Spontaneous Musings

The Golden Compass - directed by Chris Weitz ( a new director), starring Daniel Craig, Ian Mckellan (as the voice of the Polar Bear), Nicole Kidman, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Lee, Eva Green amongst others - is based on first of a triology of Young Adult novels written by Philip K. Pullman. Prior to becoming a movie, it was a radio play and a live action 6 hour play put on by the Royal Theater in London. The novels are entitled (in the US) The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass and comprise "His Dark Materials". They came out, with little fanfare in the US sometime around 2001, possibly before. Were best sellers and unlike Harry Potter, won critical awards and acclaim. What's interesting about the novels - is up until now, no one ever raised a ruckus on their content, at least not that I'm aware of. Suprised me when I read them - since the content is far more controversial than Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code and incredibly critical of "organized Christianity" specifically the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and most "fundamentalist" sects interpretation of Revelations. (It critiques the whole battle between the angels in heaven, pointing out that maybe Lucifier wasn't such a bad guy and Gabriel is a monster - the fight is about free will. By the way, this is by no means the first book to critique Christianity's literal interpretation of Revelations. Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman do it in "Good Omens".)

The movie in comparison to the books is actually quite tame, in fact I'm not even sure you can figure it out from what you see on the screen. So why the religious sects have chosen now to get all hot and bothered over it, I don't know. Desire for free publicity? Ghod, is everyone a publicity whore?

The novels aren't easy reading and fairly complex. They are also quite dark, far darker in some respects than the Harry Potter novels. Unlike most *popular* fantasy novels for children, these books center on the trials and tribulations of an adolescent girl. It is her coming of age story, not "his". And the adolescent girl is tough, tomboyish, prickily, courageous, and at times quarrlesome. I fell in love with the books because of the girl, who is called Lyra.

The film, which was cowritten by Pullman and Weitz, closely follows the book upon which it is based. To such an extent, I felt as if the pages had sprung to life. There are only a few discrepancies - which I didn't catch since I read the books over five years ago. I remember them much better than the Potter books, but not well enough to notice slight differences.

Now the books are densely plotted and detailed, more so than most Young Adult fiction - these come closer in style to Tolkien than Lewis, if that helps. Most of my friends barely made it through the last one. And to be honest, it took me a while to get into them. The reason is that Pullman introduces a couple of tricky metaphors - daemons (the human soul lives outside their body in the form of an animal entitled a daemon. The animals can touch you and you can touch them. Whatever the animal feels the human feels and vice versa.), the aliethometer or golden compass, and finally "dust" - the material that sprouts from a human form when it dies and is in the areas between worlds.

All of these concepts are explained in the film, but I'm not sure most viewers would be able to understand them if they hadn't read the books. Much like Harry Potter - the film more or less assumes you've read the books if you are watching it. But unlike Potter - it's not as popular. (Pullman got a bit preachy in his books, and as a result lost his reader; JKR did a better job of hiding her message amongst layers of metaphor in Potter. Not that Pullman didn't try and to be fair, Pullman's message was a tad harder and bit more complicated to express than JKR's.) I only compare the two because they literally started around the same time and were both on the Children's best seller lists.

The flaw in the film may be that much like the first two Potter films (which I also found a bit busy at times) - it attempts to cram too much into two hours of screen time. It wants to put the whole book on the screen - well the whole book except for the final chapter (which I had no problems with) and as a result loses a bit in character development - although, most of the characters (Asrial/Coulter and The Witch) don't really get developed that much until the later books. The book was over 300 pages long.It is not as "simple" as Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - which has less characters and only two or three tasks. Lyra's journey is similar to the heroine of The Snow Queen, which may partly explain why I loved it. We all have our favorite story tropes. Some love the whole hero's journey aka Luke Skywalker/Hercules myth. Me? I love the Snow Queen - about the girl who faces her fears and prejudices to journey into the cold desolate north to rescue her male friend from the icy clutches of the Snow Queen, who metaphorically may be her adult self. Here - Lyra rescues her friend Roger from the icy clutches of Mrs. Coulter and the GOB. There's a twist in this tale that is not in The Snow Queen, which I won't spoil you on, but other than that the stories are similar - including polar bears, gypsies (here egyptians), witches and a cowboy.

Will you like it? Ah. Hard to tell. I'm not sure anyone who hasn't read the books can follow it or for that matter appreciate it. (This is how it may differ from Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Narnia - all of which could be appreciated if you had never read the books.) The guy in front of me found it silly (then again he didn't appear to be the sort who'd like this sort of thing - far more of Transformers type of guy.) This is not a boy's story so much as a girl's. The conflicts are not resolved with "fighting" - they are resolved with wit and cunning. The little girl never really fights anyone. And the main villian doesn't fight people either - she manipulates. Which makes it a bit low on the blood and guts and violence that people seem to get off on in these things. IT does have it's scarey bits - but they aren't "physical violence" so much as emotional and mental. That's not to say it does not have moments of violence - it does. Just, more subdued. There's a rocking fight between two polar bears and a huge battle at the end.

Is it for kids? Not sure. It's complicated. Not sure if most kids below the age of 10 could follow it. But I'm not around kids that much, so I may be wrong about that. There were kids in the theater. The small children were bored. Not enough action. Too much talk to hold their attention. I think it may be too old for them. But then I thought the book was too old for the market it was directed at. For some reason people think books concerning children should be for children, I'm not entirely sure that is true. Not saying kids shouldn't read it (I read Lord of the Rings and Dune in the sixth and seventh grades) but they may not fully understand it.

I enjoyed the film more than Narnia. It's beautiful. And well cast. A bit too busy perhaps, but I loved seeing my favorite bits from the book come to life. I'm hoping it does well enough for the next two films to be made.

Overall rating? B

PS: Did have some interesting previews. Most memorable? A computer animated version of Horton Hears A Who (which looked surprisingly good - I think they finally figured out a way to adapt Dr. Seuss for the screen.) And Inkheart about a father and daughter who have the ability to bring items in books to life whenever they read them aloud, which of course causes them problems when they bring a villian from the novel Inkheart to life and can't figure out how to get him back into the book before he destroys the world.

[No time to edit. Off to bed. Must get up at 6 am.]

1. While reading the NY Times this morning at the laundramat, which was a nice and warm, so much so the windows were literally sweating, I discovered that the Catholic church near me - been to Mass there five or six times, was where Al Capone got married. Its called St. Mary Star of the Sea and the congregation is made up of mostly Italian and Irish residents.

2. Again in the NY Times - this time the letters column, got even more information on the Transit Strike, causing me to realize this is not a black and white affair, not something you can really be definitive about.
Both sides were wrong and both sides were right. The Transit Union was right to want to keep their pensions, to have that security. Especially since they put money towards them at certain point. Although, I'm somewhat confused about that - since one group says they never put money towards their pension and don't think they should have to, and another says they have and don't want to lose that money. I can understand the desire for a pension and the fear of losing one - have that fear myself, having just joined a company that had one, which is merging with a company that does not and appears to be contemplating the idea of doing away with it completely.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that fear justifies walking off a job and endangering thousands of souls livilihoods, safety, health during a period in which those three things would be at greatest risk. Should a cop walk off a job if his pension is done away with? Yet - should we expect civil servants to be slaves for the public good? IS that what they do when they choose this line of work? Should we treat those we depend on and really cannot live without less well than movie stars and celebrities, who we most definitely can survive without? Why does the baseball player or movie star make 14 million a year and live in the mansion and the person who puts him or herself in danger each day making less than 60,000 if that? I don't know. The world makes very little logical sense most of the time, methinks.

3. Just read a lengthy article on Philip Pullman in the International Writers Edition of The New Yorker. Pullman is an oddity. I agree with half of what he says and half of it has me rolling my eyes. But I think part of that discrepancy has to do with dissimilar backgrounds. Pullman believes you story doesn't begin until you think or realize you've been born to the wrong family. But what about those of us who did not have dysfunctional families and feel we fit with ours? Are we instantly less creative, less artistic than those who had parents who more likely than not should have never had children? And what about Pullman's children - does he believe they should come to that realization about him? I do to a degree agree with this comment though - that while truth may not be a tangible object, if you think of it like an imaginary number - like the square root of minus one - you can use it to calculate all manner of things without it. I also agree with some of his criticism of Tolkien and CS Lewis. Did not realize he disliked Tolkien as much as he does. He considers "The Lord of The Rings - a fundamentally infantile work" - "Tolkien is not interested in the way grown-up, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps, plans, languages and codes." Yes, but what is wrong with that? Why should a story be only about the interaction? And I'm not completely sure this is true - how do you account for the father/child relationship/friendship between Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins, which keeps spinning about until you can't really tell who is which? Or the relationship between Frodo and Sam? Or Gollum, a character who is in an eternal struggle with his own baser instincts? Yes, the mythology on its surface may seem a tad simplistic, but
there are items within that which do provide depth. Tolkien wrote the story as an anti-war allegory. How can Pullman miss that? On the other hand, the books are a tad dense with language, maps, plans, codes and battle sequences that I can see how some readers may become a bit lost in them. But perhaps that was part of Tolkien's point? That we lose a bit of ourselves and our ability to interact by becoming far too distracted with the intricacies of what was originally created to make that interaction possible. Pullman does address this himself - stating his frustration with adult contemporary literature and preferring children's stories: "In adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are flet to be more important:technique, style, literary knowingness...The present-day would-be George Eliots take up their stories with a pair of tongs. They're embarrassed by them. If they could write novels without stories in them, they would. Sometimes they do." Is this true though? Or is it a condemnation of style over substance found in some works notably William Gaddis' novels? You could say the same I suppose about Cormac McCarthy, except I found a beautiful story well-told in All The Pretty Horses. And same with James Joyce - whose tale of Leopold Bloom does not become buried by the technique so much as enriched by it. I guess it all depends on how you view story, how you see it.
Then there's his criticism of CS Lewis' Narnia series, which in some ways I always felt Pullman's own triology "His Dark Materials" was a counter to - even though it is based on Milton's Paradise Lost. I can't say I completely disagree, but I find it oddly interesting that as child I was completely unaware of the negative messages I see in the series as an adult, or if aware, I dismissed them and concentrated on the portions of the tale I wished to concentrate on. I think that's what people do actually - see what they want to see, push aside what they don't. So much information - you know. Impossible to take in all of it. Even now, here, I am taking bits and pieces of a ten page article - remembering what I wish from it, ignoring the rest. Interacting with it.
I agree with Khalad Hosseni's comment on Book TV a while back - "Reading fiction is an interactive experience." But I'd extend that to all reading. We superimpose our own views and experience and understanding on to that which we read, taking from it what is useful to us, and disposing of the rest. That said, I do agree with the criticism of Lewis, a criticism I'd extend to a few other children's novelists here and there - "The idea of keeping childhood alive forever and ever and regretting the passage into adulthood - whether it's gentel, rose-tinged regret, or a passionate, full-blooded hatred, as it is in Lewis - is simply wrong." Yes, agreed. It was the problem I had with Lewis' later novels in the series and why I barely made it through some of them, even as a child who liked being a child and was in no hurry to grow up, I saw this as troublesome.

4. The above paragraph reminds me of a comment Wales made over the weekend - she was quoting her film professor, Wales has been taking film analysis courses: "Every film made is about the men struggling with their father and eventually becoming their father or the very thing they struggled with." After watching three episodes of La Femme Nikita yesterday and The Outsiders, can't say I disagree. So many of our stories are about the relationship between parent and child and the fear the child has of becoming the parent or either losing childhood or the desire to escape it as quickly as possible. In La Femme Nikita - the series ends with Nikita becoming more or less her father, metaphorically. Cool and distant, running his organization, as he has molded her to do. And in Angel the Series, we see Liam/Angel grapple with the fact that he in effect is no different than his own father - in his need to control his son's life and his struggle with that awareness. On the female side of the fence - depending on the writer - it tends to be more about not becoming or becoming one's mother.
That struggle. And watching each show unfold, I find myself wondering if only those who came from dysfunctional families are the ones that get their stories told? Or if we feel those are the only stories worth telling?
Perhaps not...I do see exceptions to that rule. Not all tales are about that. Nor all stories. So I'm not sure Wales' professor's generalization holds. But then that's the problem with generalizations, isn't it?

Now off to eat lunch and debate whether to see a movie - four to choose from: Memoirs of Geisha, Narnia, Brokeback Mountain, and Syriana at my local theater. Or sit home, veg, and watch DVDs. Nice to have options.
Need money though - laundry sort of took a good portion of it. Three loads - 12 dollars. Sigh.