The Golden Compass - Why the critics are wrong, wrong wrong

I went to see The Golden Compass on sunday night and was pleasantly surprised.  I've been to see the last two Harry Potter movies, I saw the Lion, The witch and the Wardrobe and I saw all three Lord of the Rings movies and with the possible exception of the first Lord of the Rings film (which is based on the only decent book of the three anyway), The Golden Compass is better than all of them.  Sadly this is not a fact that is reflected in either the reviews or the film's box-office.

Rotten Tomatoes : 44% fresh (compared with 62% fresh from users)
Metacritic : 51% positive (compared with 6.0 out of 10 from users)

As far as I can see, the criticisms of the film break down into two separate categories.  Firstly, that the film is toothless and secondly that it's too slow.  I think both criticisms are unfounded.  The second one in particular.

The First Criticism of Chris Weitz's adaptation of the Golden Compass is that the film has had its teeth pulled by Hollywood for fear of offending the religious right.  I do not think that this is a criticism with any basis is reality and is grounded more in paranoia and, frankly, intellectual laziness.

Exhibit A - The undeniable baddies of the film are the Gobblers or employees of the General Oblation Board.  These people kidnap children (particularly poor and Gyptian children) and transport them to the far north where they perform experiments on them and cut out their souls effectively lobotomising them and turning them into pliable, passive zombies.  All of this is in the film including the word Oblation which means "a thing presented or offered to God".  In the Christian tradition, the offering of bread and wine at the Eucharist.  So the Gobblers are in the business of presenting children to God by rendering them passive and easy to control through the means of cutting their souls out.  How is this not a criticism of religion?

Exhibit B - The Magisterium have a "seat" in London that looks an awful lot like St. Peter's square in Rome, they, according to Mrs. Coulter, tell people what to do "in a nice way".  They also try to bring pressure on academics to stop them investigating areas related to their faith and they sit in ornate rooms muttering about heretics and planning to put people on trial for heresy in order to execute them, and that's without mentioning the fact that they're experimenting with ways to make people more passive and easily controlled.  Again, all of this is in the film.  The Magisterium are not some "Stalinist state power" as some critics have pointed out, they are clearly a religious body.  How is this not a negative portrayal of religion?

These facts are clear and present in the film as it is, even children should be able to pick up on them.  Just because Lyra does not urinate on a Bible or stab the pope, it does not mean that film is toothless.  Besides, the His Dark Materials trilogy gets progressively more anti-religious as it goes on because Lyra gradually learns about the world and the evils carried out by the religious on God's (or The Authority's) instructions.  The first book Northern Lights, is less anti-clerical because Lyra is still learning the world and putting the pieces together.  Weitz's Golden Compass reflects this characteristic superbly, but he also includes, in the subtext, a number of ideas that were not introduced until later books...

Dust - One of the central concepts of the trilogy.  At the very beginning of the film, Lord Azriel shows a picture of a man who is having Dust funneled into him via his daemon.  The Dust is coming from another possible world.  Mrs. Coulter, when Lyra accidentally mentions Dust, says that Dust fills Man and makes him do silly things, it infects Man because of a decision his ancestors once made.  A mistake.

By virtue of coming from a different possible world, we can tell that Dust is somehow all about potential and possibility.  It comes from other ways the world could be and fills mankind.  This suggests that Dust is all about freedom, the freedom to be different, to have potential and to make the world a different place than it is.  It is the essence of possibility and that possibility is freedom.  By wanting to "protect" mankind from the effects of Dust, the Magisterium is wanting to rob him of his freedom.  But Dust is also clearly the root of sin for what else is Mrs. Coulter referring to when she speaks of mistakes made by ancestors other than Adam and Eve's decision to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? 

Saint Augustine of Hippo believed that by eating of the tree, man disobeyed god and therefore committed the first sinful act.  The original sin.  This original sin precipitated the fall of man from a state of grace to a state of sinfulness that made it necessary for him to seek out salvation as he had taken an action that suggested that he wanted to be like God, an act that also precipitated the Fall of Satan.  Indeed, Augustine believed that original sin infected humanity all through the generations.  He even spoke of infants who died in childbirth roasting in the pits of hell because they died with that original sin on their conscience.

In His Dark Materials, Dust gives man the ability to choose and to be free and therefore to sin.  By removing mankind from contact with Dust, the Magisterium hope to save it by effectively removing their freedom of choice, leaving it in the docile, submissive state that God demands of all of his flock.

All of these concepts appear later in the books but they are all here in The Golden Compass if you have the wits to find them.  How exactly is arguing that religion's aim is to make people passive not a criticism of religion?  arguing that sin is not a bad thing but rather part of what makes us human effectively stands Christian morality on its head.  How is this not a criticism of religion?

Voltaire once said that "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him".  Voltaire was no atheist, but he was against organised religion and its dependence upon the Iron Age ramblings of the Bible.  The above quote is notable as it shows the thin end of the wedge, a mainstream intellectual not only thinking it possible that God might not exist but also pointing out the fact that belief in God can be determined by theory and by social construction.  In short, he allows for the fact that God can be something artificial that man creates.  His Dark Materials is a modern atheistic work and what is remarkable about it is where it sits intellectually.  In Pullman's world God, The Authority, does exist, as do heave and hell, but Pullman's characters not only oppose religion, they actively oppose God.

Most atheistic thought sits in a position of lack of belief.  Atheists argue that there is no evidence that God exists and the secularists amongst them conclude that it follows that we should therefore accord no greater credence to religious thought than we do to any other form of thought.  In fact, given how ridiculous a lot of the Bible is, without God to back it all up, we might as well not bother with the bloody thing and move on to more interesting political questions.  However, Pullman does not position himself here.  Instead he constructs a fictional world where God very much exists but he argues that in such a world it would still be right to oppose religious bodies and their hideous politics.  In fact, His Dark Materials can be summed up in the following bastardisation of Voltaire :

If God did exist, it would be necessary to kill him.

Such a view maintains that the issue of whether or not God exists is completely irrelevant to the politics of religion.  Even if God and Jesus did exist, it would still be necessary for mankind to throw off the tyranny of religion.  The only good god is a dead one.

All of these ideas are hinted at in The Golden Compass and there is no stronger denial of God than to claim that his existence is irrelevant.

The Second Criticism of The Golden Compass is a more banal one that is more about cinematic fashion than anything else.  Much like SF at the cinema, fantasy has come to be subsumed within the wider cinematic genre of the action film.  This has always been the case but since Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, the trend has become more obvious.  For many critics, to go and see a fantasy film is to go and see an action movie with chases, fight scenes and epic battles.  Indeed, all of the Lord of the Rings movies ended with a huge fight and featured other fights and chases along the way.  The problem is that Northern Lights is not that kind of book.  In the book, the final battle is more about revenge and has no importance in the plot as Lyra had already escaped with the kids by the time the Gyptians turns up.  Weitz modifies this to make the battle more necessary to the plot but prior to this the only real fight was the one featuring the Ice Bears.

The problem is that His Dark Materials is not a thriller.  It is a book about ideas and big difficult concepts.  Pullman pulls these ideas together and fits them into a traditional fantasy adventure story but the fact is that a) the trilogy of books are thoughtful rather than viscerally escapist and b) the trilogy builds and widens in scope.  This first book is intentionally a narrow affair as Lyra is still a child who struggles to understand the world.

The film critics who moan about the lack of fighting are essentially idiots.  The film is well paced, intelligent, has a number of fantastic moments but it is not Lord of the Rings.  Lord of the Rings is full of fighting because Tolkien's concepts of Good and Evil are empty.  If you trace the evil of Sauron back through the Silmarillion you find that evil came into the world through an act of non-conformism by Melkor who preferred to sing his own song rather than fit in with the rest of the Ainur and sing the tune that Illuvatar had dictated to them.  Clearly if any fictional character was over-due a Paradise Lost-style reinvention then it is Melkor/Morgoth as it's far from obvious why wanting to sing your own tune is a bad thing.  Either way, Tolkien has no interest in explaining the politics of his world and why some people are evil and others are good... he just labels them, makes it clear that no compromise is possible and the only possible outcome is fighting... at the end of the day, His Dark Materials is a more thoughftull (and therefore superior) series of books to both the Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.  To criticise The Golden Compass for not having enough fighting in it is to miss the point as profoundly as to ask why The Godfather doesn't have more fighting in it.  That's not what the series is about, not all fantasy series are identical and just because the Lord of the Rings repeatedly descends into tiresome blood-letting does not mean that every work of fantasy must follow the same path.  "It's not the Lord of the Rings" is not a valid criticism of any film.

Comments

[Serdar]

Most of the negative criticisms I have heard about the movie don't center about LotR at all. They just thought the movie was busy without being interesting, that it explained everything to death (twice), and leaves off the book's original ending -- which has been postponed for a sequel that might not get made at all, given the generally lukewarm reception to the film.

I'm still curious about seeing it myself, but oddly I have not been that excited about it. Something about the premise just leaves me completely cold, and I haven't figured out what.

[mhayinde]

Interesting post… I didn't have any problems with the pacing of the movie, or the perceived lack of action. I did think the anti-religious sentiments of the novel were played down slightly. Although I take your point that most people who know a lot about Christianity, or have a certain level of academic education, would still understand the implications, I don't think this includes the majority of people. I for one had never heard of the word "oblation" before this book, and this post is my first encounter of its actual meaning. I felt that the atheism was much more of a suggestion, rather than a clear fact, as it is in the books, and they didn't use the word "church", which I seem to recall was used quite a lot in the first book.

But what did you make of the ending? This was where I felt the film was "toothless", since it cut short the final dramatic scenes...

AR -- They don't mention LotR but it's clear from the demand for action that LotR is the benchmark they're weighing the film against. Northern Lights contains less fights scenes than The Fellowship of the Ring therefore it only follows that any film adaptation would have less action. Less action does not make for a film that's less interesting, just a film that's less visceral.

Personally I far prefer the thoughtfulness of Northern Lights to the childish fighting of most action films.

Modupe -- I think that Northern Lights makes a lot more sense once you read the later books and part of what I did in my post was read some of what I remember from the books and some of what I remember from Neoplatonic philosophy back into the film. I think the book itself keeps a lot of stuff quite vague and it's only once you've read the later books that you work it all out. I think the film reflects this.

You might be right about the use of the word "church" though. Having said that, as I pointed out recently, Studio 60 on the Sunsent Strip never used the word Atheist despite one of the character's lack of faith being the source of a major plotline.

The anti-clericalism might be less obvious, but I think it's all still in there. Would I have liked the members of the Magisterium to be wearing dog-collars? yes but I don't think that it's fair to call the film toothless as it's arguably the most anti-clerical film hollywood has produced in immediate memory.

I didn't like the ending, it was a bit like the ending of Fellowship of the Ring when it's almost as though Frodo and Sam are about to snog each others' faces off. It was a bit shit that they didn't end the film on the down-note that the book ended on.

I don't think the film is perfect, I just think that the two main criticism levelled at it are ridiculous.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Ooops, those were both mine.

Clearly the whole signing in system has now completely packed up.

[Steve]

Have you read John C. Wright's recent criticism about the plotting of the series? I haven't read the books, but his comments were cutting and hilarious.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Just googled it now and while I agree with him that the trilogy is a bit wonky in places (book 2 is a bit off and book 3 grinds to a halt under the exposition and the ending doesn't quite work) but I'm not sure that I agree that the message misfires.

I don't think the point of His Dark Materials is that there is no God but rather that God is a spent force and we're better off without him. I agree that he's trying to have it both ways and that the story pays for it (The Preacher comic actually does a similar plotline better by showing God to be a timid, childish tyrant) but I don't think the idea that there is no God plays a big part in the series for the reasons I touched on in the article. I don't think secularism needs to argue that god doesn't exist in order to argue against religion.

[mhayinde]

Fair points... given that America is the most religious country in the "West" then I guess we should be grateful for what we've been given in this film! I certainly hope the negative criticism doesn't stop the next instalments getting made.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Evidently part 2 has been greenlit but the first weekend box office on the golden compass was disastrous so we'll have to see how it performs in the long run.

I went to see it on Sunday night and the cinema was packed. Mind you, I think that His Dark Materials was voted like the third best book ever in that competition they had a few years ago, so this really is home turf.

[franky]

"Instead he constructs a fictional world where God very much exists but he argues that in such a world it would still be right to oppose religious bodies and their hideous politics."

It depends what you mean by "God". There's no evidence that a "God" in the sense of "Creator, Supreme Being" exists in Pullman's world : what we have instead is a entity who poses as a supreme being but is really nothing more than a fraud. In Pullman's world the Judeo-Christian "God" does exist but he's not a god at all, which isn't really different from a classic atheist point of view.

It may be interesting to compare "His Dark Materials" with James Morrow's "Jehovah" trilogy, which combines the existence of God (the real one) with atheism - the central idea being that we don't need God any more.

[Serdar]

A comment about the theism of the U.S.: I think it's one of those things where it buzzes out only when people are whipped into a moral panic about it. Most of the time people simply don't care about these things until someone on FOX TV shoves it under their noses and gives the busybodies something to scream about.

[Jonathan McCalmont]

I don't know about that Serdar... I know that nationalism in England follows that model. It's only when we play football or someone insults the country that people puff out their chests but in America they all attend church every weak, it's part of who they are.

However, I think stuff like gay marriage is definitely something that most people don't really give a shit bout. They're probably against it but they're not appalled and outraged about it until Fox News tells them to be.

[Chris Gumn]

I really enjoyed the golden compass primerily becuase of pulmens interesting views on religon (yes Im atheist) but also becuase i havent read the northern lights, the big problem with book to film convertions is readers are never satisfide with the film because a book offers so much more. It pisses me off that writers are critisised for contraversial works on religon but religous organisations can go around lying to people.

P.S Great post btw, I really enjoyed reading it (and im not much of a reader, as u can tell by my spelling....)

[Jonathan McCalmont]

Hi Chris,

thanks for stopping by :-) If you liked the film then I really do recommend you check out the book, even if you're not much of a reader. Pullman's views on religion are indeed fascinating.

you're also quite right, it pisses me off too that religions lie continuously but act all offended when someone calls them on it.