Left Flank

I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy because of an unflattering review of the movie, The Golden Compass. in The Atlantic. What first impressed me about that article was the author's canny honesty about his role as the original author on a Hollywood movie using an adapted script.

In discussing the film, he chose his words carefully, acknowledging that his role now is to be «sensible» so that the next two films get made. Nonetheless, he was honest about what was missing: «They do know where to put the theology,» he said, «and that's off the film.»

Long silence. Then, «I think if everything that is made explicit in the book or everything that is implied clearly in the book or everything that can be understood by a close reading of the book were present in the film, they'd have the biggest hit they've ever had in their lives. If they allowed the religious meaning of the book to be fully explicit, it would be a huge hit. Suddenly, they'd have letters of appreciation from people who felt this but never dared say it. They would be the heroes of liberal thought, of freedom of thought … And it would be the greatest pity if that didn't happen.

«I didn't put that very well. What I mean is that I want this film to succeed in every possible way. And what I don't want to do, you see, is talk the other two films out of existence. So I'll stop there.»

I did watch the movie, and I can only say, that Sam Elliot and Nicole Kidman are Lee Scoresby and Mrs. Coulter.

And then, I learned the books were based on Pullman's appreciation for John Milton, and the Enlightenment. Having studied Milton in college for a seminar one semester, all his poems and political works included, I chose immediately to read the first children's fiction I've read since I was actually a child. I only read the first book of C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, which I cannot really recall distinctly, and only Tolkien's The Hobbit. The first of Pullman's trilogy, The Golden Compass (all three books are named for idiosyncratic gizmos essential for understanding), is mostly set in the snowy sub-arctic wastes, like the other two volumes, and, although I recognized the allusion, I labored to keep reading. What Amanda Marcotte says, that the "...books are incredibly imaginative, so I churned right through them, even when the prose was tepid" is an experience I can second. Unlike a child, I bent my head into the reading for the payoff at the end.

Instead of allowing Pullman to hit me over the head with what Marcotte rightly calls the "Christianist temper tantrum", I concentrated conscientiously on the themes of "...attachment to self and to others and how religion struggles to turn people against themselves and against each other so that we're weak and stupid and easier to control." The child who reads Harry Potter will not like Lyra Belacqua or Will Parry. Both girl and boy are precocious pre-adolescents with self-consumed parents, either for good or bad reasons, and have endured fuller lives stuffed with lessons both have mastered alone. The child who dreams of running away and finding the gypsies, or just wonders what homeless people do at night, not just despising his/her parents for their apparent conformity, is the target audience. In the end, religion is as much a crutch as a cause.

Those readers who have found the last installment, The Amber Spyglass, disappointing, are only half-right. The problem is that the second book, The Subtle Knife, doesn't pull its weight, leaving the third book to cover the chronology at a gallop. Pullman could have introduced Mary Malone, Lyra's and Will's ostensible mentor, earlier. Lord Asriel also seems to disappear until the third book. The mechanics of multi-dimensionality could also have been explored more fully. In The Amber Spyglass, as a result, Lyra's trip to the Land of the Dead is compromised. Here was a series of scenes with classical and biblical allusions that gave Pullman a chance to rebut Dante, and he balked. Resolving the conflict with the harpies guarding the dead by means of resolving Lyra's childish habit of telling lies is also excellent. If for nothing else, Lyra revealed torn from her soul, or shape-shifting daemon, caused me pages of anguish wondering if the two would ever meet again. Similarly, the battle sequences seemed narratively threadbare. Only Pullman's diction slowed down the rushing torrent of the badly scripted chronology.

Unfortunately, Pullman failed to update Milton for 21st Century, and leaves Dante the field for bold visions of the afterlife. Scripting God as an archangel tortured by Enoch, reinvigorated as the archangel, Metatron, with a role as a puppet ruler and forbidden to die, is a small flash of brilliance swamped by poor strategic judgment. There are also some wonderful characters, like Lee Scoresby, Farder Caram, Mrs. Coulter, and Iorek Byrnison. Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are the archetypical self-consumed adults whose service to the universe is small compensation for the harm inflicted on their daughter, Lyra.

No matter what other readers might have felt, I thought the ending was surprisingly brilliant, although that doesn't compensate for the strategic mistakes getting there. Explaining first love without resorting to fairy tales that teach girls and boys to sacrifice themselves in ways adults cannot is laudable. Narrating the sequence of how a relationship begins and grows, and then ends, is also important. The picture of Lyra, resolute to live her life, yet grateful for the love given her, is a fortunate ending worthy of many new stories in many new worlds.