Review: The Golden Compass

by Geoff Ryan

I

watched The Golden Compass the other night accompanied by my younger brother and two friends. All three of these other guys were, or had been in their youth, avid readers of fantasy novels. One had read all three books in Philip Pullman’s trilogy, of which The Golden Compass is the first. They are also Christians: one a minister in training and one a youth pastor, both evangelicals. My brother is an occasional Anglican.

Afterward, the consensus among the four of us was that overall, the film was rather tedious (I fell asleep at one point) and ended in such an obvious set-up for the sequel that we felt a bit like marketing victims. The special effects were seamlessly brilliant. However since the advent of computer animation magic, such has become so commonplace, even in relatively low-budget productions, that it is now taken for granted. No big deal. The acting was OK. Daniel Craig makes a couple of cameo appearances but otherwise didn’t really come out to play much, presumably saving himself for the next two installments. Nicole Kidman is an alluring blend of seductive menace and heartbreaking beauty, but is impossibly tall and thin in comparison to everyone else (this was the best special effect of the whole film, in my opinion). The newly-discovered-child-actress, Dakota Blue Richards, is the type of child actress who is so obviously comfortable performing that you wonder if she was born naturally like the rest of us or simply created in some Hollywood laboratory.

The opening of the film is boring. There was a lot of voice-over talking, in order to get the audience up to speed on Pullman’s alternative universe and his fairly convoluted plot. As my assignment was to view the film and ascertain how dangerous it would be if viewed by young people, young Christians specifically, I kept trying to imagine my two youngest children, nine and eleven years of age, watching it with me. They would have been bored silly by the opening. Not a good start.

Much has been made of the fact that the British author of the Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman, is an avowed atheist and supposedly wrote his books as a godless alternative to C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. He once described his own books as Narnia’s moral opposite. If you have caught any of the numerous interviews and sound bites that the 61-year-old, former school teacher has given, then it quickly becomes apparent that the man has issues, both with organized religion and with God.

Whether or not Pullman’s personal views and idiosyncrasies have been inculcated in his novels is not in doubt. I have been told by a number of people who have read them that his theology, or lack thereof, is fairly explicitly laid out in the books.

However, whether or not these ideas have made the leap from the printed page to the silver screen is another matter. After having watched the film, I would say that no one need worry unduly on this point thanks to Hollywood, the great leveler.

The hungering materialism and cynical consumerism of the entertainment industry effectively ensures that any truly edgy idea or aberrant theology will be pasteurized and homogenized long before it is offered up on the altar of public consumption. The December 2007 issue of The Atlantic Monthly ran an interesting article on The Golden Compass by Hanna Rosin entitled: “How Hollywood Saved God”. Here is an excerpt:

Given enough time and effort, Hollywood can tweak and polish and recast even the darkest message until it would seem at home in a Fourth of July parade. In the end the religious meaning of the book was obscured so thoroughly as to be essentially indecipherable. The studio settled on villains that, as Emmerich put it, “feel vaguely kind of like a fascistic, totalitarian dictatorship, Russian/KGB/SS” stew. The movie’s main theme became, in one producer’s summary, “One small child can save the world.” With $180 million at stake, the studio opted to kidnap the book’s body and leave behind its’ soul.

In a nutshell, that’s pretty much the conclusion I came to.

At the end of the day The Golden Compass, both book and film, are stories. They are allegories, metaphors, fables. As such, they can be taken for virtually anything and have almost any meaning and intent grafted onto them or read into them or expounded out of them. In some ways it is as much up to the reader or viewer as it is the writer. And as dependent upon their worldview. That’s the beauty, and some would say therein lies the danger, of any story.

As an example, when the Wachowski brothers’ film The Matrix (another sci-fi fantasy production) came out in theatres in 1999, the evangelical community fell all over themselves to use it. Evangelical youth pastors the world over preached to gatherings of young people off the back of it, showing clips and drawing analogies. I heard no outcry from anyone in the evangelical community about The Matrix, though its theology is at best a beautifully-confused smorgasbord of religious ideas, philosophical musings and ideological silliness. If in fact, any dominant religious concept can be positively identified in it, then the best bet is probably Gnosticism. This heresy greatly exorcised the early Church Fathers and is hardly the stuff that good Christians, of whatever stripe, should be spinning.

The point is that more often than not, stories can be used to mean pretty what we want them to mean, depending upon our worldview. Read a couple of Jesus’ ambiguous parables over again, if you have any doubts. I am fairly certain that neither my two younger children nor my teenage son, would necessarily, or inevitably, descend into the pit of unbelief or even probably give a passing thought to God or the church, if they watched The Golden Compass. The only reason I would not permit my nine-year-old daughter to watch it is because of a couple of incidents that are a tad too violent for her to take in. This is the same reason that I did not allow her, or her slightly older brother, to watch any of the Lord of Rings trilogy. I deemed the films too dark and violent for them at their respective ages - even for a “Christian” film.

When the Christian community reacts to such events as the release of a film with a supposedly an anti-God bias, I think that for the most part, we act beneath ourselves, draw undue attention to it and simply prolong its shelf life. Pullman is riding on the latest wave of vocal atheism: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens for the adults, Pullman for the children. To accept the gauntlet these guys have thrown down or thrown our way is, frankly, poor tactics.

Sam Harris kicked things off with his book, The End of Faith (2004), then came Richard Dawkins with The God Delusion (2006) followed by Christopher Hitchens this year with God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. But that’s about it. The anti-God assault peaked this past spring; the writers had had their 15 minutes of fame as predicted by Andy Warhol and are already running out of steam as people lose interest. Generally speaking, the public’s attention span is roughly that of a goldfish. Further, as Hitchens and Dawkins are both English, eccentricity and iconoclastic behaviour is somewhat allowed of them (“…mad dogs and Englishmen…” and all that) and so North Americans generally just shrug and look away.

Hitchens has long been one of my literary heroes. I dedicated one of my books to him and in the past have heard him lecture. His dialectical approach to reasoning initially captivated me. He is unarguably brilliant, super-articulate and devastating in his cold and clear logic. But he is now becoming tiresome. He is like the uncle whom no one is really quite sure how he’s related to the family, yet who shows up at all the family gatherings, only to sit in the corner with a drink, muttering imprecations to himself all evening and barking at anyone who comes near. As a social commentator Hitchens has become like a T-shirt I once saw: “Don’t discriminate - hate everybody”. He has crossed the line from grumpy curmudgeon to simply nasty; his unrelenting negativism wears on the nerves. His latest foray into attack atheism seems little more than an extended tour to sell books and if he is an example of what we can all be like without God, well…who would want to be like that?

Dawkins is apparently a brilliant scientist, but he fails to apply even the most rudimentary disciplines of his profession when he starts to talk theology. What he would never get away with in the laboratory or lecturing at university, he is granted permission to spout when discoursing on matters of religion, faith and God. He is indulged because he is such a good writer and an entertaining speaker. He is a great storyteller, in fact. He is so entertaining that when he flew into Toronto last spring to give a lecture, during the question and answer period after the lecture, he inadvertently let slip that he believed in aliens (from outer space, that is). Hmmm…God can’t exist and religion is a human construct of fantastical proportions… but the little green men from Mars are OK? Thanks Richard, we’ll get back to you.

Sam Harris? Well, he’s an American. Now, while I’m a bit of a sucker for lost causes, anyone who attempts not to believe in God in present-day America is, well, more filled with faith than I will ever be. After the splash he made with the publication of The End of Faith, he followed up with Letters to a Christian Nation in 2006, which made a much smaller splash and, basically, he hasn’t been heard from since. As I am a fan of Cervante’s Don Quixote, there is something I almost admire in Harris’ quixotian quest in the midst of the American Empire, but I fear that he has already exited stage right.

As for Pullman, are those of us who are the Church, really going to get all of our collective noses out of joint over his books (read by a small, but committed, group of fantasy buffs) and the movies based on his books (watched by a small, but equally committed group of fantasy buffs)? Is it worth the bother?

One of my favourite stories of the interaction between faith and culture took place in Toronto back in the spring of 2005. Cardinal Ratzinger had just been elected Pope Benedict XVI. The Canadian press made much of the fact that apparently in Benedict’s youth he was somehow linked to a Nazi youth movement in Germany, though it eventually turned out to mean nothing at all – kind of like all Soviet youth were Young Communists, all Americans from Alabama vote Republican, all inner-city kids play basketball. It was that sort of thing. At any rate, one reporter, trying to stir up some controversy, thrust his microphone at the then Roman Catholic Archbishop of Toronto, Aloysius Ambrozic, and informed him that the press (ergo the public, society, culture, the country, the world, the universe) was quite concerned about this revelation and so what did the Church have to say in its defense? Ambrozic simply looked at the reporter and replied: “We don’t care what you people think”. This was the church is all its glory, I reckon. Having withstood almost everything that anyone could throw at us for the last 2,000 years and realizing that indeed, Jesus’ promise that not even the gates of Hell would prevail against us, Ambrozic dismissed this reporter with the curt disdain that he deserved, like one would distractedly flick away a mosquito.

My suggestion is that we all take the same approach to Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens and Pullman. As for The Golden Compass and its impending sequels. Watch them if you really want. I think you might be more bored, than offended. Otherwise ignore them. They’ll go away. I almost guarantee it.

 

Writer: Major Geoff Ryan is co-founder and publisher of theRubicon and co-ordinator of the 614 Network. Geoff and his wife Sandra minister in Regent Park, a social housing project in downtown Toronto, Canada.

11 Comments to Review: The Golden Compass

1. Great stuff, Geoff. Incisive, clever and helpful. You continue to challenge, contradict, confirm and converse.

   Write on!

   Richard Munn
Richard Munn on December 18th, 2007

2. Geoff, thank u 4 this review. it was totally useful. take care, major.
Slava Zaytsev on December 18th, 2007

3. Thanks for the review Geoff! Whilst Pullman might not be the writer we want our children to read, it amazes me that some wings of the church go up in arms over the media portrayal of our faith whilst ignoring the millions who die due to the excesses of our wealthy western nations. A sign of the times perhaps!
Graeme Smith on December 18th, 2007

4. Great review, Geoff.

   Having seen the movie myself just the other night, I concur that, except for a few redeeming scenes, the movie was just plain… blah. Special effects, as you mention, were spot on, but we’ve come to expect nothing less nowadays.

   I do take offense at certain parts of the movie.

   And I do think that, in the marketplace of worldviews, the truly Christian one WILL have something substantive to say in response to Pullman’s anti-God ontology. No offense meant, Graeme, but to really do that, I don’t think we have to pit caring for the needy and responsible consumerism against a stance of truth in the face of competing ideologies. in the fight against injustice, the two can and should be edges of the same sword.
Phil Laeger on December 19th, 2007

5. Phil,

   Which parts of the movie did you take offence at?

   Geoff
Geoff Ryan on December 19th, 2007

6. No offence taken Phil, however my point is really that people get up in arms over this sort of thing but not against the injustices of the world, and of course vice versa! As you rightfully said the two actually need to be edges of the same sword! This is why I struggle with the focuses of both the fundamental and liberal sides. Somewhere in the middle is the true face of Christianity, standing up for the truth whilst fighting for justice. Historically, we in the Army have been good at doing that and its something that we need to reclaim as individual parts of this movement!
Graeme Smith on December 19th, 2007

7. Fascinating review: it’s insightful to argue that this film is, at the end of the day, insignificant. No need to be troubled by it or Pullman’s influence.

   Is the church in all its glory really summed up by a Cardinal’s flair for disdainful repartee? Better that the church, when assaulted by cold contempt for the gospel, speaks of its adversaries with kindness. That would reveal genuine security. Oneupmanship is not the way of Jesus: atheists and journalists are not mosquitoes to be flicked away, but people to be loved.
Matt Clifton on December 20th, 2007

8. I took my kids. I fell asleep. I missed most of it although I did notice how beautiful Nicole Kidman is, despite being the story’s wicked witch. My 11 year old daughter’s perspective was that it was kind of boring. She prefers Harry Potter. But my 8 year old son’s perspective was that it was “cool” and that there is nothing more interesting than “giant fighting and talking polar bears.”

   Irrelevant? Not if you need a night out with your kids.
John Norton (Canada) on December 20th, 2007

9. Matt,

   Point taken about graciousness toward our enemies. I guess I was using the story of the Archbishop and the journalist more as an allegory of the interaction between church and culture, rather than any statement on the particular individuals involved - kind of like a parable. They were used in my review as “types”, rather than as potential evangelizing targets.

   To my mind, evangelicals (of which TSA are charter members) seem to swing between either overt attempts to be relevant to culure or the opposite extreme of counter-cultural shunning. Lately, its been more of the former.

   My point about the-church-in-all-its-glory was admittedly a little overstated - I just admire it when The Church is transcendant and not so dependent, on zeitgeist. In this incident, the journalist represented to me the ephermal voice of popular culture. He was the voice of The World in fact (a term I try to avoid using but which is apropos in this instance).

   Geoff
Geoff Ryan on December 20th, 2007

10. Thanks for the clarification, Graeme. Agreed.

    Geoff, I guess “offended” may not be the right word. I was concerned about a couple of things. For instance, the use of the word “daemon” to refer to the characters’ external animal-souls. To those that haven’t read the books, and to those unfamiliar with this use of the word - which I would assume to be the majority of moviegoers, especially kids - this could be confusing. Knowing Pullman’s views, it’s easy to think it’s probably deliberate. Does that make any sense or do you think I’m being silly?

    The other thing I was concerned about, as you already mentioned, was the level of violence in the movie that I would not feel appropriate for my kids to watch.

    There was one scene I really liked, when the underdog armored polar bear fights the polar bear king. Outside of that one moment, I felt that the movie was all brain and no soul. It did not inspire me or stir me to be a better Christian (or even just a better person), something that nearly always happens for me after watching Narnia or Lord of the Rings… or any Pixar movie for that matter.
Phil Laeger on December 21st, 2007

11. Forgive me if this is off the main topic…

    You mentioned Dawkins being taken seriously due to his entertainment abilities as opposed to his analytical assessment of religious matters. A research paper in the Journal of Medical Education from 1973 addresses some similar factors in relation to lecturers. It is well worth the read:

    http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/r30034/PSY4180/Pages/Naftulin.html

    grace,

    John
John Clifton on December 21st, 2007

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