No movie can fully capture the depth and complexity and magic of a good book. The Lord of the Rings trilogy perhaps came closest, but, good as the film versions were, they emphasized endless battle scenes at the expense of some of the more subtle messages of Tolkien's books. To me, a fundamental theme of the written LOTR trilogy was the theme of loss, the sense that when one fights a war, even the winner loses much that he had fought to save. Return of the King tried to convey this sense of loss in its final, much-ridiculed half hour, at the Grey Havens, but by that time it was perhaps too late.
Back in May, I wrote with anticipation of the long-awaited filming of the first book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass (published originally in Britain as Northern Lights). I concluded my post with the words: "Assuming the film bears any resemblance at all to the book, I say "two thumbs up" even before I see it! Don't miss it!"
The movie was released a week ago. The reviews have been mixed, and the first week's gross receipts, perhaps as a result, disappointing. Many have felt that the movie was less subtle, less complex, less intellectually satisfying, than the book. Well, duh! That's always the case. The movie presents in two hours a book that takes much longer to read, and that has room for far more complexity and development. Philosophical and theological ideas that develop slowly in the reader's awareness, absorbed from the plot itself, in a two hour movie must be presented either in narrative voice overs (parallel universes exist, a pompous voice exclaims at the outset, where humans have souls that look like animals!), or in unlikely lectures by characters, inserted in the midst of the plot. (If you hate such plot-slowing lectures, never read The DaVinci Code, where the author was unable to tell his story without such artifices even in a lengthy written novel.)
In the time available, I feel that the movie actually did a more than adequate job of presenting all the major events, characters, and plot developments of the book. This is a movie, like The Fellowship of the Ring, that will make far more sense and be more appealing to persons already familiar with the books. The movie moves quickly. The viewer has little time to mull over plot and character development before the next crisis, the next character, the next twist of plot, arrives on the scene. You can't turn back five pages to recall who had which daemon. But the film does a more than adequate job of laying the foundation -- and creating an appetite -- for the next of the series, The Subtle Knife.
Visually, the movie could hardly be better. In LOTR, we marveled at the integration of the computerized Gollum into the filming of the live characters. In The Golden Compass, an enormous number of animal daemons, witches, armored bears, and mechanical insects fight, talk, and maneuver along side the live action cast. It's all done so seamlessly that we hardly appreciate the technical skills involved.
And the daemons! As we gradually learn in the book, and as the voice-over informs us bluntly at the beginning of the movie, every human in Lyra's world has his or her appropriate daemon, an animal companion representing an embodiment of the human's soul. In the many mob scenes, all the humans have to be shown with their daemons -- whether these are large impressive animals for complex characters -- snow leopards, golden monkeys, wolves -- or small simple daemons for simple folks -- birds, small dogs. The filming is handled beautifully, and we quickly grow accustomed to Lord Asriel stalking into the room, his leopard at his side, or, more movingly, Lyra's loving daemon, still capable of changing into a bird or a cat when appropriate, but usually presented as an ermine with an expressive face. (The Texas pilot's daemon, a female rabbit with a sarcastic Texan drawl, is hysterically funny.)
Death in such a world is dramatic. In the book, when a human was killed his daemon quickly faded away. In the movie, his daemon explodes in a flash of light. Battle scenes are thus spectacular!
Finally, a serious concern even before the movie was made was how the director, Chris Weitz, would handle the religious question. In the book, Lyra's world was ruled by a version of the Catholic Church that had, in her world, adopted some aspects of Calvinism during the Reformation and had moved its headquarters to Geneva. The Church, in the book, is a malevolent force. Its leaders' objective is to maintain control over the people, and to protect them from "sin," which in the author's vision is the same as protecting them from true adulthood. In the first book's most devastating scene, only somewhat less affecting in the movie, the Church conducts experiments in an Arctic laboratory, experiments it hopes will find a way to eliminate sin by surgically cutting the bond between children and their daemons before the kids reach puberty. The vision of the little boy -- now effectively soulless -- crying all alone in the frozen North for his lost daemon is unforgettable.
New Line Cinema could not see any advantage to releasing a movie for young people that attacks -- even in an alien world -- an institution that resembles in any way Christianity in our world.
We knew that Pullman's professed atheism would have to be tamed to some degree in the movie. How much, no one was sure. This month's issue of the Atlantic Monthly contains a lengthy (and very interesting) article by Hanna Rosin arguing that the movie gutted the book, leaving behind a couple of hours of simple entertainment for the mass audience. "The studio opted to kidnap the book's body and leave behind its soul."
I disagree. First of all, the trilogy's "soul" was not a logical attack on religion. It was a fantasy with many themes. It described a malevolent, or at least sadly mistaken, Church. But it also described the Chuch's God as a pathetic, senile old man floating around in space, who in his elder days was dominated by his supposed subordinates. It presented angels -- good, bad, and a couple who were gay. It presented flying witches. It presented talking, armored bears of incredible strength and endurance. It presented pathways between universes.
No one, no child, would take any of this as anything but a ripping good yarn. A fairy tale, a story of "what if?" Insofar as it contained a message, it was a call for every person to grow up, take responsibility, seek out the unknown, be brave, sacrifice the self for the common welfare, and love others. Hardly subversive. Those who see it as an attack on religion should ask themselves why they see a greater relationship between the "Church" in Lyra's world and any religion in our own world than they do between any other of the story's fictional devices and anything we're familiar with. Both those who applaud and those who fear the movie -- as an attack on religion -- should ask themselves that question.
In any event, to answer the Atlantic's critique, I don't see that the movie seriously watered down the philosophical questions of the books, except insofar as necessary to make a short movie and to avoid unnecessary offense to Christians . The movie always refers to the Church as "the Magisterium," and in the only reference to the fictional God of that world calls him "the Authority." Anyone old enough to be interested in the movie, beyond the level of cheering for awesome fights between armored bears, will recognize the religious references. Anyone that old, I would hope, also recognizes a fantasy when he or she sees one.
So my pre-release verdict from last spring holds. "Two thumbs up. Go see it!"
(But you really should read the books first!)
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(12-16-07) -- The movie has drawn an extraordinary amount of comment on the internet, much of it from Christian writers. The majority of Christian commentators appear to feel that the movie, and even more the books, present a threat to children's faith. Others, however, view the movie as a well-produced fantasy, one that is not only entertaining but that presents parents with an opening for serious discussions of religious faith and theology with their children.
The Pullman trilogy is an "ode to the joy of living in a physical world, a hymn to flesh, to exuberance, to the here and now, to free thought, imagination and feeling, to nobility of spirit," according to a review by Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda.
"I happen to think that these positive traits are entirely compatible with organized religion and so I choose to focus on the positive rather than on any anti-religious themes in these books," said Paul Lauritzen, director of the Program in Applied Ethics at Jesuit-run John Carroll University in Cleveland, commenting on Dirda's review. Lauritzen is a contributor to dotCommonweal, a blog run by the Catholic magazine Commonweal.
--© 2007 Catholic News Service/USCCB
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office for Film and Broadcasting gave the film, which is rated PG-13, a warm review. The film is not blatantly anti-Catholic but a “generalized rejection of authoritarianism,” it said.
While noting the story’s “spirit of rebellion and stark individualism,” the office said Lyra and her allies’ stand for free will in opposition to the coercive force of the Magisterium is “entirely in harmony with Catholic teaching.”
--MSNBC (11-30-07)
