Lost in transition

Nicole Kidman, left, stars as Mrs. Coulter and Dakota Blue Richards is Lyra in the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel The Golden Compass. (Laurie Sparham/New Line Cinema)

At early screenings of David Lynch’s convoluted adaptation of the sci-fi novel Dune, filmgoers received photocopied cheat sheets to help them navigate the movie. Never a good sign.

I like to think of movies as relatively self-explanatory, research-free excursions — the one chunk of time in a week where a book in hand is kind of useless. Yet about halfway through The Golden Compass, I had the urge to sprint to the nearest bookstore and bone up. This is a film that assumes a level of source literacy that the best adaptations simply don’t. Anyone who can’t tell a Hobbit from a Muggle would still feel transported by Lord of the Rings or the early Harry Potter films, but The Golden Compass, based on the best-selling, controversially atheistic children’s novel by Philip Pullman, is for insiders only.

An adaptation of the first book in Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, the film must act, in effect, as a compass itself, orienting the reader to the fantastic universe that will unfold over the (assumed) next two parts. But the tool is fussy, or broken; it never elucidates much, except the need for a Lynchian cheat sheet. Let me in, oh Golden Compass; I want to enjoy you without reading the Coles Notes first.

The story takes place in a parallel universe (Norway is Norway and zeppelins are transportation) that looks a little like 1940s London under the thumb of a Nazi-like government called the Magisterium. In this world, people’s souls — or “daemons,” pronounced demons — walk beside them in animal form. It’s a smart idea, and not just because a crowd where each person is shadowed by a fluttering bird or a leaping leopard makes for a stunning visual. The daemons function as living metaphors revealing who people really are, in ways both comical (the cricket on the shoulder of a cocky Magisterium officer) and terrifying (a man followed by a cheetah is a man to be reckoned with).

Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) is the film’s urchin-heroine, a classic children’s book ragamuffin living as an orphaned ward of a posh college. Children’s daemons shape-shift, and Lyra’s, named Pan, is most often a tiger cub or a sharp-nosed ferret (always voiced by Finding Neverland’s Freddie Highmore). Pan acts as Lyra’s conscience, warning her away from the trouble she attracts once she’s entrusted with an alethiometer, the titular Golden Compass, a banned truth-telling instrument that answers questions posed in the mind of the user. (Disclosure: because of the film’s bad ’splainin’, I cribbed this description of the alethiometer’s function from a lexicon posted on the website. While there, I took a test and learned that if I had a daemon, it would be a fox named Gabriel; sadly, this has been the most riveting part of my Golden Compass experience thus far.)

Lyra doesn’t know it yet, but she’s a prophecy, sent to liberate the world from the Magisterium’s iron reign. Her first step is using the alethiometer to track down the “Gobblers,” be-tuqued men who are stealing poor children from the streets.

Orphans, stolen children, bogeymen, the future of the world resting on the shoulders of one small kid — these are the kinds of primal fears that animate the best children’s literature. Too bad, then, that as it lurches toward more and more impressive CGI trickery — a war between armoured “ice bears” is as good a holiday diversion as anything in Narnia or Hogwarts — The Golden Compass pays less and less attention to its own great Dickensian undertow.

A mysterious, Jessica Rabbit-like glamour puss named Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman, whose face now resembles a Greek theatre mask; you can see her knees straining when she attempts to frown) slinks into the school, casting a beady eye on Lyra. Coulter is an authoritarian opposed to free thought. (The book was published in 1995, so it can only be a tee-hee coincidence that she bears such a striking resemblance to that other cool, blond, conservative Coulter of the real world — or, at least, of CNN.)

In contrast, Lyra’s guardian, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig), is a radical, and some say a heretic. He wants to head to the icy north to investigate a mystical “dust” whose existence may overturn the Magisterium’s authority. This infuriatingly under-explained dust appears to be the key to the universe. But wait — isn’t the alethiometer the key? What’s the grumpy Lord’s damage, anyway? Why is that Veronica Lake lady in the school cafeteria? The film is full of unanswered questions and unanchored concepts. So many characters flit past, it feels like you’re standing in a butterfly arboretum: witches, a cowboy (Sam Elliott, visiting from Deadwood), spy-bugs, evil nurses in a Dr. Evil-style laboratory in the tundra, roving “Gyptians” — we get a litany of nice-to-meet-you-freak introductions, but no followup, no hang time, no depth.

The radical Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig, right) acts as Lyra's guardian in The Golden Compass. (Laurie Sparham/New Line Cinema)

Good fantasy has a super-strong gravitational pull that draws the viewer into the laws of its imaginary universe without self-consciousness. But The Golden Compass isn’t sufficiently assured or emotionally resonant to keep itself from looking silly. When Ian McKellan’s voice booms from the mouth of a gigantic “ice bear” named Iorek Byrnison — “I will serve you in your campaign until you have your victory!” — I almost giggled. That’s not immersion.

The reason for the vagueness of the film may have crossed over from the real world. Some Catholic organizations were so offended by the books’ atheistic overtones that they’ve called for a boycott of the film. They can exhale now. Whatever Pullman’s agenda, director Chris Weitz has told the press that he stripped away many of the film’s religious elements to make the film more palatable. In doing so, he also made things more confusing: when a witch casually mentions the impending “war for free will,” it’s a notion that feels just barely linked to everything that’s come before. One is constantly noticing little scraps from the religious version of the story that just kind of hang there, blowing in the tundra wind. For example, this bit of passing dialogue seems significant: “A long time ago, two people made a mistake.” The line calls, but there’s no response.

Pullman has stated that while he’s a critic of organized religion, he is interested in “the sense of awe and mystery when we look at the universe, the urge to find a meaning and a purpose in our lives, our sense of moral kinship with other human beings.” The film seems content to dwell in this Oprah-esque domain where the spirit — cuddly and afoot — is celebrated. The worst thing that can happen to a human is that his daemon is killed, meaning he loses his soul, his own moral compass. It will surely offend some Christians that the compass resides within and not above, but the film feels more anti-government than anti-organized religion. There are no sit-on-my-knee priest bad guys, and it’s unlikely that any group will rise to the defence of the goose-stepping Magisterium. Even if the word comes from the teaching function of the Catholic church, no Catholic would admit to recognizing himself in this comic-book vilification, and few viewers will get the reference. In other words, any provocation lies inert.

The Golden Compass feels like a warm-up session for the next installment, a really flashy ad. The pivotal battle for free will never arrives, and I felt as if I, the viewer, was a chastised toddler denied my treat: “We’ll just save that for later, shall we?”

Films should be self-contained units, rapturous unto themselves. The Golden Compass is technically proficient, but it never achieves the full-throttle escapism of a fantasy film, or the cerebral massage promised by the books. The assumption is that we’ll get the thrills in the second one, but I don’t think I could find my way to return to this lacklustre little universe, even with a compass.

The Golden Compass opens across Canada on Dec. 7.

Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBCnews.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.