The Golden Compass

Saw The Golden Compass last night. Whilst it wasn’t as good as the book (although few films are) it was a pleasant surprise – a well paced, well produced adventure film. Even the kid in it managed not to be too wince-inducing. It even managed to have some of the nastiness of the book reproduced in the film (particularly when the bears fight at the end).

There’s been some criticism of the film for watering down the anti-Christian/anti-Catholic sentiments of the book. And, yeah, the enemy in the film, the Magisterium, is presented a lot less like the Church and more like a bog standard dictatorship. But this change isn’t to the detriment of the film – in fact, far from it. The film’s subtext is about free will, with the heroic characters within fighting the attempts of the Magisterium to tell people how to live not just in the world of The Golden Compass, but also in all other worlds as well.

And that message of fighting for the right to think for yourself, regardless of whether it is against religious or political authority, is pretty potent. And it is nice to see what is on paper a kid’s movie giving that message.