The moral ‘Compass’

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Whenever someone says the soon-to-be-released screen adaptation of Philip Pullman’s novel ‘The Golden Compass’ is anti-religious, I want to ask: ‘Have you seen the film?’

I have, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is how thoroughly the book’s religious context has been stripped from the movie, making it less about the discontents of doctrine than the more amorphous battle between authoritarianism and free will.

Of course, even ‘The Golden Compass’ ’ most vocal detractors are willing to acknowledge this; the film, they suggest, is something of a gateway to lure unsuspecting kids into reading Pullman’s heresies. That’s an argument Laura Miller convincingly takes apart in yesterday’s Book Review, calling it preposterous ‘that anyone would make a $180-million movie with the purpose of tricking children into reading a seditious book.’ (Miller’s piece has prompted hundreds of responses from readers -- both pro and con.)

Indeed, watching ‘The Golden Compass,’ I found it hard to find anything seditious or insurrectionary about it--which, in my view, is too bad. Pullman’s novel has been reduced to something thin and insubstantial, a Hollywood feel-good extravaganza that could have (should have?) been much more.

Rather than focus on whether ‘The Golden Compass’ is pushing an atheist agenda (it’s not), we’d be much better served by having an actual conversation about the larger questions it seeks to raise. What is the nature of existence? How about the relationship between religion and God?

More to the point, why is it that every time a film comes out that even tangentially challenges Christian orthodoxy, we have to go through this ridiculous song and dance? If Pullman has anything to tell us, it’s the value of free thinking. Why are we so scared of deciding for ourselves?

David L. Ulin