THE GOLDEN COMPASS [PG-13]
To quote the 10-year old boy, who sat next to me at a screening of The Golden Compass clutching his copy of the book: “This movie is freaking awesome!”
I wholeheartedly agree, but only if you are familiar with the books upon which it is based: Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. To the uninformed, be prepared for a visual onslaught and an extremely complicated plot with new characters presented every five minutes.
That narrative centers on a dark and profoundly disturbing evil plan to take over the universe. It doesn’t get exposed until the third book and hopefully, the third film in this ongoing series. (Unlike The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was filmed in its entirety, only the first book in this series has been filmed at a cost of a hefty $180 million.) At hand is the fate of this parallel universe, which looks very much like ours, and it’s up to 10-year old Lyra to save it, with the help of her friend Roger, a warrior polar bear named Iorek Byrnison, a mysterious, truth-telling Golden Compass that only she can read.
To state the plot in the most simple form, young orphan Lyra Belacqua (an extraordinary Dakota Blue Richards) must journey to the far North to save her best friend and other kidnapped children from terrible experiments by a mysterious organization known as the Magisterium. Masquerading as children’s books, the His Dark Materials trilogy is about nothing less than man, God, the devil, arch angels, the nature of existence, the soul, Heaven, Hell and the totalitarian nature of organized religion – all wrapped up in an epic adventure that follows Lyra to the very edges of existence. Pretty heady stuff for kiddie literature!
In this film, from writer and director Chris Weitz (About a Boy), they somehow managed to get everything right in a near perfect transformation to the screen of Pullman’s action-packed first installment. The visuals are gorgeous and the oddly juxtaposed Victorian and high-tech worlds meld together seamlessly. The extensive cast of characters is perfect portrayed by a vast array of international actors and the beautiful Richards as Lyra is an unstoppable hero bearing a strong resemblance to a young, determined, Katherine Hepburn.
Digital filmmaking may have been invented just to bring to life the kingdom of the warrior bears. Lyra lives with her uncle Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) at Jordan College in Oxford. Left to her own devices, Lyra has grown up to be independent and unaccountable and a bit of a misfit. As such she is shunned by the other kids on campus and has developed a close friendship with Roger, the son of a kitchen worker. Asriel has just returned from the North where he has discovered the existence of mysterious Dust that he believes may be the key to traveling to other dimensions in time and space. When the Magisterium – the World’s ruling body – gets wind of Asriel’s discovery, they condemn his work as heresy. Meanwhile, Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), an evil minion of the Magisterium, is working on a secret facility in the North where kidnapped children are being taken to have their “daemons” removed.
In Lyra’s world, the soul lives outside the body and takes the form of an animal known as a daemon. Exactly what Mrs. Coulter and the Magisterium are up to remains to be seen, but the very thought of separating a human from their daemon is horrifying to Lyra. When Roger disappears and Ms. Coulter takes a sudden interest in Lyra, the actions kicks into gear when she escapes and heads North to save Roger with the help of numerous nomads, witches and adventurers including the soldier of fortune and balloonist Lee Scorsbey, played wonderfully by Sam Elliott.
Along the way Lyra meets Iorek Byrnison (most convincingly voiced by Ian McKellen), the warrior bear and one of the most amazing and gorgeous creatures ever portrayed on film. Iorek is working as a handyman behind a bar doing odd jobs, paid with buckets of whiskey. He has been exiled from the Kingdom of the Northern Bears, but decides to help Lyra and try to regain his place among his kin. Digital filmmaking and computer animation may well have been invented just so it could be used to create and bring to life Iorek and his kingdom. The bear sequences in this film are simply stunning. (In the film’s complicated mythology, Bears don’t have daemons, but their war armor is the manifestation of their external souls that they will defend with their lives.) When Lyra tricks the Bear King into a death match duel with Iorek, it is digital filmmaking at its best.
After the duel, Lyra proceeds North where she finds Roger who is a prisoner of Ms. Coulter’s evil facility and things explode to the cataclysmic and climatic battle. In the end Lyra, Iorek, and Lee sail off into the future to their next encounter with the Magisterium and – you’ll just have to wait for the next film to see what happens next.
My only complaint about this film is with Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Mrs. Coulter. While she looks the part and is all full of evil intention and controlling dementia her entire dialog is delivered in a sub whisper so, even though I was sitting in the third row, I could not hear a single word she said in the entire film. But it’s a minor quibble with an otherwise great film that I totally enjoyed watching and will no doubt watch again and again. –Howie Green
Howie Green is a Boston-based artist and painter whose portrait of rapper Biggie Smalls appears on the 2007 compliation album “Incredible.” He was winner of Absolut Vodka’s 25th Anniversary art competition and he painted 3 of the cows in the Jimmy Fund’s Cow Parade 2006. He is also a multi-media designer and author of several books including “Jazz Fish Zen: Adventures in Mamboland” - and he once sang back-up for the opening act at a Shaun Cassidy concert in Madison Square Garden. He loves Peggy Lee, Dusty Springfield, ‘Star Wars’ and any movie where a car flies through the air, something big explodes and pretty people do nasty things. A self-described media slut, he sees over 100 movies a year, hears over 100 music albums a year and reads 30-40 books a year, not to mention concerts, live shows, DVDs and TV.