Film "The Golden Compass": The truth saves entire worlds. Film “The Golden Compass”: The truth saves entire worlds States and peoples
,
Vladimir Babkov
Plot
The novel takes place in a fictional parallel world where science and magic are intertwined, where, in addition to people, witches, armored bears and other fantastic characters live. The world is ruled by a religious organization calling itself the Magisterium.
The girl Lyra Belacqua lives in Oxford at one of the colleges, is friends with the children of servants from the college and fights with children from the city. Lyra's parents died, and her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, makes frequent expeditions to the North. During one of his expeditions, he finds the mystical Dust and plans to open a laboratory to study it. During Asriel's long journey, the college master gives Lyra to be raised by Mrs. Coulter, who takes the girl to London. When Lyra realizes that Mrs. Coulter is not who she says she is, Lyra tries to escape. She ends up with the wandering gypsies who have been looking after her from the very beginning. Then her path lies to the North, where the gypsies send a detachment to save children kidnapped from all over England by terrible “priests”. There Lyra meets witches, armored bears and learns about Lord Asriel's plans. She also has to find out that her parents did not die. Thanks to the help of an ice bear named Iorek, the girl reaches the Bolvangar fortress, where the “priests” hid the kidnapped children. It turns out to be difficult to save them, but Lyra is helped by her faithful friends and the magical object Alethiometer, capable of showing the truth...
The world in the novel
Damons (Almas)
Every person in the world of the novel is accompanied by his demon. Damon is an integral part of a person’s personality, a piece of his soul. If a daemon and an adult are separated, they will both die. Damon looks like an animal that represents certain human character traits. At the same time, the child’s daemon can change its shape, and as the person grows up, the daemon loses this ability and remains forever in one guise. In this regard, at a young age, it is possible for a person to separate from a daemon without causing death. However, after this, children remain crippled for life.
The gender of a daemon very rarely matches the gender of a person. The exception is the daemons of witches, who match their gender, and can also be at a great distance from their witches. Witches' daemons take the form exclusively of birds or other flying creatures in order to be able to accompany the witches in flight. Daemons are the conductors of Dust, connecting it with humans. When a person dies, the daemon turns into mist and dissipates into the air, and when the daemon dies, the person dies. Damon accompanies a person throughout his entire life journey.
States and peoples
Armored bears (Panzerbjorn): By and large, panzerbjorn differ from ordinary polar bears only in the presence of intelligence and an opposable thumb. Dressed in strong, massive armor made of meteorite iron. Each Panzerbjorn forges his own armor. Armored bears live in the north, their only state is Svalbard.
Witches: Witches have a human appearance, but, unlike people, they can live for many centuries (in the first part of the trilogy, Serafina Pekkala mentioned that the oldest witch mother is about a thousand years old), and also fly. The witch uses a cloud pine branch to fly, armed with a bow and a knife. They are not afraid of the cold and are dressed in black and blue silk. There is no unity between witches; they live in clans, headed by witch queens.
Religion
The main religion in Europe is Calvinist Christianity. Once Calvin became pope and moved the papal throne to Geneva. After his death, the papacy was abolished and its place was taken by the Magisterium, which is a complex system of competing organizations. By the time the novel takes place, the dominant church organizations are: the Disciplinary Court of the Spiritual Consistory and the Ministry of Uniform Decisions on the Affairs of Initiates. There are rumors of a revival of the Holy Inquisition. The church has absolute influence on society. They also have their own army units - the Swiss papal guards, the Muscovite imperial guards (under the command of the Magisterium) and detachments of demon-deprived soldiers (including Africans). In the third book, a certain Pope Calvin is mentioned, who gave the go-ahead for the hunt for Lyra, so perhaps the papacy is preserved, especially since the elite parts of the Magisterium - the Pope's Swiss guards - are constantly mentioned.
Science and technology
Experimental theology- one of the basic sciences. In the second book of the trilogy, you can find out that this is the same as physics in our world. Antarny energy is used for lighting, driving cars, etc. (the same as electricity, but it is available only in rich houses, scientific centers, the headquarters of the Magisterium and is not widely used). For flights, airships are used, gyrocopters and airplanes are mentioned as something rarer and usually do not carry on-board weapons (airships are often armed with machine guns). Weapons described include repeating rifles, machine guns, flamethrowers, armored cars (in Once Upon a Time in the North), firefighters - napalm catapults, although bows are still in use. There are cars, but horse-drawn traction predominates. There are antar-mounted hydroelectric power stations (HPPs), but antar-type lighting is not developed, inferior to gas and kerosene. Antarctic electricity is used in industry and scientific mechanisms, there is a nuclear industry and primitive nuclear charges (they tried to kill Lyra with this). There is a steam fleet and gasoline (internal combustion) engines. The chthonic rail road is mentioned (
Damon (English dæmon, in another spelling daimon) is a manifestation of the human soul in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Damons exist separately from people in the form of animals and represent the essence of their owners, the most striking traits of their character. Only children's daemons are able to change shape, while adult daemons take on a single form. The daemon's adoption of the image is considered the final stage in the process of human maturation.
The connection between a daemon and a human is intimate, so they must remain a short distance from each other (witches are an exception), moving too far away the daemon and its human experience pain. Contact between a person and another's daemon is prohibited, but the daemons themselves can touch each other. Many features of daemons correspond to concepts from other cultures and ideas about the human soul. Damons can talk and express their feelings, give advice to their owners, and also resolve problems with other people's daemons.
In the world of Lyra, the soul has a physical manifestation in the form of an animal, i.e. Damon. It has its own individuality despite the fact that it is an integral part of man (one soul is contained in two bodies). The book says that in our and other Universes, the daemon is one with a person without any external physical manifestation. They only have a form in the Lyra Universe and a few others. In some Universes, daemons are invisible and cannot communicate with their owners.
It was considered an “inconceivable violation of etiquette” for a person to touch someone else’s daemon; Even in battle, the warrior did not touch the enemy’s daemon, but there were exceptions (for example, for lovers). Physical impact on a daemon causes vulnerability and weakness in the person to whom this daemon belongs. However, daemons are free to touch each other; relationships between daemons usually highlight and show relationships between people.
The child's daemon does not have any specific form and can change depending on desire or circumstances. As children mature (around puberty), their daemons lose the ability to transform and take on a form that most clearly reflects the person's personality. For example, a person with a dog daemon is most often a servant, while a person with a cat daemon, on the contrary, can be very independent. Witch daemons always take the form of birds and other flying creatures so that they can accompany their witches in flight. Many creatures, including armored bears, do not have their own daemons, and parts of their souls are found in other objects. So, for a bear, a piece of the soul is its armor.
Damon is usually of the opposite gender to the owner; however, in some cases it may be the same. Philip Pullman admitted that the reason for this is unclear even to himself. This can either mean a person is homosexual, or indicate some distinctive feature or special gift (for example, clairvoyance). The only mention of same-sex people and daemons is in the book Northern Lights, where such people are described as "rare" or "noble".
Lifespan
It is not clear when, how, or in what form a daemon is born. When a person dies, their daemon becomes "smoke particles" (not supposed to be Dust in the books, but that's what the particles look like in the movie). Likewise, if a daemon is killed, then the person also dies. The origin of the names of the daemons in the trilogy is not said, but Pullman later clarified that they are given by the daemons of the parents. Our world's daemon Will Parry did not originally have a name; Serafina Pekkala gave him the name Kirjava (a Finnish word meaning spotted or multi-colored). Damon accompanies a person throughout his life, but it is unknown what happens to the daemon after the natural death of a person. Witches' daemons live for hundreds of years, just like their mistresses.
Separation
Man and his daemon are united spiritually into an indivisible whole. The strong connection between them forces them to be at a short distance from each other. The forcible separation of a person from a daemon (i.e., separation) causes unimaginable physical and emotional pain for both, often causing death; however, some cultures have mastered techniques that allow daemons to gain greater freedom. For example, witches, as well as people who choose to become shamans, must endure grueling ritual tests that involve being separated from the daemon for a period of time while they are on a spiritual quest. After reuniting, they gain the ability to move away from each other at a much greater distance, while maintaining a strong connection with each other.
In the trilogy, the Sacrificial Recruitment Center uses a special guillotine to separate people from their daemons without killing them. However, unlike the tests that witches and shamans undergo, the guillotine completely destroys the connection between a person and a daemon, often turning a person into a kind of zombie. The Sacrificial Recruitment Center is constantly improving the process through experiments, but Lyra encounters at least one boy who has not been able to come to terms with life without his daemon. The separation process is accompanied by a huge release of energy, which was used by Lord Asriel to create a bridge to another world.
The film “The Golden Compass” was released in 2007 and, despite the fact that it was received with interest by the audience, and the box office receipts more than doubled the budget spent on filming, the film was never continued. Perhaps the reason was the negative assessment of official critics, perhaps the takeover of the New Line Cinema film company by Warner Brothers, or the controversy surrounding the book trilogy “His Dark Materials,” the first part of which formed the basis of the film. Nevertheless, the film itself, even without a sequel, leaves a pleasant impression and can teach young or adult viewers a lot.
The plot develops in a fantasy world, which is simultaneously inhabited by witches, huge bears and people. From the very beginning, we meet the main character, a girl named Lyra, and her daemon - a furry animal that turns into a bird, a ferret, and a cat. In this world, each person has his own daemon, which is part of the soul of its owner, is inextricably linked with him and always accompanies him.
As the child grows, his daemon can change shape, turning into different animals, birds or even insects. But sooner or later, when its owner becomes an adult, the daemon is forever determined in the guise that most fully corresponds to the person’s inner world and actions.
The main events develop around this feature, in the midst of which Lyra finds herself. The supreme power in the person of the Magisterium decided to completely subjugate people and for this purpose destroyed all golden compasses - devices that help people find out the truth, and is conducting experiments on separating daemons from humans. As one of the main villains bluntly states, ridding people of their demons will make them “free.” But what kind of “freedom” is this that their rulers promise people: the opportunity to live in harmony with their conscience or the opportunity to completely abandon their soul, freedom as permissiveness unlimited by any moral framework?
Lyra and her friends are not at all happy with this prospect of a “free life”, and she sets off on a dangerous journey full of adventures and unexpected encounters. She will have to enlist the help of a huge ice bear, learn to use a magic compass, fly on a fantastic airship, appreciate the external gloss of the luxurious chambers of the Magisterium, visit the North Pole, fight with many minions of the “free world” and learn the value of true friendship.
What does the film teach?
In the picture there is a place for real nobility, courage, self-sacrifice of positive characters, and cunning, deception and treachery of villains, who are accompanied by demons in the form of snakes, eagle owls, mantises, and wolves.
The film “The Golden Compass” also touches on philosophical questions about the meaning of life, the structure of our world, the struggle between good and evil and the place of each person in this struggle. And although the viewer’s views on these issues may not coincide with how the filmmakers portrayed it, nevertheless, the leitmotif of the film, expressed in demonstrating the importance of caring for one’s soul and the struggle to preserve it, is unlikely to seem irrelevant or insignificant to anyone .
Unfortunately, the film was not without the typical Hollywood “bookmarks” in the style of villains speaking Russian in some scenes or out-of-place mentions of close relationships of minor characters. It is also unusual for Russian viewers to see witches as positive heroes. However, in the general context of the picture, these details are not of fundamental importance.
,
Vladimir Babkov
Plot
The novel takes place in a fictional parallel world where science and magic are intertwined, where, in addition to people, witches, armored bears and other fantastic characters live. The world is ruled by a religious organization calling itself the Magisterium.
The girl Lyra Belacqua lives in Oxford at one of the colleges, is friends with the children of servants from the college and fights with children from the city. Lyra's parents died, and her uncle, the powerful Lord Asriel, makes frequent expeditions to the North. During one of his expeditions, he finds the mystical Dust and plans to open a laboratory to study it. During Asriel's long journey, the college master gives Lyra to be raised by Mrs. Coulter, who takes the girl to London. When Lyra realizes that Mrs. Coulter is not who she says she is, Lyra tries to escape. She ends up with the wandering gypsies who have been looking after her from the very beginning. Then her path lies to the North, where the gypsies send a detachment to save children kidnapped from all over England by terrible “priests”. There Lyra meets witches, armored bears and learns about Lord Asriel's plans. She also has to find out that her parents did not die. Thanks to the help of an ice bear named Iorek, the girl reaches the Bolvangar fortress, where the “priests” hid the kidnapped children. It turns out to be difficult to save them, but Lyra is helped by her faithful friends and the magical object Alethiometer, capable of showing the truth...
The world in the novel
Damons (Almas)
Every person in the world of the novel is accompanied by his demon. Damon is an integral part of a person’s personality, a piece of his soul. If a daemon and an adult are separated, they will both die. Damon looks like an animal that represents certain human character traits. At the same time, the child’s daemon can change its shape, and as the person grows up, the daemon loses this ability and remains forever in one guise. In this regard, at a young age, it is possible for a person to separate from a daemon without causing death. However, after this, children remain crippled for life.
The gender of a daemon very rarely matches the gender of a person. The exception is the daemons of witches, who match their gender, and can also be at a great distance from their witches. Witches' daemons take the form exclusively of birds or other flying creatures in order to be able to accompany the witches in flight. Daemons are the conductors of Dust, connecting it with humans. When a person dies, the daemon turns into mist and dissipates into the air, and when the daemon dies, the person dies. Damon accompanies a person throughout his entire life journey.
States and peoples
Armored bears (Panzerbjorn): By and large, panzerbjorn differ from ordinary polar bears only in the presence of intelligence and an opposable thumb. Dressed in strong, massive armor made of meteorite iron. Each Panzerbjorn forges his own armor. Armored bears live in the north, their only state is Svalbard.
Witches: Witches have a human appearance, but, unlike people, they can live for many centuries (in the first part of the trilogy, Serafina Pekkala mentioned that the oldest witch mother is about a thousand years old), and also fly. The witch uses a cloud pine branch to fly, armed with a bow and a knife. They are not afraid of the cold and are dressed in black and blue silk. There is no unity between witches; they live in clans, headed by witch queens.
Religion
The main religion in Europe is Calvinist Christianity. Once Calvin became pope and moved the papal throne to Geneva. After his death, the papacy was abolished and its place was taken by the Magisterium, which is a complex system of competing organizations. By the time the novel takes place, the dominant church organizations are: the Disciplinary Court of the Spiritual Consistory and the Ministry of Uniform Decisions on the Affairs of Initiates. There are rumors of a revival of the Holy Inquisition. The church has absolute influence on society. They also have their own army units - the Swiss papal guards, the Muscovite imperial guards (under the command of the Magisterium) and detachments of demon-deprived soldiers (including Africans). In the third book, a certain Pope Calvin is mentioned, who gave the go-ahead for the hunt for Lyra, so perhaps the papacy is preserved, especially since the elite parts of the Magisterium - the Pope's Swiss guards - are constantly mentioned.
Science and technology
Experimental theology- one of the basic sciences. In the second book of the trilogy, you can find out that this is the same as physics in our world. Antarny energy is used for lighting, driving cars, etc. (the same as electricity, but it is available only in rich houses, scientific centers, the headquarters of the Magisterium and is not widely used). For flights, airships are used, gyrocopters and airplanes are mentioned as something rarer and usually do not carry on-board weapons (airships are often armed with machine guns). Weapons described include repeating rifles, machine guns, flamethrowers, armored cars (in Once Upon a Time in the North), firefighters - napalm catapults, although bows are still in use. There are cars, but horse-drawn traction predominates. There are antar-mounted hydroelectric power stations (HPPs), but antar-type lighting is not developed, inferior to gas and kerosene. Antarctic electricity is used in industry and scientific mechanisms, there is a nuclear industry and primitive nuclear charges (they tried to kill Lyra with this). There is a steam fleet and gasoline (internal combustion) engines. The chthonic rail road is mentioned (
"Worrying in vain, that's what it is."
Philip Pullman, "The Golden Compass" ("Northern Lights")
On December 5, 2007, the premiere screening of the film “The Golden Compass” took place in Russia, filmed by New Line Cinema based on the first book in the trilogy “His Dark Materials” by Philip Pullman. Apparently, in order to compensate for the rather simplified film version of the novel (in the UK the book was published under the title "Northern Lights", and in the USA - as "The Golden Compass"), editions of all three parts of "His Dark Materials" in Russian were laid out on the seats in the hall . The general impression of the picture can be conveyed in a few words: beautiful, uncomplicated, fascinating.
The plot of the film is built around the adventures of the main character, a 12-year-old girl Lyra Belakva (Dakota Blue Richards), who became the owner of an alethiometer device (it is a golden compass), which shows the “truth” using several arrows and various symbols. As the characters in the film cryptically say, Lyra must become a key figure in the war between good and evil, which is about to break out or is already underway. By the middle of the film, the idea arises that the Americans created their own “Guest from the Future” with Alice and the mielophone.
The parallel world where Lyra lives resembles ours, but not quite. It contains airships, witches, talking bears and scientific laboratories. Every person has a "daemon" - an external soul. It changes its appearance in children, has a constant form in adults, but in any case inextricably coexists with humans. There is also a government body here, the building of which for some reason resembles the Palace of the Council in Equilibrium - the Magisterium, with the Priests working for it.
Photo gallery for the film "The Golden Compass"
Let us note right away that those who have read the book should not count on philosophical statements related to criticism of the Christian worldview, for which Pullman’s book has already been criticized by some media outlets and American Catholics. The creators of "Compass", it seems, did not dare to enter into conflict with conservatives and gracefully reduced the atheistic component to the struggle between the Magisterium (together with the Priests) and the gypsies. At the same time, suggestive of cruel “people in white coats”, the Priests (who got their name from the initial letters of the organization Sacrificial Recruitment Center) kidnap children and conduct experiments, trying to separate them from the demons, and the gypsies nobly resist the Priests, trying to free the children.
If you compare the book and the film, both here and there there is the notorious Dust, around which, in fact, the whole intrigue revolves. The priests in Lyra's world are afraid of her and consider Dust to be a material manifestation of original sin, but in the film there is no such thing as "original sin", and Dust is vaguely called "evil" that "accumulates around children" as they grow up. On the other hand, the opposite statement “Dust does not cause harm and is even useful” is not in the film; there is only a hint that with its help you can get to other worlds.
By the way, the film, compared to the book, makes a significant nod to the “magical” component of the universe. If in the novel, for example, the “projection lantern” runs on kerosene (!) and almost unchanged Norway and Oxford are mentioned, then in the film the energy for everything is obtained from incomprehensible sources in the form of flickering spheres, names familiar to our world are almost never seen (for with the exception of Lapland on the flashed map), and the guards of the northern Bolvangar laboratory wear hats similar to Cossack hats and brandish sabers.
The greatest admiration is, of course, for daemons in the form of all kinds of animals, birds, insects and reptiles, as well as armored polar bears with Scandinavian names. Lyra's Damon, Pantalaimon, in the form of a cat makes one remember Shrek's companion with plaintive eyes, but it's even funny. But after the fight between two bears for the throne of the bear kingdom of Svalbard, which quite deservedly caused an ovation in the hall, as well as the final battle (which, however, is far from the extras in “The Lord of the Rings”), it becomes clear why “The Golden Compass” today became New Line Cinema's most expensive project. According to various sources, from 150 to 180 million dollars were spent on it.
Nicole Kidman looks very beautiful in the role of the main villain Mrs. Coulter (by the way, a blonde, not a brunette, as in the book). James Bond Daniel Craig, who plays Lord Asriel, doesn't appear much in the film, so his fans will likely be somewhat disappointed. Gypsy King John Faa (Jim Carter) with his eyeliner looks like an older and fatter Jack Sparrow. Somehow the witches look completely indistinct, but quite mysterious, and among them is Serafina Pekkala, played by Eva Green, known for the films “Kingdom of Heaven” and “Casino Royale”. Dakota Blue Richards (Lyra Belacqua) looks the most natural.
To summarize, we can confidently say that New Line Cinema has produced a wonderful children's film with intense action, wonderful music by Alexandre Desplat, a politically correct depiction of the conflict and very seriously worked out "magic" scenes.
And yet - without a doubt, in the near future the worship of saber-toothed squirrels and red cats will definitely be replaced by the cult of polar bears. Get ready.
