The Golden Compass
Dec. 9th, 2007 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsOmaha and I took the girls and met ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lisakit at the cinema this afternoon to go see The Golden Compass, the new movie based on Phillip Pullman's book The Northern Lights.
I was disappointed with the film. It's a beautiful movie with a ton of special effects thrown into it, but ultimately the outcome is less than perfect. Much of what's in the book is missing from the film not because the writers cut it out but because intrinsic aspects of the book do not transport well to other media. The relationship between a person and their daemon is easy to write, but very hard to relate in a film. The very basis of the book, the ideas that knowledge of good and evil and the worthiness of rebellion, are hard to get across in a film without getting talky, and you can't have a talky kids film. It doesn't work.
If you're a steampunk afficiando there's more than enough imagery in the film to keep you happy for days: magic zepplins, horseless carriages, steam and sail, gleaming cities of marble and chrome, the whole 1930s look and feel of the university, the laboratory, the docks. (Indeed, the laboratory is striking because everything in it looks like it comes out of a Doc Savage video except the intercissor, which instead looks like popped out of some postmodern cyberpunk.) The armored bears are very cool indeed, as is the relationship between Lyra and Pan.
Omaha believes that the point of the film is that it's told in Lyra's eyes. But for people watching the film, it's a mishmash of coincidences, deterministic segues from one crisis to another without any real threat to Lyra's will being, and overall a real lack of narrative struggle: Lyra is just carried along from one set piece to the next and you just know, with more surety than a film should allow, that she's going to come through unscathed. I was never in any doubt about this film, and that's a sign of poor filmmaking; I never felt that the main characters were in any real danger. Someone will show up who's just willing to help Lyra-- no reason given, mostly-- and in scene after scene that's exactly what happens.
It's very pretty. If you like Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, they make lovely set pieces in an accelerating collection of gorgeous steampunk settings and post-Victoriana costumes. Derek Jacoby and Christopher Lee are effective villains. Dakota Richards is quite effective as Lyra. Even Sam Elliot looks great. But still, to cut the heart out of the book and make The Magisterium into an organizing body without invoking the authority of God, hurt the story, and it ultimately didn't move me.
lisakit at the cinema this afternoon to go see The Golden Compass, the new movie based on Phillip Pullman's book The Northern Lights.I was disappointed with the film. It's a beautiful movie with a ton of special effects thrown into it, but ultimately the outcome is less than perfect. Much of what's in the book is missing from the film not because the writers cut it out but because intrinsic aspects of the book do not transport well to other media. The relationship between a person and their daemon is easy to write, but very hard to relate in a film. The very basis of the book, the ideas that knowledge of good and evil and the worthiness of rebellion, are hard to get across in a film without getting talky, and you can't have a talky kids film. It doesn't work.
If you're a steampunk afficiando there's more than enough imagery in the film to keep you happy for days: magic zepplins, horseless carriages, steam and sail, gleaming cities of marble and chrome, the whole 1930s look and feel of the university, the laboratory, the docks. (Indeed, the laboratory is striking because everything in it looks like it comes out of a Doc Savage video except the intercissor, which instead looks like popped out of some postmodern cyberpunk.) The armored bears are very cool indeed, as is the relationship between Lyra and Pan.
Omaha believes that the point of the film is that it's told in Lyra's eyes. But for people watching the film, it's a mishmash of coincidences, deterministic segues from one crisis to another without any real threat to Lyra's will being, and overall a real lack of narrative struggle: Lyra is just carried along from one set piece to the next and you just know, with more surety than a film should allow, that she's going to come through unscathed. I was never in any doubt about this film, and that's a sign of poor filmmaking; I never felt that the main characters were in any real danger. Someone will show up who's just willing to help Lyra-- no reason given, mostly-- and in scene after scene that's exactly what happens.
It's very pretty. If you like Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, they make lovely set pieces in an accelerating collection of gorgeous steampunk settings and post-Victoriana costumes. Derek Jacoby and Christopher Lee are effective villains. Dakota Richards is quite effective as Lyra. Even Sam Elliot looks great. But still, to cut the heart out of the book and make The Magisterium into an organizing body without invoking the authority of God, hurt the story, and it ultimately didn't move me.
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Date: 2007-12-10 04:01 pm (UTC)"Yes, Mr. Yahweh...really like the book. Fascinating set of stories. We can make a series of sequels that will outmatch Rocky, I'm sure. However, we do have one request. Any chance you can get your ghostwriters to rewrite the book without that Christ character in there?"
::chuckle::