The Golden Compass
The Golden Compass is, first and foremost, a book. To be honest the real name of the book is The Northern Light, but once more Americans decided it was not a good name for a book. Since yesterday it is also a film, which I have watched in its first night.
It is hard for me to judge the film, mostly because I have read the book (and loved it). The comparison is not fair, because the film is not able to bring the quality of the book to the cinemas. Try not to misunderstand me, the film is good, but it is not the book!
I have to admit that I haven’t been impressed by Dakota Blue Richards, but probably this is due to the massive interaction with digital characters. The other part of the cast have seen their original (paper) characters, shrinked a little bit.
There are, however, some choices that I do not share. The film ends before the story in the book, leaving out an extremely important part of the book. The book itself is “open ended“, as is the film, but the latter one is so cute and kind… no blood during the fight, no dark characters, too pretty. The Northern Light shows character you fear and hate, it makes you lose the perception of who is Good and who is Not (where Good is a relative value). In this the film have been highly disappointing, because it was not able to delivery all this.
Clearly a two hours film cannot deliver all the book, but I have not appreciated the poor characters portraits and the lack to make the public feel the bond between the characters and their Daemons. What about the complete removal of the Church? It would have been “impolite” to tell bad things on it? Would it be hard to make the sequels with a medieval, Machiavellian church?
For the rest… a nice two hours film.
Tags: TheGolden Compass, The Northern Light, His Dark Material, Dust, Lyra, Oxfors, Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Eva Green
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