'Golden Compass' Doesn't Shine
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Kent Turner -- School Library Journal, 12/4/2007 9:44:00 AM
Put away your picket signs. Writer/director Chris Weitz’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (Knopf, 1996) strips nearly all ecclesiastical references from the adventure saga, though it retains its strong anti-authoritarian bent. Charges of heresy are bandied about, but there's no mention of either the Holy Church or priests.
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| Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter (left) and Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) Photo Credit: New Line Cinema |
In the narrowed-down story, seemingly orphaned and rebellious Lyra (the serious Dakota Blue Richards) must rescue her kidnapped friends and imprisoned uncle from an evil governing body, the Magisterium, with the use of the truth-telling, symbolic-laden Golden Compass, the only one of its kind.
Weitz provides a lot of exposition, so much so that Lyra doesn’t have to figure out what to do. In her encounter with the adversarial king bear, she already knows the monarch’s weak spot—he wants to be human and have his own daemon.
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| Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) and Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) Photo Credit: New Line Cinema |
Lyra gains the giant bear’s trust when she reveals to him that his armor has been hidden (without it he’s vulnerable) inside a wooden structure that looks like a church—which he proceeds to smash to smithereens. Only here is any Christian symbolism obvious.
For the most part, the special effects convince, save for one strange-looking daemon and Iorek, who looks real in his close-ups, but in the wide shots appears like the Coca-Cola polar bear run amok.
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| Iorek Photo Credit: New Line Cinema |
Directed by Chris Weitz
118 min.
Rated PG-13
