2 of 4

Writer-director Chris Weitz, a self-described "lapsed-Catholic crypto-Buddhist," said in one interview that the film will not refer to "the church." But the movie's official website indicates that the cruel scientist Mrs. Coulter works for a villainous "dogma"-enforcing entity known as "the Magisterium," a Latin term that, in the real world, signifies the Catholic church's teaching authority.

Nicole Kidman, who plays Mrs. Coulter, told Entertainment Weekly the film "has been watered down a little," adding, "I was raised Catholic [and] I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic."

Then again: "If the first film was a film in isolation, I would say it's no big deal," says Tony Watkins, managing editor of the U.K.-based website www.culturewatch.org and author of Dark Matter (Damaris/IVP), a book that analyzes the trilogy from a Christian framework. "But it isn't in isolation, and it is part of a bigger picture."

However, Watkins, while disagreeing with Pullman's worldview, says he appreciates the way Pullman raises important religious questions, especially in secularized Great Britain, where the books have already been dramatized on radio and in live theater.

"While I don't want to encourage out-and-out attacks on the gospel, obviously, truth can stand for itself if it is given a fair hearing," says Watkins. "And one thing that this story does is it gets the [Christian] story into the public sphere. [In the U.K.], that has often been a bit of a challenge. But when there's some clear opposition, that's often when the Christian voice gets heard."

Several observers argue that the books of atheist and materialist Pullman point in a more spiritual direction.

One of the trilogy's main narrative devices is the "daemon." In The Golden Compass's universe, every human being is accompanied by an animal that reflects that person's soul. The daemons of young children constantly change shape, from one animal to another, because the children have not yet settled into their adult personalities.

Watkins writes that the relationship between humans and their daemons—"united yet distinct"—ironically models the Trinity. And in Shedding Light on His Dark Materials (Tyndale), Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware argue that this device underscores, however unintentionally, the Christian belief that "personality and relationship" stand at the center of the universe.

"Our intention from the beginning was to say, well, here's a guy who on the surface, overtly, is attacking Christianity and the church and the idea of God—and even saying that he wants to kill God," says Ware, "yet we can see ways in which I think he pays homage to Christian truth, maybe without intending to or even knowing what he's doing."

Another central device in the trilogy is "particles of consciousness," or "Dust," which coalesces to form angels and human souls. In the final book, the spirits of the dead are freed from the afterlife; their particles disintegrate and are reabsorbed into the universe. Just as their physical bodies decompose when they die, so too do their spirits return to the earth.

"Pullman the writer is creating a world filled with the reality of a transcendent spiritualism, even though he rejects that cognitively," says Bruner. "And that spiritualism is much more in line with Spinoza and New Age mysticism, or Eastern pantheism."

next page... |  2 of 4

share this page

December 2007, Vol. 51, No. 12