The Book Tower

As a fan of Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy I was looking forward to The Golden Compass, the film of the first instalment Northern Lights. After seeing it, I wasn’t disappointed or let down, but I wasn’t excited either. It’s something of a Goldilocks film, just okay, and I’m not sure if this makes The Golden Compass good, acceptable or only mediocre.

It was my fantasy film expectations that were eventually satisfied more than my literary ones. The special effects were very good, especially the cinematic realisation of Pullman’s daemons, where the people in his alternative world are accompanied by the animal embodiment of their souls. Like the novels, what at first comes across as weird and unsettling is in fact very easy to get used to. By the end of the film you will be looking for the daemon of every new character you see, and judging that very character by their daemon. You will be wary of the ones with dogs or wolves, suspicious of the man with a grasshopper, respectful for Lord Asriel’s leopard and fearful of Mrs Coulter’s monkey.

Nicole Kidman brought life to the Mrs Coulter, who has already lived in my imagination for a long time. From the moment we see her I knew she was going to get the characterisation right, both for me and and for anybody who hadn’t read the books. Kidman let you know right away that Mrs Coulter was one to watch out for. In the cinema, my daughter leant over to me and whispered “she’s bad, isn’t she?” and The Golden Compass does exceed with its choice of cast. There’s the usual company of skilled British thesps, including the excellent Tom Courtenay, Jim Carter and Derek Jacobi. Even Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee, who you would think are growing bored with this sort of thing, make their contribution. But its the lesser knowns who are good too such as Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra. With a bad Lyra this would have been nothing more than a Christmas turkey.

What is strange about The Golden Compass is its confidence that today’s cinema audience can expect their entertainment to be episodic. Weaned on Tolkein and Harry Potter, they consume their films in instalments and, being the first of three, this opening to The Dark Materials goes nowhere. We are literally left up in the air. What’s even stranger is the casting of Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel. Something of cinema’s golden boy since Casino Royale (but a very fine actor nevertheless), you would expect him to have made more than the couple of the brief appearances he makes. No more than a days work for Mr Craig, who still manages, strangely, to have a shave halfway through the film. Was there a continuity problem, or will his loss of beard be explained in the next film?

The Golden Compass has been accused of toning down its take on theology, and coming to it straight from The God Delusion I was interested in seeing what truth there was in this. The answer is that I really don’t think there’s a place for such intellectual and philosophical debate in a family film, and anyway – it’s all there for you to read into. The Magesterium and authority, those who question it and are themselves questioned when they decide to seek out the real truth. Science and religion, those old chestnuts. I’m glad this film didn’t try to spell out any message too much. I was far too busy cowering from Nicole Kidman.

As I’ve said, this could have been more polished and accomplished but it could also have been far, far worse. It’s a film that would have been difficult to imagine pre Lord of the Rings, but it’s also a film that takes this genre (literary fantasy?) and pushes it a touch further forward in terms of visual spectacle. I just hope it’s successful enough to allow the next two books in the trilogy to be filmed, otherwise it will remain an inconsequential oddity. And by the way, don’t rush out of the cinema at the end and stick around for Lyra, the rather excellent theme song from Kate Bush.

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So onto my pick of the older books I’ve enjoyed in the last year, where I’ve made a point of reading several authors I’ve always had in the back of my mind. The most prominent of these was probably Mervyn Peake, and I managed to complete the whole of the Gormenghast trilogy early in the year. I also made a point of catching up with Graham Greene. The other two authors I read several books by were both new to me – Cormac McCarthy and Neil Gaiman. Two writers who couldn’t be more different, but there’s diversity for you.

My non-new favourites of 2007, in no particular order:

• Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake (although to be brutally honest, I can give or take part three)
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
• The Outsider by Albert Camus
• In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu

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My copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins boasts the subtitle “the alternative Christmas gift”. Borders took the joke one stage further by sticking a card inside the cover which reads “oh come all ye unfaithful”. I’m sure Mr Dawkins won’t mind the joke. Reading him, it’s obvious he does have a sense of humour, although my approach to the book isn’t really to seek an alternative Christmas gift or message, or to declare myself unfaithful or not. I like a well written, intelligent book and I like a good argument. Richard Dawkins provides all of this for me.

What surprised me is that The God Delusion isn’t just the anti-God polemic that I’d been suspecting, the book that its critics have been ranting about. Dawkins prints some of the abusive letters he has received since its publication, damning him in no uncertain terms, and letters no doubt from people who haven’t bothered to read The God Delusion. The same mentality that led people to burn copies of The Satanic Verses. Dawkins certainly knows his theology, I would say more so than many of his critics, but his well considered book touches on science in discussing how the universe came to be, Darwinism in how we came to be, gene theory in how we came to be like we are and meme theory in how we came to think and act like we do. Yes, you meme-loving bloggers out there, Richard Dawkins is the one who originally coined the phrase meme in 1976.

So at times, and what I found very rewarding, is that The God Delusion serves as a kind of Richard Dawkins Greatest Hits, covering many of the topics he has written about at length in his other books. But be warned. Although he does cover themes such as natural selection (one of his favourites), he expects you to have some prior grasp of them. This book isn’t another A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (although that’s a book that serves its purpose well), and if it was it would be four times as large. This is a writer who respects the intelligence of his reader, and Dawkins supplies a rich resource of references to follow if you should see fit, from texts similar to his own (there are several books specifically about meme theory) and links to websites. He even quotes a comment to a blog post that he’s found insightful.

The God Delusion isn’t a book that will change my life because I don’t need to be converted to Dawkins’ argument, but it isn’t a book that will only succeed in preaching to the converted either; it is a clever, extremely well researched book that should be read by any intelligent person. And anyone who condemns it unfairly without a good counter argument deserves to be labelled ignorant. And ignorance is one of the things that really annoys Richard Dawkins.

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