Friday, December 14, 2007

The Golden Compass

A lovely movie! Nowhere near the complexity and greatness of the book, but I truly believe that is the best anyone could do trying to fit everything into a movie.
I still have no clue what the big uproar from Christian groups is caused by. Is it because Pullman is an atheist? Maybe they are put off by souls that live outside the body and are called demons?
I see nothing bad about the core plot, which is that of people fighting to preserve their free will from an evil organization called the Magisterium. Is that not supposedly God's greatest gift to humans, free will? Perhaps people who belong to such hard core Christian groups have such a group mentality to have lost their free will? Or perhaps the Magisterium trying to impose it's will on everyone hits a little too close to home, is a little too much like themselves?
In the immortal words of Sting -
"Men go crazy in congregation they only get better one by one."

2 comments:

nolocontendere said...

Don't know much about the book or movie, but if there is any symbolism at all in it then the christopaths will find fault. They literally do not understand symbolism. It's why they took an extreme dislike to Joseph Campbell.

By the way, thank you for pointing to "RFK Must Die". It was very good.

LesleyinNM said...

The people with the fish on the back of their cars don't understand symbolism? I think they understand symbolism if it is something they agree with and otherwise they don't. Or being that they are group people, they probably need an important church person to explain it to them. They are followers and can't be expected to think for themselves. It makes it easy for their leaders who wouldn't want them to leave the flock to just tell them it is evil and have them believe it. Did I mention those fish are a dead giveaway that there is a lousy driver in front of you?

I am glad you enjoyed RFK must die. I really did, but I have seen very few documentaries on that subject, if any.