After the worldwide success of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the ongoing success of the Harry Potter movies, , it’s no wonder movie studios have been pouncing on fantasy series novels, particularly those aimed at children. New Line, who backed the Rings movies, got back into the game with the first of a initially proposed three films, based on Philip Pullman’s novels, grouped under the title “His Dark Materials” (though none of the books—so far—is called that; this one was “Northern Lights” in Pullman’s home country of England).
The most significant difference between “The Golden Compass” and the Rings movies is that the Tolkien films were aimed at adults, though of course stuffed with the kinds of things children love (elves, dragons, wizards, etc.), while “The Golden Compass” is aimed more directly at children. This probably cost it in terms of gaining adult fans, but children the world over—particularly little girls—are likely to go bananas for this big-scale adventure. The movie was a boxoffice failure in the U.S.; though it did well overseas, evidently that wasn’t well enough to launch the other two movies. That’s a pity.
This first in the series was written and directed by Chris Weitz (“American Pie,” “About a Boy”) who clearly has embraced this world and its denizens with enthusiasm and sincerity. Being the planned first of a trilogy, “The Golden Compass” has an inconclusive ending, though it does have a satisfying climax, an all-out battle on a vast field of ice, pitting children, Gyptians (this world’s gypsies), a huge polar bear and flying witches against a well-armed force of Samoyeds. (No, not fluffy white dogs.) The lack of a thorough wrap-up may be what cost it American viewers.
It’s likely that very few go to movies like this because of the stories; instead, they go for the way the story is told, the spectacle and the cast; this is very strong in all three areas.
This is not our Earth; in a brief opening narration, and the action of the first half hour or so, Weitz clearly explains this world’s background. It is an Earth, and the time is roughly now—but this world is very different. It is ruled by a benign but all-powerful group called the Magisterium, which wants to control the lives of all citizens—they claim the do this in a “kindly” way, but there are those who disagree.
There are legends of Altheiometers, which can tell its user the truth;
the boogeymen of this world are Gobblers, who kidnap children; everyone
is in awe of Svalbard, an island country near the Arctic Circle, ruled
by intelligent, armor-clad polar bears known as the panserbjørne—human
beings are in awe of them.
Everyone has a soul, but the soul is contained in a companion animal—we
see many of them, from small birds to big spotted cats with heads like
tigers and a body like a lion; these are called “daemons” (pr. demons),
and are linked psychically to their human companions. If the person is
killed, or if the daemon is, the animal vanishes in a cloud of sparks.
This world’s technology is limited and much behind ours, though they do
have huge flying machines, some like giant dirigibles, and powered
carriages without obvious engines. There are also paddle-wheel
steamboats and, presumably, other conveyances as well. The
architectural style is as though the designer of St. Paul’s Cathedral
had been given free reign to design nearly every building in London.
Some distance away is Jordan College, resembling Oxford and/or
Cambridge; the college scenes were shot in Oxford, where Pullman
attended college.
This is where 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) lives;
she’s a free spirit, and has a great time with her best friend Roger
(Ben Walker) and the livelier Billy Costa (Charlie Rowe), a Gyptian.
She’s an orphan, in the care of her adventurous scholar uncle, Lord
Asriel (Daniel Craig), a don at the college. Hoping to made good on
claims Billy’s skeptical about, Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon (voice
of Freddie Highmore), Pan for short, hide in a cupboard. (Pan is
usually a ferret, but sometimes a bird, a housecat or a mouse; the
daemons of children can change their shape; those of adults cannot)
She’s able to warn Asriel against poisoned wine, and listens from
hiding while he describes a finding to the officials of the college: he
is convinced that their universe is just one of an infinite number of
parallel universes, and that the only bridge between them is a mystical
substance known as Dust. This has long been banned from their world,
on orders of the Magisterium, but he’s convinced it has returned, up in
the frozen Arctic, and wants to finance an expedition. He’s sure he
can find a bridge between the parallel universes. Without money, he
sets out on his own. We see the highest lords of the Magisterium
(Derek Jacobi, Christopher Lee, Edward de Souza) plotting to use
Dust—and Asriel—to their own ends.
An emissary from her uncle presents Lyra with the only remaining
Alethiometer (the rest were destroyed by the Magisterium), a device
like a golden compass, that can tell its user the truth about almost
anything, though the messages require interpretation. To her surprise,
Lyra ends up in the care of elegant, secretive Marisa Coulter (Nicole
Kidman); at first, she greatly admires the beautiful woman, but soon
realizes that Coulter is attempting to control her—and to find out just
what she carries in her omnipresent bag.
Soon, Lyra and Pan are rescued by Gyptians, among them the parents of
Billy, who has disappeared, along with many other children, including
Roger. We see they’re confined in comfortable quarters in the frozen
north, but Lyra doesn’t know that yet. She learns that Mrs. Coulter is
allied with the Gobblers—in fact, she seems to run them—and that she’s
in charge of a mysterious process called “intercision.”
Lyra escapes from Mrs. Coulter, and is befriended by Lee Scoresby (Sam
Elliott), a salty Texan of an aeronaut, waiting in an Arctic village
for his flying machine to be repaired. Amusingly, his daemon is a
jackrabbit named Hester, given a wise and regional voice by Kathy
Bates. Knowing Lyra needs help, he directs her to Iorek Byrnison
(voice of Ian McKellen), an armored bear without his armor (“a bear’s
soul is his armor” he bitterly explains), working in a menial
blacksmith job and drinking too much. He was ousted from his tribe by
a vicious opponent, and leads a life of shame. Iorek is a great
character—a huge, scarred polar bear who’s civilized and can talk, but
is still a fierce warrior. Iorek has the best lines in the movie,
superbly delivered by McKellen: “I am an armored bear,” he explains.
“War is the sea I swim in.” Often seen loping over the frozen land,
Iorek is a magnificent creature.
And, Lyra learns, a fierce friend and ally. She also briefly meets
Serafina Pekkala (Eva Green), one of a group of nearly-immortal flying
witches, who live apart from the rest of the world. Both Iorek and
Serafina will be useful as everything comes to a head in the frozen
north.
Weitz skillfully leads us into this world, both like and unalike our
own; he doles out information as we need it, and usually very
thoroughly. There are some weaknesses in this; it’s never entirely
clear why the Magisterium wants to control everyone (in every parallel
world, we eventually learn), or just what Dust is or what it does.
When Lyra uses the Golden Compass, we should see the three symbols (out
of many on the device) she chooses as the basis of each question;
instead the camera zooms instantly into the inner clockworkings of the
Compass, and we see elements of the question and answer in indistinct
clouds of Dust.
The movie is well-paced, though the pace occasionally falters; at 113
minutes, “The Golden Compass” is shorter than these fantasy epics have
tended to be, but it feels like it lasts longer than that. However,
Weitz also introduces visual wonders and action scenes judiciously;
there aren’t too many of the latter, but the two major battles are
well-handled. Especially impressive is when Iorek battles King Ragnar
(voice of Ian McShane), the ruler of the panserbjørne, whose previous
defeat of Iorek was the reason for his exile. The camera swoops
deliriously around the battling bears, whose fight is intense enough
some kids will be hiding their eyes. Parents: take note of the
rating. On the other hand, the bears are depicted as being so
majestic, this movie could well give impetus to the burgeoning
save-the-polar-bears movement. (They are dying because of global
warming.)
The movie is laden with special effects, primarily computer graphics;
they are apparently under the overall control of Michael Fink and Susan
MacLeod—the end credits feature a nearly endless list of names, of both
people and companies. The effects are generally splendid—the polar
bears are particularly convincing, as are most of the aircraft, cities,
towns and ice fields. The daemons are a bit more problematic,
particularly when they are very familiar creatures like house cats and
backyard dogs. We’re so familiar with these that it’s difficult to
entirely buy into their depiction here. The personalities help, but
the cats and dogs don’t quite achieve satisfactory reality.
Nonetheless, “The Golden Compass” won the Oscar for visual effects.
The wide-screen photography by Henry Braham is excellent; he hasn’t
yet done many features, but while there’s nothing exceptionally
imaginative in his work here, he’s professional and skilled. The
production design by Dennis Gassner is richly detailed and imaginative;
he won an Oscar for his work on “Bugsy,” and did excellent work on
“Barton Fink,” “The Truman Show,” “Road to Perdition” and “O Brother
Where Art Thou?,” among other films. He’s conjured up convincing,
richly detailed and mostly handsome worlds; his work is discussed in
detail in this double disc’s many featurettes.
One of the best aspects of “The Golden Compass” is the excellent score
by Alexandre Desplat, seemingly chosen after careful thought, as he
hasn’t done anything like this before. Among his previous scores are
“Girl with the Pearl Earring,” “The Upside of Anger,” “Hostage” and
“Syriana.” It took imagination to think of casting him for a lavish
fantasy like this, and he delivers great work.
Amazingly, this is the first feature film for this young actress of the
unusual name, Dakota Blue Richards. She was already a fan of Philip
Pullman’s novels when she saw a theatrical production based on one of
them. She decided then and there that she had to be Lyra—and she is,
completely and impressively. Another element in those featurettes is
footage shot at the open-casting calls for actresses to play Lyra.
These British girls are funny, bright and likeable. Even though
Richards was only 13, this is an outstanding debut performance; she’s
on screen most of the time and carries the film on her thin shoulders.
She’s especially good in her confrontation with bear king Ragnar; the
plot requires her to try an especially dangerous gambit—and we
completely believe that her character is tough and courageous enough to
bring it off. She’s likeable, intelligent and a true hero—they
couldn’t have found a better actress for this role.
The same is true of Nicole Kidman; her Mrs. Coulter is the main villain
of the piece, but she’s also intelligent and attractive—there’s more to
her than just being the baddie here; Kidman makes her a rounded
character. Daniel Craig has relatively few scenes; he delivers some
exposition at the beginning, then is seen later in the frozen
wilderness, fighting warriors employed by the Magisterium. His role
was expected to expand in the sequels.
Presumably so was Sam Elliott’s. It’s a bit of a surprise to find a
wal-howdy-podner Texan in a movie of this nature, but Elliott’s charm
and easy way with a drawl makes him convincing. He’s an old friend of
Iorek Byrnison; we can easily imagine the long-haired,
cowboy-hat-wearing Texan and the gruff bear having adventures
together. In fact, Pullman wrote a short novel about just that.
The movie ends, promising us a war yet to come. I’d be surprised if
this film isn’t a hit; I think it very likely that we’ll see parts II
and III in the years ahead. I was looking forward to them; the
boxoffice failure of “The Golden Compass” dismayed and disappointed
me. I think this is better than “Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe;” it’s more fun, it’s more colorful and it tells
a clearer story, centering on one character. But money rules all in
Hollywood, and the remainder of Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” novels
will probably go unfilmed.
Here, however, is the DVD, this set in Blu-ray high definition. It’s
an excellent package, housed in a cardboard sleeve. The documentaries
are very detailed and thorough; most of them are fascinating to watch.
One drawback is that Chris Weitz’s commentary track appears twice, once
on its own, once narrating the optional behind-the-scenes popup track.
That’s well enough done that they shouldn’t have included the
commentary track on its own
On the second disc is a wealth of documentaries, with almost everyone
connected with the film who made significant contributions getting to
have their say—many of them several times. First, author Philip
Pullman, introduced carving a wooden horse, explains his reasons for
writing the book. We also hear from Chris Weitz, producer Deobray
Fore, and Kim Raynolds, professor of Children’s Literature at Newcastle
University. Nicholas Tucker, who wrote a book on Pullman, also is
seen, as well as Daniel Craig, Dakota Blue Richards, Ileen Maisel,
Andrew Miano and Mark Ordesky.
Then its on to adapting the novel into the screenplay. Weitz first
wrote the script, then stepped aside as the producers considered
directors. They finally wisely returned to him. Here, we also see
Nicole Kidman.
“Finding Lyra Belacqva” is about the search for a teenage actress.
Evidently this search was genuine—often these are mere publicity
stunts—and we see lots of the little starry-eyed girls who showed up
for one of the auditions (in Cambridge). Here, Dakota’s mother appears
as well.
In “Daemons,” it’s the turn of the special effects crew. Pullman and
Witz are heard from again, but also effects supervisor Mike Fink (king
of the river) and Bill Westonhofer of the L.A. effects company Rhythm
& Hues. There’s a fascinating, very detailed documentary on the
creation of the Alethiometer, the Golden Compass itself. In addition
to some of the usual suspects (Pullman, Weitz), we here from production
designer Dennis Gassner (who went to the same high school as Sam
Elliott), who’s remarkably articulate, prop master Barry Gibbs, art
director Richard Johnson and prop maker James Enright, among others.
The process of creating the Alethiometer—or several of them, as backups
were needed—is fascinating.
There’s also a segment devoted to the production design; Chris Weitz
and Gassner were trying to embody a “redundancy of detail,” to show how
this world is powered by “anbaric” devices, a creation of Pullman
similar to electricity.
In all, there are eleven documentaries and many galleries of individual
images, a segment on the score and on the release of the film,
including three trailers. “The Golden Compass” was a mammoth
undertaking, an exceptionally good and beautiful movie that should have
done better at the boxoffice.
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