Review: The Golden Compass
Dec. 17th, 2007 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjI have a general principle that, if a new f/sf movie starts popping up on the radar and I have any interest in seeing it, and if I haven't already read the text it's based on, I'll wait to read the text until after seeing the movie. As a general rule, it's a lot easier to forget about the contents of a movie when reading an associated book than to forget about the contents of a book when viewing an associated movie. And both from a critical and an experiential point of view, it's fun to see a movie without having the built-in expectations of knowing the book.
I suspect one of the reasons I hadn't gotten around to reading Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy yet is my general aversion to starting on in-process series (and the difficulty, especially in the context of young-adult series, of knowing when the series has stopped being in-process). At any rate, I had the opportunity to see The Golden Compass without benefit of knowing any more about it than what popped up in the generall pre-movie buzz ... oh, and a review article in an SF Bulletin that may have given me a smidge of an edge on some of the metaphysics, if I could have remembered any of the details. So last night when I went off to see it in company with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scotica and klwilliams, I had the dubious benefit of a semi-naive view of the story.
The movie is visually glorious, like so many f/sf flicks in these post-CGI days. The underlying premise (although only barely touched on in the screen story) of intertwined parallel worlds gave a believable validity to the steampunk esthetics of the setting and the visual quotation of various more-popular-than-historical cultural elements from our own world. The only visual flaw that really hit me on the nose was an odd inability to cgi a believable domestic cat (there's just something about the heads that never worked quite right).
In its essence, the plot is a bog-standard fantasy-trilogy staple: spunky tomboy of upper-class background but populist socialization is pitched into adventures through a Mysterious Past, driven most immediately by loyalty to friends, assisted by the semi-inexplicable appearance of Standard Character Types, and learning eventually that she is The Chosen One destined to save the world. What's not to like? You have a Powerful Oppressive Institution against which odds are designed to appear hopeless. You have a Rag-Tag Coalition of Societal Outsiders who apear in the nick of time to supply logistics and temporary respite from danger. You have the necessary Powerful and Dangerous Champion who is redeemed from past misfortune/failure by service to the Chosen One. None of this is particularly innovative, although it's woven together in a craftsmanlike way.
The innovative part of the story is also the part the movie is least competent in presenting: the themes of the mysterious "dust", how it relates to the relationship between people and their "external-soul" daemons (who --for the one person reading this who is oblivious to the background -- take the form of animals of separate personality but intertwined physical experience), the nature of the "golden compass" of the title (which is supposed, in some way, to answer questions with "truth"), and just what the purpose is behind the sinister experiments being conducted on the kidnapped children whose rescue forms the climax of the present movie. Since the original novels are a single-story-in-three-books, the movie necesarily ends with massive quantities of loose ends and the presumption that unless it bombs completely at the box office, there will be at least two more movies to round out the series.
As noted by many other reviewers, we're given a bare bit of basic world-building exposition via narration as the movie opens, and then we're left to pick up the pieces as the characters experience them. As I've noted in previous reviews (see, e.g., my recent Nutcracker review), I'm fairly comfortable with suspending my understanding of a story pending the presentation of further data. But the problem that nagged at me throughout the Golden Compass was an inability to distinguish between new information that was simply additional world-building and new information that should have struck the characters in the story as peculiar and meaningful. Just as an example, when the flying sorceresses show up, I had a lot of work trying to figure out whether they were a normal everyday part of this world's experience or whether the protagonist experienced them as near-mythic supernatural beings who suddenly invaded her "normal" life. At the conclusion of the movie, I still feel that I'm missing essential background information about how this world works that I need in order comprehend the meaningfulness of the events and of people's reactions to them. No doubt I'll pick it up if (when) I read the books, but I shouldn't have to.
My overall judgement is that The Golden Compass falls in that category of literary-inspired movies that are best understood as illustrations to accompany the story, but not as an independent interpretation or version of the story, even a condensed and highly alternative one. (I had the same opinion of the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice film, but of course in that case I had the advantage of knowing the underlying story thoroughly.)
In addition to the larger conceptual gaps, there was the usual assortment of gaping plot-holes that any action-adventure requires:
* Given that the nature of a person's daemon so clearly correlates with their profession and/or lot in life (e.g., servants and soldiers have dogs, Evil Villains have insects or reptiles) why aren't people in this society a bit quicker on the uptake about the nature of who they're dealing with?
* If you have at your service a flying machine, why are you crossing a crevasse-filled glacier on foot?
* After the heroic ice-bear gives us a long self-flagellating lecture on how an ice-bear's honor and soul are tied up in his armor, why does he later go rushing off to battle without it?
* After said heroic ice-bear has fought an epic battle to regain his True Place as ruler of the ice-bears, why aren't the rest of them by his side in the climactic battle? You could do a lot with an army of armored ice-bears.
Well, enough of that. I did promise to noteklwilliams's comment on the epic bear-fight: "sumo weasels". ETA: correction "sumo ice-weasels".
The underlying story is intriging enough that, with the added impetus of the movie, the books will go on my "buy this some day" list. (At which point they will go on my "read this some day" shelf.) But I'm not sure that the average movie-goer will have the same reaction, and a lot of them are just going to continue in a cloud of confusion. This is probably not a Good Thing in terms of prospects for the rest of the movies getting made, which would be unfortunate, because I'm sure that as accompanying illustrations, the series as a whole will be well worth the effort. But fergoodnessakes, there are lots of great fantasy novels out there that would make much more comprehensible stand-alone movies (or even first-in-a-continuing-series movies). And it might have been nice to have all these resources and talents turned to a project where there was greater scope for general success.
I suspect one of the reasons I hadn't gotten around to reading Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy yet is my general aversion to starting on in-process series (and the difficulty, especially in the context of young-adult series, of knowing when the series has stopped being in-process). At any rate, I had the opportunity to see The Golden Compass without benefit of knowing any more about it than what popped up in the generall pre-movie buzz ... oh, and a review article in an SF Bulletin that may have given me a smidge of an edge on some of the metaphysics, if I could have remembered any of the details. So last night when I went off to see it in company with
scotica and klwilliams, I had the dubious benefit of a semi-naive view of the story.The movie is visually glorious, like so many f/sf flicks in these post-CGI days. The underlying premise (although only barely touched on in the screen story) of intertwined parallel worlds gave a believable validity to the steampunk esthetics of the setting and the visual quotation of various more-popular-than-historical cultural elements from our own world. The only visual flaw that really hit me on the nose was an odd inability to cgi a believable domestic cat (there's just something about the heads that never worked quite right).
In its essence, the plot is a bog-standard fantasy-trilogy staple: spunky tomboy of upper-class background but populist socialization is pitched into adventures through a Mysterious Past, driven most immediately by loyalty to friends, assisted by the semi-inexplicable appearance of Standard Character Types, and learning eventually that she is The Chosen One destined to save the world. What's not to like? You have a Powerful Oppressive Institution against which odds are designed to appear hopeless. You have a Rag-Tag Coalition of Societal Outsiders who apear in the nick of time to supply logistics and temporary respite from danger. You have the necessary Powerful and Dangerous Champion who is redeemed from past misfortune/failure by service to the Chosen One. None of this is particularly innovative, although it's woven together in a craftsmanlike way.
The innovative part of the story is also the part the movie is least competent in presenting: the themes of the mysterious "dust", how it relates to the relationship between people and their "external-soul" daemons (who --for the one person reading this who is oblivious to the background -- take the form of animals of separate personality but intertwined physical experience), the nature of the "golden compass" of the title (which is supposed, in some way, to answer questions with "truth"), and just what the purpose is behind the sinister experiments being conducted on the kidnapped children whose rescue forms the climax of the present movie. Since the original novels are a single-story-in-three-books, the movie necesarily ends with massive quantities of loose ends and the presumption that unless it bombs completely at the box office, there will be at least two more movies to round out the series.
As noted by many other reviewers, we're given a bare bit of basic world-building exposition via narration as the movie opens, and then we're left to pick up the pieces as the characters experience them. As I've noted in previous reviews (see, e.g., my recent Nutcracker review), I'm fairly comfortable with suspending my understanding of a story pending the presentation of further data. But the problem that nagged at me throughout the Golden Compass was an inability to distinguish between new information that was simply additional world-building and new information that should have struck the characters in the story as peculiar and meaningful. Just as an example, when the flying sorceresses show up, I had a lot of work trying to figure out whether they were a normal everyday part of this world's experience or whether the protagonist experienced them as near-mythic supernatural beings who suddenly invaded her "normal" life. At the conclusion of the movie, I still feel that I'm missing essential background information about how this world works that I need in order comprehend the meaningfulness of the events and of people's reactions to them. No doubt I'll pick it up if (when) I read the books, but I shouldn't have to.
My overall judgement is that The Golden Compass falls in that category of literary-inspired movies that are best understood as illustrations to accompany the story, but not as an independent interpretation or version of the story, even a condensed and highly alternative one. (I had the same opinion of the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice film, but of course in that case I had the advantage of knowing the underlying story thoroughly.)
In addition to the larger conceptual gaps, there was the usual assortment of gaping plot-holes that any action-adventure requires:
* Given that the nature of a person's daemon so clearly correlates with their profession and/or lot in life (e.g., servants and soldiers have dogs, Evil Villains have insects or reptiles) why aren't people in this society a bit quicker on the uptake about the nature of who they're dealing with?
* If you have at your service a flying machine, why are you crossing a crevasse-filled glacier on foot?
* After the heroic ice-bear gives us a long self-flagellating lecture on how an ice-bear's honor and soul are tied up in his armor, why does he later go rushing off to battle without it?
* After said heroic ice-bear has fought an epic battle to regain his True Place as ruler of the ice-bears, why aren't the rest of them by his side in the climactic battle? You could do a lot with an army of armored ice-bears.
Well, enough of that. I did promise to note
klwilliams's comment on the epic bear-fight: "sumo weasels". ETA: correction "sumo ice-weasels".The underlying story is intriging enough that, with the added impetus of the movie, the books will go on my "buy this some day" list. (At which point they will go on my "read this some day" shelf.) But I'm not sure that the average movie-goer will have the same reaction, and a lot of them are just going to continue in a cloud of confusion. This is probably not a Good Thing in terms of prospects for the rest of the movies getting made, which would be unfortunate, because I'm sure that as accompanying illustrations, the series as a whole will be well worth the effort. But fergoodnessakes, there are lots of great fantasy novels out there that would make much more comprehensible stand-alone movies (or even first-in-a-continuing-series movies). And it might have been nice to have all these resources and talents turned to a project where there was greater scope for general success.
