The Golden Compass - Chris Weitz (2007)

The Golden Compass
From Chris Weitz

IMDB

Quote :

In a parallel universe, young Lyra Belacqua journeys to the far North to save her best friend and other kidnapped children from terrible experiments by a mysterious organization

Seen on the plane on our way back yesterday
Good easy and entertaining familly/fantasy movie
It gave me a great epic feeling, also with the music and the adventure atmosphere, really enjoyed it
I would have seen this as a child, I would have been totally in love with it
A few down sides however, some ideas could have been explored more, some things are not totally explained and the end seems to suggest a "to be continued" but I'm not sure that this was the idea
A more developped and longer movie would have made it excellent in my opinion
But just for the special effects which are amazing (the movie won a well deserved oscar for it), it is a must see

I know it's a cliché, but the book is so much better.

Really, for fantasy, the books (it's a trilogy, which explains the open ending) explore a lot of quite deep and profound philosophical and spiritual concepts and ideas, as well as touching on the fields of physics and science in an original way, apart from being a really comfortable read. I was actually pretty impressed when I read them.

What annoyed me mildly about the film is that while in the books, there is a definite negative criticism towards organised religion, Christianity in particular (although it's subtle), you don't get much of that in the movie. I guess the filmmakers watered that aspect down a bit for the easily offended churchgoing masses in the US. Of course, you can never expect that all of a book's content can be completely translated into film, but still, this plays quite large role in the books.

When viewed as a book for children/ young adults, I really like how the writer tries to teach kids how to think for themselves, always keep an open mind, stay curious and never stop looking for new knowledge to develop yourself. Another moral is how there is no definitive 'good' or 'evil'; everything is a bit of both, everything has it's own complex motivation for doing what it does. (not surprising too, considering the entire story is in part a retelling of John Milton's epic poem 'Paradise Lost', which deals with the biblical Lucifer's fall from heaven, but told with Lucifer as the protagonist)

All in all, definitely a story that I'll read to my kids, if I ever have any.

(Apart from all this, the whole setting is so entertaining... armored bears, spirit animals that are a part of your soul, Siberian tribes, dimension-hopping... For those things the film worked quite good.)

Oh, by the way, the trilogy is called 'His Dark Materials' , with 'The Golden Compass' (British title: 'Northern Lights') as the first book, 'The Subtle Knife' as the second and 'The Amber Spyglass' as the third. The author is an Englishman named Philip Pullman .

I didn't know it was based from trilogy book. And with all what you say about religion, philosophy, morals... there are defenetly none of these in the movie which is only a very very easy movie for kids imo with good special effect

Mataklap wrote:

(British title: 'Northern Lights')

Having fond memories of my first explorations into the wonderful world of smoking pot now