Northern Lights diminished

Among the usual collection of Christmas holiday season movies is The Golden Compass, the film of Philip Pullman's wonderful Northern Lights. I saw the film a few weeks ago with my stepdaughter and two daughters, between us ranging in age from 150 (me) to 24, 16 and 12. We all think we enjoyed it, but we aren't too sure - something of a curate's egg.

The younger generation all felt that you had to have read the book in order to understand the plot and hence enjoy the film. I wasn't so sure -- because for me the film was "good enough" (in the sense that the Harry Potter films are "good enough" renditions of the books though lacking a dimension or two), but it had two stand-out dreadful flaws. The first of these was a voice-over right at the start, which solemnly explains the entire plot in words of one syllable -- what Lord Asriel is doing in the North, the existence and meaning of dust (including detail from book 2) and all you ever could want to know about daemons. Hence, dramatic tension was ruined.

The second horror was that the film ended three-quarters of the way through the book, destroying the terrible balance of Lyra's two parental confrontations and hence the awful power of the story. One of the many reasons why Northern Lights is so thrilling is that Pullman is not afraid to go "all the way" with the evil parent motif -- not just with one parent but both. The author backs down somewhat, but not very far, in subsequent books (one reason why they are weaker); the fierce independence and strength of Lyra, such a fresh character in all of fiction, is severely undermined by this bizarre plot decision.

I can forgive the omission of Lord Asriel's dramatic slamming of the head on the table of the senior common room to the shock of the dons, and (apart from in a brief aside) the gliding over of Iorek Byrnison's true status. These, and other, simplifications weaken impact but don't detract from the power of the story. There were lots of very good things about the film, as described in two excellent reviews at Stephen Lang and at Material Witness. But I can't forgive the awful, unnecessary dumbing-down of the initial voiceover, and I was left high and dry by the decision to truncate the story before its end. It is as if Far From the Madding Crowd ended before Bathsheba finally reciprocates Gabriel Oak's devotion, or as if Othello ended at the death of Desdemona.

Comments

[Michael Walters]

Couldn't agree more, Maxine. I was terribly disappointed by the ending (as was, more to the point, my eight year-old son, who was utterly gripped by the books and had no difficulty in coping with their themes and ideas). I suppose we'll have to wait for the subsequent films to know for sure, but my impression was that they'd decided to turn Mrs Coulter into a relatively straightforward 'baddie' and Lord Asriel into an equivalent 'goodie', and so had to lose the ending. If so, it's a tremendous shame, because one of the most impressive things about the books is their willingness to engage with complexity - of character as well as of ideas.

[Maxine]

Well put, Michael. Our girls read these books when young, too, and had no problems following these outlines -- though some of the convolutions (in subsequent books) are fairly challenging -- and not just for them!

The film-makers did rather convert Lord A into "James Bond" for the movie, I felt (eg the prolonged fight sequence in the snow).

No doubt the two things I hated about the film were there for commercial, rather than artistic reasons. Which just goes to show....

[Susan Balée]

I didn't read the books, but did see the movie with my son. We liked the special effects but could tell we were missing a lot of material that must have been in the book -- to make more sense of the events that unfolded. It was not clear to me that Lord Asriel was Lyra's mother, but he certainly did come off as this good guy, dashing adventurer. The Nicole Kidman character seemed simply evil, though we never did figure out (in this movie) why she saved Lyra from the machine trying to separate her from her daemon.

Basically, I just thought stuff was missing that would be clarified in sequels, but would make sense to people who had read the books. I sure did love the armored bears, though -- great effects with them! And the magisterium people did strike both Mark and me as evil Catholic priest types, trying to oppress the world with their religion. Is that what is implied in the books?

[Susan Balée]

Lyra's *father* -- excuse me. Where is Dr. Freud when we need him?

[Maxine]

Yes, the Magesterium is evil in the books -- but the books aren't anti-religion (as many claim, probably those who haven't read the books), they are anti-oppression. The Magesterium uses religion as a tool to control people's minds and deeds. At the end of the saga, His Dark Materials turns out to be a highly spiritual trilogy, with a strong theme of redemption through sacrifice for a higher, but unknown, good.