The Only Writing On The Golden Compass Whose Title Does Not Contain A Pun

Given the furor and controversy that was supposed to surround The Golden Compass due to its anti-religious message, the movie would seem to be headed towards a flop. And that is exactly as it should be, because this movie was bad.

As a fan of the Philip Pullman novels, it was probably inevitable that I would see this film at some point. And while adaptations such as the Lord of the Rings are some of my favorite movies, this one left me feeling glad that I had some free passes. The intellectual underpinning of the novel was stripped away, as was the character development. And the imagery of the movie was as comic as the dialogue. Every cliché was pulled out in an effort to make a well written, and cheerfully atheistic children’s story into an epic tale of bravery and meaning. The goal was to turn it into that tale without, of course, any actual bravery or meaning.

I was curious for moment after I finished watching, why Pullman would have allowed the movie to be made. I had read an interview with the author, where he admitted to having met with the director, read the script and seen early screenings of the film before production was complete. He pronounced himself satisfied with the product. I had to ask myself: why? Was it simple avarice? Did he possess strange need for widespread approval? None of these traits seemed likely given the novels. Then it dawned on me. He must have found the film hilarious.

Though I disagree wholeheartedly with the message of His Dark Materials, I think that the books are thought provoking and largely harmless. Only in responding to the series in the way that some American Protestants did is Pullman’s point truly made. If you fear ideas that you disagree with, then you are not truly secure in your faith. Pullman would argue that no one truly can be secure in this way, and so the religious will always seek to purge the world of ideas they dislike.

By allowing a version of his story to be released without the theological components, Pullman was able to make the point that the soul of his work was not the imagery but the ideas. The story doesn’t hold together without them. Thus if the movie flops, it must be that his popular series of books was popular because of his ideas and not in spite of them. And he gets to make the forces of political correctness in Hollywood live with the possibility that they could have made more money by rocking the boat then by pandering to fools. Ouch.

I can picture him laughing right now.