Letters to the Editor
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Stephanie, you haven't steered me wrong yet
Stephanie, please promise me you'll keep doing movie reviews for the rest of my natural life, or that if you ever stop, you'll give me your contact information so I can just ask you directly for moviegoing advice (we just went to see "I'm Not There" last weekend--WOW). I know opinions about films can be subjective, but for whatever reason your taste in movies is perfectly aligned with my own.
On this movie, not having seen the movie itself but being 2/3 of the way through the book trilogy, I will say in defense of the moviemakers that the "Golden Compass" book is also a little rushed in terms of the relationships between the characters. Lyra is a fully developed and brilliant character, but the deep and abiding love she and Iorek Byrnison quickly develop for each other seems to pop up out of nowhere. I get the relationship she has with the gypsies, since most of them have known her since she was a child (and she has a natural affinity for nomads). I also get Serafina Pekkala's devotion to her, which has more to do with a belief in prophecy than actual affection for Lyra the person. But what's up with Lee Scoresby? He seems such the cliche of a strong, silent Western-type hero that Pullman never bothers to develop him, or explain why one balloon ride with Lyra makes him want to treat her henceforth as his own daughter. (The sacrifices he makes for her make even less sense in the second book.) He's like a grizzled/jaded/mercenary Han Solo type who just suddenly flips his lid.
Yes, I'm sure Pullman's *ideas* are developed more fully in the book than in the movie, and an earlier letter writer hit the nail on the head as to why the movie is different and inferior in this regard: fear of offending somebody. But in terms of narrative story-telling and character development, Pullman is good, but he's no Tolkien.
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Name me one movie that's better than the novel
Compared to Pullman's language and plotting, Tolkien's work is oppressively patriarchal (only 3 quasi female characters in the whole trilogy) and numbingly adolescent and sexually naive. Jackson's movies were wonders, but after an hour of each one of them I started to check my watch to see when they would end.
The movie version of Dune was a mess too, but it did depict a huge sense of scale about history and fate. Even the miniseries they made of Dune a few years ago, despite it's length and detailed exposition, seemed a sort of gimcrack universe compared to the Lynch's movie.
But no movie of a book can ever supplant the richness and intimacy of reading the words and having your imagination create your own particular vision of that work. A movie can only be better than the book if the reader's imagination is flaccid or dull.
The theme of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy is far more philosophically rich and challenging than anything in Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. It goes far beyond religion per se, it goes to the heart of what being human really means, and it tries to wash away 20 centuries of shame about sexuality and the pleasures of sensation.
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More than one film that is (was) better, or at least as good as the novel
Blade Runner
The Godfather
The Silence of the Lambs
Children of Men
Stand by Me
Any LeCarre adaptation with Sir Alec Guiness as Smiley
Mary Poppins
A Clockwork Orange
My Left Foot
The Lion in Winter
The Exorcist
BBC's Pride and Prejudice
Oh, and I'm really looking forward to The Diving Bell and Butterfly. My main point is that there have been absolutely excellent adaptations of books - and I'm a reader first and foremost. This film was clearly made with the philosphy that you can substitute money where imagination fails. It never works.
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"Name me one movie that's better than the novel"
Jaws
The Godfather
Gone with the Wind
The Shawshank Redemption
The Silence of the Lambs
Trainspotting
Jurassic Park
Fight Club
The Hunt for Red October
A Bridge Too Far
You're right ... it's difficult to narrow it down to one, when there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of films that are better than the novel they were based on.
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Talking of Jaws ...
This review nailed it, I think:
http://www.shinyshelf.com/article/3/4/1515
"it's like they made Jaws but left out the shark ... If you want to be nice to the shark demographic, you might want to avoid adapting one of perhaps only half a dozen novels in the history of literature that are about giant sharks that go around eating people."
I preferred the Golden Compass to any of the Harry Potter movies, or Lord of the Rings - a movie where none of the characters make any choices, display any wit and where the speed they move at depends on where they need to be, not the method of transport - but the problem is that it's taken a novel that's full of that British irony and spit and kicking against authority, where what's said and what's meant are two different things that need teasing apart, and turns it into goodies and baddies and spectacle.
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It really is anti-god
For once, Christian groups aren't frothing at the mouth over something totally ridiculous (i.e. Harry Potter). The trilogy really is anti-god. Not just anti-religion, anti-god. I am sorry for all you others who will miss out on this incredible surprise, because it is ballsy as hell and I'm grateful I got to experience it as a progression of "oh yawn, another 'follow your heart to god' theology" to "well, he definitely isn't a fan of organized religion, but..." to "oh my god, this really is about god." Awesome. (I don't capitalize "god," even when I'm referring to just one, because I am a superstitious, culture-bound kind of athiest. Rational, I know.)
The movie is a different story, as I guess it's been sanitized. That's fine in the first movie, but what is the third one going to be about? There is literally nothing left if you take out the anti-religious content. One wonders if it will ever get made, given the response so far.
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For jdsmith
I'm not going to apologize for deriding the earlier tripe on the subject. That piece was and is bad, pointless, self-centered, shallow, and altogether not worth anyone's time reading.
However, I was clearly wrong when I suggested that Salon intended said self-centered tripe to be their last word on the subject of the film. Apparently, they're not that dumb, and I applaud them for that.
This review is very good and tells me everything I need to know about the film. Mary Williams' piece only told me more about her, the only subject she seems to feel compelled to comment upon.