In an alternate reality, people’s souls are manifasted into animals that talk, “daemons”, who cannot be distanced too far away humans without hurting them. The world is governed by Magisterium, an institution that punishes any critical thinking. Lyra is a 13-year old orphaned girl with a weasel-like daemon Pan, and she grew up with her friend Roger, but the latter is kidnapped by the Gobblers, a group that performs experiments on children by seperating them from the daemons. When her uncle Asriel returns from the North Pole and presents photos of “The Dust”, thought as the origin of “sins”, he is accused of blasphemy, and Lyra saves him from drinking a poisoned drink. Asriel flees in a Zeppelin to continue his research. Lyra is given an alethiometer, a compass-like device that tells the truth, and meets Mrs Coulter who educates her at her apartment, but who works for the Gobblers. Lyra flees with the Gyptians, a group led by Farder that wants to stop the Gobblers, so they travel to the North Pole and are joined by a Polar bear with armor, Iorek. Mrs Coulter thinks that by severing daemons from kids, the group will prevent the onset of “sins” in adolescence. Asriel severs Rogers from daemon, killing him, which opens a portal to another dimension which Asriel enters.
This TV series adaptation of Philip Pullman’s book trilogy “His Dark Materials”—which stands as a UFO of sorts among the preteen fantasy fiction—is kind of a rare wonder: the original storyline included such uncompromising themes as atheism; critical thinking; questioning of any kind of totalitarian one-party ideology as absolute; and child kidnappings that any kind of mainstream Hollywood film adaptation would have to a priori be a compromise, and thus unworthy, without courage. Sure enough, Weitz’s film adaptation “The Golden Compass” was a disappointingly “cleansed”, rump version of the first novel, dictated by the producers who chickened out when faced with the too controversial subplots, and the comparison with the TV series is even more staggering. The first 30 minutes of the TV series are already better than the entire said film. The story is more detailed, and thus feels more complete, whereas it intruiges as the viewers follow Lyra (a very good Dafne Keen) as she tries to solve the mystery, find as many pieces as possible and connect the dots. This alternate fantasy world is surprisingly dark and bitter (when someone crushes the animal soul of the people, their daemon, the person dies as well, and the other way around: when a man jumps into death, his daemon, a hawk, dissolves into dust). However, while the 1st season of the series is faithful to the source material, the said source material is not flawlessly written: while the themes are thought provoking, and defy the idealistic escapism of the genre, they are written rather standardly, too dry at times, especially during the monotone dialogues, and thus, after an initial wonder of curiosity in the first episodes, the whole narrative starts to drag from episode 4 onwards. A little more finesse, wit and ingenuity would have made for a broader spectrum of a viewing experience. While too grey at times, and serving more as a long introduction, the 1st season has surprises (one character routinely goes through a portal to visit modern Oxford for his own agenda), and thus the anticipation of the next season is essential.
Grade:++
No comments:
Post a Comment