The Golden Compass finally moved to the cheap theater (now just $3, yay!), so A and I went to see it. Not having read the books, he thought it was OK, but I kept writhing and smacking my forehead so much I think he wanted to smother me with his coat. It wasn’t a total loss—everything looked just as I’d envisioned it while reading, and the casting was brilliant. Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliott, and the girl who played Lyra were especially perfect, and you could play “Spot the famous British actor” throughout—Derek Jacobi! Christopher Lee! The voice of Ian McKellen! I thought Freddie Highmore was too squeaky as Pan’s voice, but at least we got Kathy Bates for Hester. I’m not usually a fan of CGI talking animals, but the daemons and armored bears were very well rendered. The plot, however, was a mess—hamhanded and dumbed down. I’d been prepared for the dilution of the (anti)religious themes, but not for the watering-down of everything else. Small examples: in the movie Iorek Byrnison is exiled from Svalbard for
losing a fight with another bear, rather than for
killing another bear in a fight. (Why? Were the filmmakers afraid of making him too scary or unsympathetic?) And he doesn’t eat Iofur Raknison’s heart after killing him, although at least they left in the jaw-ripping-off part (ew! and awesome!). One of the things I loved most about the book is that nothing is overly explained; you experience and learn things from Lyra’s point of view over time. In the movie, there was lots of very clumsy exposition, some of it in the form of Old Evil British Guys Talking, which was not only annoyingly non-Lyra-POV, but boring for kids as well. And although I knew going in that the downer ending of the book was going to be saved for the next movie (which I think is perfectly fair—the
Lord of the Rings movies did it effectively enough), now that I know there’s not likely to be a sequel (since
The Golden Compass wasn’t a hit), I wish they’d just gone for it. The film’s ending was dreadfully bland and toothless, especially if you’ve read the books. Overall, it seemed like the filmmakers were afraid of their material—I think they wanted to adapt the book so they could show a lot of cool computer-generated animals, and then they realized they’d have to wince and duck all the inconvenient story details. (Still, I reread
The Subtle Knife the next day, remembered I like it even more than the first book, and found myself totally yearning for a second movie—for one thing, Sam Elliott got totally robbed of Lee Scoresby’s big scene!)
And given my
Mansfield Park angst last year, of course I had to watch the new PBS adaptation. Surprisingly, I liked it. It made me appreciate the story more. It was snappy and streamlined (though I was sorry to get the Portsmouth part get cut), and I think the morality-play aspects were easier to watch than to read. Body language and tone of voice goes a long way in conveying why certain people in the book are supposed to be good and others are supposed to be “bad” (but seem way more fun than the goodniks—I’m looking at you, Crawfords). I really enjoyed the portion of the film after Mary and Henry show up and all the young people start flirting and running amuck—I even laughed aloud a couple of times. Also, I loved Pug. However: While I figured they’d have to change Fanny’s personality to make her more likable and less passive, did she have to
run all the time? In the book she’s practically an invalid and it’s a big deal when she has to walk a quarter-mile, and in the movie she’s manically racing all over the place, romping with children, dancing, and playing
badminton, for pete’s sake. A slight adjustment to her character would be fine—no need to bend over backwards and make her a freakin’ tomboy. Also, I know
Mansfield Park isn’t the most romantic of Austen novels, but the adaptation went a bit overboard to rectify that at the end, with about 10 minutes of longing glances over the breakfast table, gooey confessions of love, kissyface, and wedding frolicking. It didn’t work for me…although maybe that’s because A (who tuned in halfway through) was so repulsed: “But…they’re cousins! They were raised as brother and sister!” Yeah, no matter how cute and nice you make Edmund and however much you amp up the romance, that’s a hard detail to overcome.
By the way, is anyone else cranky about the new
Masterpiece Theater format? Television Without Pity’s Blogfile nails it in the fittingly titled entry
“Goddammit, PBS!”:
Oh, sorry, it’s Masterpiece now, isn't it? What—the second word was too much to handle? We live in such an impatient blog-ridden society that no one can manage to wait around for a two-word title? Wait, I know—it was the use of “Theatre” and not the Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, and E.M. Forster that made the series seem too intellectual for all those PBS-watching theatre-phobes. Like Masterpiece alone is so much better. It’s just hanging out there all cold and unfinished. “Masterpiece” what? Society? Barbecue Sauce?
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