Dervish

Rodney Olsen has a post up about the Golden Compass on his blog, which reminds me Abu Yasmin and I went and saw it last week.  The first I knew of it, was reading a Christian blog in the States ranting about it being worse than Harry Potter (or sentiments to that effect).  Abu Yasmin and I were not sure if we would see it, only because it didn’t do well at the box-office in the US and Kidman’s performance was said to be rather stilted.  But with not much on offer at the cinema for our highly treasured and extremely rare chance to go to the movies by ourselves, the Golden Compass it was.

The premise was interesting enough, an alternate Earth in which there were groups of sentient beings: humans whose souls accompanied them outside their bodies in the form of animals called daemons, witches who flew around on broomsticks, and bears who could talk and wore armour.  There is an authoritarian evil hierarchy ruining everyone’s lives (in the movie called the Magisterium but apparently in the book it’s the Church, leaving quite a few Christian critics with their knickers rather understandably in knots) and the main character is a precocious girl called Lyra who seems to be the second-coming for all the free-thinking scientists who are trying desperately to keep truth alive.  I’m not going to say much more than that, in case you do want to see the movie. 

It left me flat, however.  Especially the ending, which clearly anticipated there would be lots of sequels to come (I don’t think so, somehow).  As I left the movie theatre feeling a bit unfulfilled I tried to pinpoint what I didn’t like about it.  After some discussion with Abu Yasmin, we hit on its polytheism.

In his excellent book Why Religion Matters, Huston Smith outlines a spiritual hierarchy using the analogy of one-way mirrors.  At the bottom is materialistic atheism, which sees material existence but nothing more. The next level is polytheism, which can look through the mirror and see the world of the materialist atheist but adds to it the capricious world of demons, sprites, angels, gods and every kind of superstition.  Nevertheless polytheists see no further.  The third level, which can see down into the other worlds is monotheism in which it is possible to understand God as a benevolent Creator, but goes no further.  Lastly, the top level is that of mysticism which can see down into the other levels, but experiences the immanence and transcendence of the Divine Reality. 

Smith argues that this spiritual hierarchy is found in any religion or ideology, and even though the author of the Golden Compass is apparently an atheist, the movie came across as very polytheistic. There was no ultimate Goodness that exists despite the evil inclinations of some (such as exists in Star Wars, which admittedly is more dualistic than it is monotheistic - maybe Smith needs another level between polytheism and monotheism).

Lyra irritated me too.  She seemed a bit rude and bratty for a child, even if she was the ‘chosen one’ of sorts.  You’d never get Harry Potter being as snarky as she came across.  (Lovely actress though, who did a brilliant job!)

Maybe the book is better, I am not sure.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.