 Golden Compass
Pullman author of the books which the movie is based wondered why his books hadn’t attracted as much controversy as the Harry Potter series. “As he told The Sydney Morning Herald, he was “saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God.” (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/religious-movies) Killing Narnia and Lord of the Rings Pullman in the past held the much loved Narnia and Lord of the Rings books in contempt. He once dismissed the Lord of the Rings trilogy as an “infantile work” primarily concerned with “maps and plans and languages and codes.” Narnia got it even worse: “Morally loathsome,” he called it. “One of the most ugly and poisonous things I’ve ever read.” He described his own series as Narnia’s moral opposite. “That’s the Christian one,” he told me. “And mine is the non-Christian.” http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/religious-movies
Good is evil and evil is good Pullman is a self confessed humanist a go between an atheist and an agnostic. So he reverses our understanding of what is good and what is evil. The Church (and I take it all religions) are evil, oppressive and inhibiting of all that he would deems as good. Witches, telling lies, disobedience, being self centred and selfish are all qualities that are represented as being good. The main character’s name Lyra (Liar) is apt because she hardly ever tells the truth. She is stubborn, wilful and rebellious. Humanism Charged and guilty Pullman attacks the whole Church lumping us all together. He portrays the Church as oppressive and hater of free thinking and charges it of great evil, of cutting people souls away from them and also of cutting genitals. But Humanism has far more to answer for in terms of the oppression of it’s people and those who desire to be free to speak the truth. Far more people have been victims of humanist regimes than of those under the Church. Millions of people have been exterminated and are still being oppressed by Communism (a humanistic philosophy). How many thousands of unborn Children are cut from the womb with the humanistic rationalisation that it’s only a foetus. I am much more afraid of humanists than of any world religion. Under aged sex saves the world There are many disturbing features in these stories the most of which is Pullman’s assertion that sex between two 12year old children is responsible for saving all the worlds. In an interview he denies any explicit reference to the two characters having sex, that they only kissed. However when I read the books I certainly believed them to have engaged in intercourse. He is reversing the fall in Genesis. Instead of it being evil Pullman asserts it was actually good. He adds to the words of Genesis 3:1-7 as well as misquoting it. “...the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shalt ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 'For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and your daemons shall assume their true forms, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to reveal the true form of one’s daemon, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband....
“And the eyes of them both were opened.... But when the man and the woman knew their own daemons, they knew that a great change had come upon them, for until that moment it had seemed that they were at one with all the creatures of the earth and the air...." [1, p. 371-372] http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/007/compass-pullman.htm Heaven is replaced God dies in the last of the books but don’t worry he wasn’t really God he was one of the first angels that said he was God. Lyra’s father Lord Asriel doesn’t waste any time before establishing his republic of heaven. There is no God but there is dust. Dust is what makes up the universe: Pullman reveals it to be the evidence of human consciousness, a kind of godlike energy that surrounds everyone. People accumulate Dust by “thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on.” It starts to build up around puberty because, for Pullman, sexual awakening triggers the beginning of self-knowledge and intellectual curiosity. To him, the loss of sexual innocence is not a tragedy; it’s the springboard to a productive and virtuous adulthood. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/religious-movies When Lyra and Will free all the ghost from Hades they escape into a world where they return to dust. So the best these books can give us is that when we die we walk through hell to get to the other side and our particles return to dust to reform into something else. This is such a shallow and worthless hope that has no real meaning. PG is underrated I’m amazed that this film was given a PG rating. There are explicit battle scenes. One example is the when a bear has is lower jaw smashed off. In addition to this there are some very scary concepts in the movie. Children have the souls separated from them which in the book kills them, although this is not made clear in the movie. The movie stops short of the first books ending when Roger whom Lyra has gone to great effort to save is killed by her own father so that he can use the energy of his death to open a door to a parallel world. There were a number of very young children watching this film when I went on Boxing day and I shudder to think of what they are being exposed to and what they will be exposed to if the next two films are made. Warning If you have not read the books and go along to the films all might seem ok on the surface but be warned. The second and third books are much more explicitly anti Christian and amoral (without morals). Pullman is working to an agenda; he seeks to rectify what he sees to be the poisonous writings of CS Lewis and Tolkien. This is an anti Narnia and anti Lord of the Rings. As a movie There is lots of action, the characters are engaging and well acted. However I wonder how the next two films will go. I found the second and third book progressively disappointing because too many fantasy concepts are mixed in together so that it becomes difficult to relate to it. I just got tired of it in the end because anything happens; it becomes so random and meaningless. This of course is to be expected because there is no real basis or foundation left when you remove God and God’s morality from the world. Anything goes and that’s exactly what happens. Picking a fight It strikes me that Pullman has a chip on his shoulder, that he resents not being as popular and influential as Lewis and Tolkien. It really is a shame that he picks a fight with them because his books don’t even compare to the majesty of these to late authors. He will be long forgotten while the two great masters will remain as classics. Score 3 stars Great visuals, great acting, exciting story but lacks substance, meaning and purpose. |
