THE GOLDEN COMPASS: REVIEW

Now I understand.

When I sit there, trying to explain how unbelievably awesome the movie/book/video game/internet cartoon I am fascinated with is, and the person next to me is trying very hard, but ultimately, just has a blank, pleasant smile on their face. I get it now. I must get something, anyway after sitting through The Golden Compass, which cost some 180 million dollars and is…

Well, it’s hard to finish the sentence. Is The Golden Compass an allegory about religion telling us what to believe? It is a rip-roaring fantasy adventure, with animals that talk and a machine telling us the way? Is it a rip-off of Dune, where everyone’s talking about a certain item (spice or dust) but no one actually knows what it is? Ya got me. All I know is, 2 hours later, I was very confused and 12 dollars poorer.

The Golden Compass is based on book one of His Dark Materials, a fantasy series unread by me but beloved by many. If this sounds familiar, it’s because you can fill in the blank and be talking about Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Jim Carrey and basically be talking about the same thing. I’ve read none of the above, save Harry 1, and I have no doubt my life is poorer for it. But I’ve seen all of the movies, and loved Rings, admire Harry and scratched my head at Snicket. But with all of those films, even the last one- which did not produce the anticipated sequels and was hated by many who love the books- made some semblance of sense. Cliff’s Notes was not required to appreciate the journey. And if details were missing, the logic of the adventures remained. (Who’s the good guys? Who’s the bad guys? Is that hat talking? Is that Orlando Bloom as an elf? Okay, I got it.)

Here, we are doomed almost from the start, as the movie takes a page out of Dune and tries to explain the entire world in about two minutes. Star Wars has proved the wheel that many have tried to reinvent, with it’s dense text prologue followed by rapid excitement. Who cares if none of the previous made sense, there’s spaceships fighting! Even the Fellowship of the Ring wisely kept it’s prologue to just about the ring itself, leaving the rest of the world for us to discover. Here, we get Eva Green giving us a rapid outline of principles, ideas and character classes, along with which dice we should use when figuring out our characters’ attributes, before plopping us next to our heroes: a bland yet plucky girl and her whiny, rodent spirit guide. I kid you not.

I won’t go into the rest of it- mainly because I do not understand, and to the extent I understand, I do not care- but something must have gone very, very wrong in the translation from book to film. Many characters are introduced, given funny names and intense makeup, only to be discarded. The editing is so clunky that whenever the film tries to build momentum, it suddenly shifts us halfway across the galaxy (or planet, or wherever the hell we are) to tell us some other plot development that obscures more than it reveals. We are told that in this world, one’s soul has the form of an animal that follows the person, but we are not told why. (The book apparently supplies a reason, all I can tell you is that Nicole Kidman’s character’s spirit was a monkey)

There are children being experimented on in a lab, where the lab technicians run around in costumes that seem more appropriate for the later Alien movies. We are not told why (or if I was, I missed it.) There are blimps and old tycoots with guns and huns with swords and electricity, and bland villains who look like Cossacks but sound German and ultimately get slaughtered because, well, the good guys gotta fight somebody.

We are told there are polar bears who are fierce, articulate, and want to be human (or have souls) (namely, the animal souls for an animal) (or whatever). Nevermind the last two parts, let’s discuss the scene where one of these bears fights another. This scene stands alone as effective, not because it makes sense, but because polar-bears fighting to the death is not something you see everyday. We can add the following to the laws of bad-assery: when one creature kills another by ripping off the bottom part of its jaw, it shall be awesome.

Let us also briefly discuss Sam Elliott, he of the mighty mustache and who narrated The Big Lebowski. He’s in this movie, and there is a scene where he speaks with the polar bears, and there is no doubt- whatsoever- that he believes he is talking to a talking polar bear. “You involved in this Turkey Shoot?” he asks, and he probably actually said that line to a ping pong ball on a stick, but, hey, I bought it. Sam Elliott is a treasure of an actor, he should work more, hopefully in better projects than this.

I am told the books are amazing. I am assured that all the contradictions are explained. And I do not care, because the movie left me befuddled, bewildered and be-pissed off. No doubt there is depth, wonder, and a consistency of thought in the fantasy world created by theses novels. But this movie makes Beowulf look competent, Pirates of the Carribean 2 and 3 look clear, and Star Wars I-III look deep. A lesson can be learned here: do not hire the man who created American Pie to direct your 180 million dollar fantasy franchise launch.

To sum up the best parts of the film: polar bears fighting, Sam Elliot’s mustache, and Nicole Kidman slapping a monkey. I just saved you 12 dollars. You are welcome.

Grade: * Stars (out of 5)

P.S. I forgot to mention the Golden Compass itself. The Golden Compass is a device, that, when put in the right young girl's hand, tells the script what to do next. On the whole, it is poorly made and doesn't work very well.

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD

Now here is an American crime story for the ages. I say American because there are notes here that are particularly those of this country, along the lines of O’Neill, where shame and greed and remorse and randomness all play supporting roles. Only in America could two men rob their parents, only to be struck with guilt that it was mom running the story that day, instead of dad. Oh, and she knows where the gun is, and tries to be a hero. Oops.

Before The Devil Knows Your Dead is as good and depressing as No Country for Old Men, but it has something that filmed lacked. And if I knew what it was, I’d tell you. I thought maybe it was the fact that it was a lack of good men facing evil, like Zodiac. But no, here are men just as bad and doomed and unlikable as No Country, but I find myself more pulled into their stories. Scene after scene, 3 characters walk into a room and you have no idea which 2 of them will walk out.

You deserve to walk in with as little info as possible- I’ve probably already said too much- but suffice to say that Ethan Hawke has never been better, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is batting a thousand between this and Charlie Wilson’s War, and Albert Finney is… well, it’s relatively easy for a sad old man character to be powerful, but hard to make him this specific. The story cuts back and forth between these two brothers and their father, the women who orbit their lives, and where they were before and after a robbery. The robbery goes bad, as many film robberies tend to do, but in a way so simple and so spectacular it’s some kind of genius.

Once it goes bad, things get worse. The brothers needed money before the robbery, and they need it even more afterwards. To quote the last funny movie Chevy Chase made in the past fifteen years: “What I don't understand is... when you owe a bookie a lot of money, and he, say, blows off one of your toes, you still owe him the money.” Something along those lines happens here, as twist after twist happens to screw these crooks. They deserve it, but you feel for them- after all, it sounded so plausible on paper.

There are many virtuoso moments. Hoffman’s monologue after shooting up. The way the camera glides over the table as Finney makes a huge decision. Hawke’s eyes when he realizes that he’s picked exactly the wrong time to lose his driver’s license. And Marisa Tormei, who is naked multiple times in this movie (for reasons both realistic and possibly gratuitous), but is only emotionally revealed in her final scene, where she goes for broke in trying to get a reaction out of her husband. And when she does exit, it goes from pathos to farce, and we’re reminded that it always looks easy to make a Big Exit, but is in fact hard to do without looking silly. Especially when you don’t have cab fare.

I cannot express adequately how this movie moved me in ways that No Country did not. Maybe it was because I wasn’t on a journey in the face of oblique evil, or traveling with a man who didn’t give a shit about anything. Maybe it was because, while these two men were born losers and went out losers, there was that sad poetry I was missing. All they wanted was a bit of money. A bunch of bodies later, they still need the money, but now they’re out of time. You know you’ve been watching a great movie when, near the end, a character has gun to his head, and he says “Go ahead, you’ll be doing me a favor.” The line is not original. What is original is that he means it, he’s right, and yet you still care about what happens to him. And then, man oh man, what happens next. You could have called this movie “Of Mice and Men,” and it’d be accurate. Certainly, it would be more interesting for those 7th graders.

RATING: * * * * * (out of 5 stars)

P.S. Fair warning- this movie starts with a naked Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Theres also a naked Marisa Tomei, but I figured you'd rather know about the Hoff first.

P.P.S. That Chevy Chase movie is "Dirty Work"