Church in a spin

It was a spur of the moment decision to go and see the Golden Compass last night. Well, Saturday evening TV is hardly gripping and it had been one of those frustrating days of nearly but not quite doing things – almost finding a Christmas tree, almost addressing the Christmas cards, almost going for a walk, etc. At least I could find out what all the fuss was about, the Catholic League calling for the film to be banned an' all.

Much ado about nothing is my verdict. It’s an enjoyable enough evening’s entertainment, the visuals are great, the plot moves along apace, but emotionally it falls flat. Everything seems underdone. The characters, the plot, the science fiction. The Parallel Universe idea had the potential for excitement but no progress was made in proving it or experiencing it in this film (whereas we know that the crew of Star trek and also Dr Who had it sorted years ago). Lord Asriel (James Bond) sort of fizzles out of the plot after escaping a rather rushed and underdone arctic ambush. Then there’s this 'dust' which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether you’re a goody or a baddy. (Didn't Sooty use 'oofle dust' for his magic back in the days of Harry Corbett?). Since none of our main characters experience it we are left nonplussed.

The other central concept is the Magesterium, the cause of all the bother. To me it seemed closest to a Stalinist atheistic politburo, in its desire to cut people off from their souls, or daemons and in wanting to prevent people experiencing other worlds or higher thoughts – probably rather the opposite of Pullman’s original intention. There are some very nice visual effects, with strange gyroscope driven carriages, sailing ships and flying machines, all quaintly Heath Robinson - except for a train which inexplicably rushes like the Eurostar over a bridge in a London city-scape. That train bothered me long after I’d forgotton the names of any characters.

The central character, the child Lyra, is a rather emotionless and hard edged little girl who doesn’t evoke enough sympathy to keep us on her side - while her cute little CGI ‘daemon’ gets all the best lines. I know the good bits will probably be in the sequels, but it still felt a prologue for the main action. Pullman has compared his work to CS Lewis’s Narnia Chronicle, but with the intention of dispelling the ‘God myth’. Both allegories suffer from a need to twist the plot to fit the allegorical requirements, but with God taken out of the Golden Compass it lacks the drama of Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter where there is no need to make any moral or allegorical points.

So what about the church and these boycott calls? When the Da Vinci Code was being made into a film it too had its critics who wanted to see it boycotted. The books were flying off the shelves and apparently readers were being convinced by Dan Brown’s ‘facts’. In the event the central message of the book was diluted, the film wasn’t very good, and the whole Da Vinci thing collapsed. Will the same happen with the Dark Materials trilogy? With three goes at the story, the films are bound to have more impact, but at the same time, just like any other film in the science fiction/ fantasy genre, cinema audiences will leave entertained but untroubled by any deep theological or philosophical musings. The film stands or falls on its own, the daemon of atheism has been cut away from the story by Chris Weitz and New Line productions and I’d be happy to take my children along to see it, even though they are 26, 25 and 20 years old.