I don’t understand people sometimes

Let’s talk about a controversy that’s going round regarding the movie “The Golden Compass”. There’s a lot of controversy going on that this film is super anti-Christian and even the Vatican has condemned it as portraying a world devoid of compassion and humanity feeling. Essentially a godless world. According to Wikipedia, it says that people saw the Magisterium as a Church gone wrong and the movie in itself was a rebellion against the Magisterium and the established order and is therefore promoting anti-Christianity and atheism. Did I get it right? I don’t really understand it though. That’s why no matter what I argue here, I’ll still be arguing in the dark. Can someone please explain it to me in a nutshell so I can edit my post accordingly.

My take on the storyline: It’s a film based on a book called “Northern Lights” by Philip Pullman. In this story, people’s souls live outside of the body and are manifested as creatures called daemons. Kids’ daemons are not fixed and can still change shape. As with real life society, the society in the film are also divided into classes and are ruled by this governing body called the Magisterium. There is also this thing called Dust which is supposed to be the thing which gives rise to anything and also forms a conduit between worlds. Ok, so, as the story goes, some evil people somewhere are kidnapping children to experiment on them by ‘cutting’ their daemon away from them, supposedly thinking that it would make them more…obedient? Supposedly it’s supposed to cut off the ‘bad influence’ of Dust that happens when the kids grow older. Along the way all the adventures and the fighting polar bears and evil characters etc. And in the end they managed to save most of the kids and ends with a note that war is coming or something like that.

I enjoyed the film even though (I think I said so before), the huge action sequences gave me a headache. No where did I start to equate the Magisterium with the Church. I think people are reading far too much into the film. You might as well say that Star Wars is anti-religion also. It’s just as bad – the Force being Christianity and the Imperial Senate being the church. No? But I digress. I can understand (even if I didn’t like it) why people were so pissed off at the Da Vinci Code. After all, Dan Brown himself wrote in the book that the story is true. But this? It’s FANTASY. It’s NOT REAL. It doesn’t even come near to portraying real life. In real life, people’s souls don’t exist outside of the body. This is and was clearly portrayed as a PARALLEL universe. Who said that parallel universes have to mirror reality? I have no idea where this controversy came from. Far from being godless and promoting people to turn against the church, I saw it as being the other way round. Lyra was working against the Magisterium in order to restore what was the ‘religion’ which was about the Dust and souls and what not. The Magisterium was the bad guy that was trying to kill off ‘religion’ and beliefs. If we wanted to draw real life parallels, then the Magisterium is the secular government. Actually, I saw the Magisterium as the coughusgovernmentcough. The part about cutting off the children’s daemons is like the government brainwashing people to do its bidding. A thing which is not uncommon in the world. It was not godless, rather, it was a portrayal of the kids searching for god (in the Dust) as an alternative to the evil government that they are living under. Yes, I interpreted Dust as God.

Oh and by the way, I don’t know what was the point of the aleithometer. It was just a tool to advance the plot. It wasn’t some sinister whatever. Not that I perceived anyway. Same with the polar bears. Not entirely important to the plot as a whole. Probably why I almost forgot about those anyway. (until I looked up imdb then remembered).

Yeah anyway, in my earlier post I awarded this film 4 out of 5 stars. I do not retract this rating because well, this is my honest opinion and if peope can’t tell the difference between a work of fiction and fantasy as compared to say one which purposely tries to be a satire or social commentary, then it’s their own business to come and pull out controversies out of nowhere. I thought the major themes were actually friendship and hope and justice. I recommend this movie to whoever wants to watch a good film. Like I said before, why can’t people go to the movies and enjoy films for their own sake? Let entertainment be entertainment and stop trying to find things that aren’t there!

~ by mezzogal on December 23, 2007.