His Dark Materials
Bewildered compass
It is possible that a lot of people that watched “The Golden Compass” (USA, 2007) never had idea of the controversy about the original work, the book series “His Dark Materials” by English writer Philip Pullman. A declared atheist, Pullman created a stir by shaping the powerful dominant organization in the world of his books, the Magisterium, with features very similar to those of the Catholic Church. Obviously, as in Hollywood there are no fools, these “heretical” aspects were very much softened in the film.
For fans of the books, and those who would like a more faithful version, the chance came with the series “His Dark Materials” (USA, 2019), produced by HBO, and much closer to the original vision of Pullman. There are three seasons, where each corresponds to one of the books (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass).
In the first moments of the film and the series, the viewer is warned that there are many worlds that live in parallel universes and that one of the story, although it is very similar, is not ours. In this world, each human being has a “daemon”, a physical manifestation of his own soul in animal form. Children, until they reach a certain maturity, have a changeable daemon, which can take different forms. No one can touch the other’s daemon, and it ends up being an alter ego of its owner, with whom it exchanges confidences and opinions.
It is in this strange world that Lyra Belacqua lives, an orphan who is raised at Oxford University, one of the few organizations that are not subordinate to the powerful Magisterium. At the margins of this society are the families of the Gypsies, who had their own laws, but lived in harmony with the rest of the population.
Lyra had a protector, the mysterious Lord Asriel, whose thirst for knowledge challenged the Magisterium, who prefered to dictate what people could know and what to believe. Asriel discovered the existence of a substance known only as “dust”, which had a relationship with each other’s daemon.
A mystery plagues the world of Lyra. Many children, especially the ones of Gypsies were abducted and taken to an unknown destination. When Lyra’s best friend disappears, she takes it upon herself to find him.
The university dean gives Lyra a gift, a mysterious artifact known as the Golden Compass, whose purpose and form of use the child is unaware of. In the meantime, a mysterious woman appears, Marisa Coulter, who takes an interest in Lyra and takes her to her home in London.
When she manages to realize Marisa’s real intentions, Lyra runs away, receiving help from the Gypsies families, and later from the witches, whose queen, Serafina Pekkala, also stands by her side.
Everyone’s destination will be the dangerous land of the North, where Polar Bears coexist with dangerous nomads of those lands and a mysterious laboratory, where terrible experiments are carried out with missing children.
Regardless of the possible religious interpretations that may be made, “The Golden Compass” is an interesting adventure film, with stunning special effects and the reaffirmation of family values. The choice of Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter and Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel greatly changed the viewer’s perception, as they are the villains of the story.
The HBO series, which by the end of 2020 concluded the second season, is very close to the literary version. James McAvoy and Ruth Wilson lack the charm of Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, but they interpret their characters correctly. The talented child actress Dafne Keen, who made her film debut in “Logan” (USA, 2017), was the right choice for the protagonist Lyra Belacqua.