Click HERE for the rest of the heyallright movie review archives.

The Golden Compass
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: December 9, 2007

Make way for another batch of magical British children this weekend, as Harry Potter and Narnia shove over for their kissin’ cousin, The Golden Compass. What with its accents and academic settings, its talismans and talking CGI animals, its precocious messianic pre-teen protagonist navigating a world of inscrutable adult agendas, and so on, The Golden Compass would seem to be taking a path well-traveled… all the way to the bank. To be fair, the book on which The Golden Compass is based was published prior to the first Harry Potter installment. Also to be fair, the Narnia books precede them both. But we’re talking about movies here, and the thread of transparent Hollywood capitalism follows the chronology it follows. By the way, some Christian groups are boycotting The Golden Compass for supposedly indoctrinating kids to atheism. Guess again, folks. All this film wants from its target audience is $300million+ at the box office.

Prior to anyone seeing it, this adaptation was already being declared either too soft or too hard on organized religion, by various detractors and supporters of the book. Well now, if our eternal souls can muster the courage, the movie is here to be seen at last. I would say the religious allegories are overt, harmless, and rather simple-minded. In this film, the characters are followed around by animal manifestations of their souls. A kitty cat. A puppy dog. A monkey. A jackrabbit. Everyone gets a warm and fuzzy doppelganger. (Fortunately for the local architects, no one gets doppleganged by an elephant or a giraffe.) The animal companions are referred to as “daemons.” And, as the plot unfolds, an authoritarian religious group is revealed to be abducting children and sticking them into a machine that separates them from their daemons. The process is supposed to relieve the children of unhappiness, but in fact the children emerge from the machine catastrophically depressed.

So puppy dogs are daemons, are they? You’d think PETA would have a stronger case for boycotting this movie than any Christian group would. (For those unfamiliar with the acronym, PETA stands for “People for the Ethical Treatment of CGI Animals.”) Anyway “daemon” is the key word here. Clearly the film means to say that a healthy spiritual existence means an acknowledgment of our wild selves, and that organized religion aims to separate us from this essential piece of our humanity. But conveniently enough the movie does not actually address the subject of wickedness (unless, of course, the evil is being perpetrated by adult members of the religious establishment.) I’m not taking sides in any debate about this film’s message. It’s not a dangerous movie, just a terribly un-insightful one, to suggest that a child’s inner troublemaker resembles a puppy dog, capable of nothing worse than soiling the carpet. None of the kids in this film presents an actual challenge to his or her community, and that’s a major omission in any serious examination of freewill. And by the way, I watched this nonsense just a few days after a kid strolled into a real life Nebraska shopping mall and gunned down eight people for no reason at all. Hey Golden Compass, what did his daemon look like?

The problem is, you can’t make a genuinely provocative film and still afford CGI polar bears, not unless you’re prepared to let those polar bears slide around in the snow, swigging bottles of Coca-Cola. Oh yes, there are polar bears in this movie, lots of them. And they’re not daemons—just garden variety, talking, armored, fighting polar bears. I find it a bit perplexing that this movie includes one species of animal that is actually an animal, while all the other animals are spiritual manifestations of human companions. It’s quite naggingly illogical, as a matter of fact. In any case, judging by the trailers and posters, the fighting polar bears are esteemed by the filmmakers to be The Golden Compass’ featured attraction. And yet, the set piece is about as compelling as a round of Tekken on Playstation 2.

But who am I to say this movie isn’t just what the doctor ordered, for kids, and for people of certain esoteric spiritual inclinations? No Potter, no Narnia? Let them have their Golden Compass. As for me, I’ve just reviewed three overtly spiritual movies in a row, and next week I get to see a film called Atonement. It’s all so heavy, as we knew it would be, back in June, when it was all so weightless. Folks, let me suggest a rental this week. Take a break, try Ocean’s Thirteen, and have yourself a good time. The hell with The Golden Compass.

Copyright © 2007 Theo Michelfeld