural, who can actually act.
Some reviewers have sneered at her accent - which was far less Estuary than their dire warnings had led me to believe - but DB's voice is infinitely preferable to some stage school ingenue's idea of RP. And she IS Lyra - totally believable as the "coarse and greedy little savage" of the book's early chapters, who becomes the Child of Prophecy and the heroine of the whole saga.
So it is possible to get genuinely good child actors, as Charlie Rowe's composite character of Billy Costa, the Gyptian boy, also proves, though sadly with Bert Walker's Roger, we are back with mediocrity. Nicole Kidman is perfect casting - even if you loathe her - as Mrs Coulter, who is another in the line of the Snow Queen, Lewis's White Witch and Miss Slighcarp from The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.
Not so Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel. Where is the sense of power and danger? He seems a mere cipher in this film and either a lot has ended up on the cutting room floor or they are saving a lot for the by no means certain to be made films two and three.
But back to the good bits. Eva Green is a wonderful Serafina Pekkala, the Finnish witch who floats down from the sky whether on to a boat deck or the field of battle (firing arrows as she flies, in that case). And the wonderful Jim Carter proves himself just as at home as John Faa, "king" of the Gyptians as he did as Captain Brown in TV's Cranford, a world away from the all-action interpretation of Pullman's novel.
Lee Scoresby is beautifully played by Sam Elliott and it is entirely my fault that male Texan accents now make me nervous and fearful of stupidity and perfidy (well, not entirely my fault).
And the bears - ah, yes, the bears! As important as a good Lyra, the armoured bears and especially Iorek Byrnison are perfection. Having Ian McKellen do a Gandalf as the voice of Iorek is just the royal icing on the gorgeous confection that is the CGI panzerbjùrn. (I think it's just about OK to make him roar like a lion even though polar bears don't - perhaps panzerbjùrne do.)
The film doesn't answer the question of how come, after years of booze-sodden semi-slavery in Trollesund, Iorek is able to defeat King Ragnar (which is what the film calls Iofur Raknison), who is bigger and better armed, but I missed most of the actual fight because of being too squeamish to watch even a special effects bear being bloodily killed.
But reason doesn't come into the film much; it is too concerned with exciting action sequences and morally unequivocal characters so that the viewer is aware who is good (Lyra, Iorek, Scoresby, Serafina etc.) and who bad (Mrs Coulter, Tartars, Samoyeds and anyone from the Magisterium).
Another powerful scene , which I DID watch, because I knew how it would end, is the near-severing of Lyra from her daemon in the dreadful "intercision" machine at Bolvangar. This is sheer agony to watch, as DB and the special effects people show how intolerable is it for a human child in Pullman's universe to be separated from its daemon.
The daemons are a mixed blessing; they work so much better on the page than on the screen. The problem is not with their realisation, which is convincing enough, especially with birds and larger mammals. All credit to DB again that she interacts so well with what on set was simply a "sort of green beanbag kind of thing" as I heard her say on Radio 4's Go for It. (Though there is a danger of their appearing like lovable Disney creatures rather than a combination of soul and conscience).
No, the problem is in the crowd scenes, where lots of animals are milling around and you gradually realise they are ALL someone's daemons! Are there no ordinary dogs in Trollesund? And are all the Tartar and Samoyed slavering hounds, just the guards' and soldiers' daemons?
Another problem is that the children's daemons change shape until their humans reach puberty when they settle down to one chosen form. It's a good idea in the book - though it does rather give you a clue to a person's character if their daemon is a poisonous snake, for example. In the film these changes just make for further confusion and I think this nuance could have been sacrificed for the sake of clarity.
And clarity is sadly lacking. The Magisterium is part of the problem. No longer linked to the Church, as in the books, its emissaries and officials are just cardboard da Vinci Code villains in ecclesiastical robes, led by Christopher Lee and Derek Jacobi so clearly a Bad Thing. The film even makes it Fra Pavel, rather than the Master who tries to poison Lord Asriel at the beginning of the movie.
All the stuff about Dust is completely puzzling, but I admit to having found it so in the books. I kept feeling that I would "get it" at any moment but didn't. Perhaps Pullman's The Book of Dust will make all clear? But how a non-reading viewer could make anything of these golden particles that Lord Asriel has photographed leaching from another world into ours through a man's daemon (through a child in the book), is just another mystery.
Even the "Alethiometer", the "Golden Compass" of the title, is mystifying in this version. Lyra says she doesn't know how to use it, but the minute she is told it has three controls, suddenly she does! Without benefit of a manual, she knows that "snake means cunning, a pot can mean a plan and a baby means children" or some such and that means she can ask the alethiometer where the stolen children are - and understand the reply.
Philip Pullman claims to like the film. "The studio... has done a fine job," he said in the Sunday Times on December 2nd, even though it had been comprehensively trashed by the sister paper's reviewer, James Christopher - "Weitz's spectacular shambles" (Times November 28th).
I think that those who don't think it works possibly share my qualms about the over-egging of this pudding. Is it really necessary to use big stars like Kristin Scott-Thomas, Ian McShane and Kathy Bates just to provide voices for daemons and animals? (Asriel's snow leopard Stelmaria, King Ragnar and Hester, Lee Scoresby's hare respectively). The presumably very expensive Daniel Craig is wasted as Asriel, as is Tom Courtenay in the much diminished role of Farder Coram.
Much has been said about the film's cost - £76m - and how it must make that back with knobs on at the box office to ensure that the two further films are made. But fans are more bothered by the changes made to the book to ensure that this mysterious alchemy takes place. "What is the meaning of this movie?" asks one plaintively on an SF and Fantasy fansite.
And this is particularly relevant to how the film finishes. The action stops three chapters before the end of the book and one can understand why; the wilful killing of Roger by Lord Asriel would have ended it on too much of a downer. But doesn't this just create another problem if the other books are made into films? The Amber Spyglass hardly ends happily for Lyra.
One of my companions referred to a cartoon he had seen after the film of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was released. Two punters were leaving the cinema. One is saying "It works better if you know the book" and the other is saying "It works better if you don't know the book."
That just about sums up the dilemma of The Golden Compass; in trying to please both groups, it might satisfy neither.