Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Golden Compass

This is a new movie based on the "Dark Materials" trilogy by Phillip Pullman. Here is a thoughtful review looking at his anti-God philosophy behind the books.

"In these books, Lyra discovers that Lord Asriel is mounting a war against God, and she meets a boy from our own world named Will, who acquires a knife that can cut through anything, including the barrier between universes. The knife even has a prophetic name, Æsahættr, which means "god-destroyer." By the end of the trilogy, God is dead, and Will and Lyra have reenacted the Fall in the Garden of Eden—but in doing so, they save the universe rather than destroy it.

"In Pullman's story, the God of the Bible is not really the Creator, but simply the first angel who emerged out of what Pullman calls "Dust." When other angels emerged, he lied and said he had created them—and he went on to set up churches in multiple universes, to assert his control over them. But now this angel, who is called "the Authority," is old and weak and faces a rebellion by angels and humans alike....

"Pullman says he's just a storyteller," continues Watkins. "I think he's really slippery at this point. Because it's all very well saying, 'It's just a story, just a fantasy, some of the characters say what I believe and some of them don't'—but in his Carnegie Medal speech, he said stories create the morality we live by.

"The trouble is, he blurs the line between fantasy and reality by giving interviews and talking about the Republic of Heaven in the world. And because he's got all of this anti-God rhetoric in the real world that is even stronger than what's in the book, I think he can't get away with saying, 'It's just a story and you can read into it whatever you like.' Because he does understand what he's saying."