Thoughts on "The Golden Compass"

As you have no doubt heard, The Golden Compass is the first in a series of stories, written by atheist Philip Pullman, to be something of an "anti-Narnia" series. This has generated some controversy, which has no doubt helped ticket sales to people like me who otherwise would not have seen the movie.

A few thoughts. As a movie, this movie is mediocre. It has the potential to be really impressive, but I couldn't help but feel that it was very poorly edited. One felt as if one was watching the highlights of a much much longer movie that had been spliced together rather hurriedly. The story was disjointed. In virtually every scene some new character appeared who was immediately welcomed as a closely trusted advisor to the main characters, who are supposed to be on the run from the all-powerful Authority of the Magisterium (which would imply some level of caution).

Then there is the issue of whether this is a children's movie or an adult movie. Some of the dialogue is quite grown-up, addressing issues (favorite's of post-modern philosophy) of the relation between truth and reality on the one hand and truth and power on the other. Over against this is the annoying "kids movie dialogue" that could have come from any number of movies targetted at 6-year-olds. Also, some scenes are rather violent for children, as when one polar bear knocks the lower jaw clean off another, and it goes sliding across the ice.

Then there are the religious or ideological questions. The bad guys in the movie are attempting to control 'truth' in order to control people. In the old days we called that "propaganda" but in this movie it is recast in more postmodern terms: their truth vs. our truth. But even so, the truth that is discerned using the Golden Compass (a tool for gaining truth) is said to describe things as they really ARE. So this isn't exactly a post-modern "no absolutes" world after all. The "truth" of the Magisterium turns out simply to be lies.

Nicole Kidman claims that this movie is not anti-Catholic, though I think that is debateable. The evil powers that are trying to control everyone are called the Magisterium (and I only know of one institution in the world that goes by that name). They are willing to use any means necessary to squelch the "heretics" (a word with strong anti-clerical connotations in Europe). And in one scene, the local office of the Magisterium has painted on the outside of it Christian icons, apparently of the four evangelists, so that the office looks like the altar area of many churches. So the association is hard for the trained eye to miss: Christianity, perhaps especially the Roman Catholic variety, is associated with the evil Authority that is trying to control everyone. Now the average 10 year old may have no idea what an iconostasis looks like or what the words "Magisterium" or "heretic" mean in the real world, but one wonders if the really extreme lovers of this book can possibly grow up to be the very devout sort of Roman Catholics that the Church is no doubt trying to cultivate?

Finally, I should say there is the issue of the daemons - the spirits of the various characters that take the form of animals. Because of the spelling of the word itself, as well as the function of the daemons in the story, I feel they are intended to be associated with Socrates' daemon which he describes in the Apology (which is something like his conscience or connection to the divine will), rather than with demons as they are usually understood (fallen angels/spiritual forces of wickedness) in the Judeo-Christian tradition, though the words "daemon" and "demon" are clearly variants of the same word.

So the Authority/Magisterium of The Golden Compass could represent any number of actual regimes - including the Greek City-state that killed Socrates for that matter, and for that reason the movie is not explicitly anti-Christian/Catholic. Indeed one could even argue, I suppose, (based on having seen only the first movie) that the Golden Compass is a source of "divine revelation" and could be used as an analogy to the Bible. However the association of traditional Christian lingo and imagery with "the Evil powers" in this film is very noticeable to me.