Anyone who's seen Henrik Ibsen's
A Doll's House knows that the whole play turns on Nora's decision to leave at the end of the play. It was called "the door slam heard round the world" by contemporary audiences. Yet, to appease sensibilities, Victorian productions often had Nora walking back through the door minutes later to return to her husband and life, essentially reversing Ibsen's intent to please the audience.
The same thing happens, more or less in the movie adaptation of
The Golden Compass. In trying to excise the political and religious meaning of Pullman's novel, the movie winds up having no reason to exist. It's a gorgeously realized world filed with characters laden with exposition, but wandering around without any greater purpose. Truthfully, I had though that Hollywood had finally licked the "box office bomb" syndrome for films of this caliber, but I'm proven wrong. Having ripped the essential story that drives
His Dark Materials out, for fear of offense, the film staggers through a lifeless series of CGI action scenes. Who are these witches? Remember the dreaded goblins, the ostensible villains of the film? Blink your eyes and you'll miss them. Why are those giant Russian men attacking the children? Don't care. Had the producers of this film kept its heretical message intact, it may have done just as poorly as I'm certain it will do, but at least it would be interesting. At the very least, they could have focused on one story and told it well. Instead,
The Golden Compass is an infuriating exercise in futility, unable to even offer up a satisfactory resolution on its own terms.
For what its worth, there's a rumble between talking armored polar bears that's pretty awesome, but if the point was to dazzle us with great effects, they should have extended those brief 30 seconds to fill the whole picture. I don't know why this film was made. Obviously someone though there was a successful franchise here, but the popularity of the books is not about the fantasy elements, it's about the deeper themes at work. The thing that makes stories like
Lord of the Rings,
Harry Potter and
The Wizard of Oz is not the dragons, wizards and witches; it's the universal truths those stories express. In divorcing
The Golden Compass from its meaning, Hollywood has rendered it as lifeless as a daemon without its human.
Labels: film
Anyone who's seen Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House knows that the whole play turns on Nora's decision to leave at the end of the play. It was called "the door slam heard round the world" by contemporary audiences. Yet, to appease sensibilities, Victorian productions often had Nora walking back through the door minutes later to return to her husband and life, essentially reversing Ibsen's intent to please the audience.