Cute critters, twisted plot

Ikuko Kitagawa / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

In a fantasy adventure, humans get the rare opportunity to communicate with nonhumans--animals, robots and imaginary creatures--and set off on a journey together to accomplish their mission.

The Golden Compass is one such human-animal fantasy, in which young Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) heads north with a talking ermine, an armored polar bear and other trusted friends. Unlike typical fantasy films, though, this adventure is twisted and complicated.

Lyra is an orphan living in an alternate world that looks like our own, and is raised in a dormitory among scholars at Jordan College, Oxford.

In her world, people are always with animal companions called daemons, which share a person's soul and fate. Daemons are shapeshifters when their young human partners are still building their characters, but their form becomes fixed as soon as the person matures. Lyra's partner Pantalaimon (voiced by Freddie Highmore), for example, is usually an ermine but flexibly changes his shape to be a butterfly or a cat.

Lyra one day meets the influential Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), a cold beauty who kindly approaches Lyra and invites her to join in some research conducted in the cold North.

Lyra happily accepts the offer. Before her departure, the Jordan headmaster (Jack Shepherd) gives her a special golden compass that indicates truth and warns her not to give it to anybody. Lyra looks for her best friend, Roger (Ben Walker), a member of a nomadic ethnic group called Gyptians, to say good-bye, but she can't find him.

On their way to the North, Lyra realizes that Mrs. Coulter is far from nice but is evil and slyly dominant. Lyra then finds that Mrs. Coulter has kidnapped children, including Roger, in order to use them in her research.

Lyra escapes from Mrs. Coulter to save Roger and other kids who are confined in a secret lab in a snowy land. In the course of her trip, Lyra joins forces with Gyptians, witches and an armored talking bear named Iorek (voiced by Ian McKellen).

There is so much detail to consume about The Golden Compass--Lyra's world, daemons' nature, Lyra's and Iorek's backgrounds. It took me some time to figure out that the main theme of this film is Lyra saving her friend.

It's also unclear how she uses the compass. It has a dial with three hands that point at various pictures and symbols, from which Lyra guesses the truth about what she wants to know, such as where Roger is. But, it's not quite clear how she comes up with the answer from the compass.

As this is intended as the first installment of the trilogy, The Golden Compass only touches on the basic information that the audience needs to know to enjoy the next two installments and leaves many things in question. For instance, what's the meaning of the particles called "Dust," which is mentioned at the very beginning of the film? And what does Lyra's uncle (Daniel Craig) have to do with the story?

If the movie is targeted at Japanese children, I think it will be a little bit hard for them to take in every bit of the story happening in parallel. So instead of trying to understand the story, I recommend simply enjoying the realistic computer-graphic critters, which are well blended into the live action. When a fierce polar bear is tamed by a little girl and commits to serve her, it may sound like standard fantasy fare, but it is still fun.

The movie opens today.