tomhbrand

It's a bit of a disappointment really. Knowing the books and look at all of the pre-release material that came out I had rather had high hopes for this adaptation for the first in Phillip Pullman's Northern Lights trilogy. The casting seemed perfect, the look, from what I'd seen, matched the feel of the books. And, to be fair, director Chris Weitz hasn't made a bad film as such, it's just that he hasn't made a very good one either.

The look of the film is excellent, and where it doesn't quite match up exactly with how I picture it, it still works perfectly. The art team has managed to capture the essence of Lyra's world being the same as our but different as opposed to ours in the past, which was a danger. But despite all this up until the last act the film is flat and uninteresting, arousing none of the intrigue and wonder that the books used to pull you in.

I think the main problem here is the same thing that happened to the Harry Potter novels once they were adapted. To fit the novel into a film has meant the plot has been left in but all the fleshing out that makes Pullman's books so engrossing is left out, and this basically leaves the characters flat and uninteresting and your left with the feeling that Weitz is relying on the fact that the audience has already read the book so he doesn't need to flesh out the characters too much. Characters such as Serafina Pekkala appear briefly and seem simply there as a brief moment of fan service and because later in the story they need to have been established. Weitz seems to have been to scared to make too many changes in the plot to make it fit a film and the characters have suffered.

Which strikes me as odd as Weitz's previous film, About A Boy was all about the characters and a good film, so we know he can direct good characters and with Compass it's only when the action picks up that the film develops and real pace and excitement. The fight between the Armoured Bears and the battle between the witches, soldiers and Gyptians both look amazing (the sight of each character's dæmon vanishing in a swirl of golden dust as a they die is incredibly effective in showing the horror of the battle without any gore.) Other than that there just a few moments where you just get the feeling that the studio was calling the shots over the directors head. The unnecessary opening monologue, reminiscent of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, introduces aspect of the world, from the Armoured Bears to the concept of parallel universes so there is no joy of discovery for the audience as we now know it all already. Despite promises that the parts of the book discussing religion would not be ignored but done subtly so as not to cause offence, it seems to have been ignored completely so not to cause offence, something I can only see causing either big problems in the last two books (if they make it into movies) or big rewrites of the story.

So all in all The Golden Compass is not a bad adaptation of the book, and it is not a particularly bad film. In a lot of ways it could easily have been a lot worse, and if you're a fan then it's a pretty good bet you'll enjoy yourself. It's just it seems to me with a little more effort and confidence it could have been so much better.

In 2003, days before the US led invasion of Iraq, Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Country and Western group the Dixie Chicks, announced to an audience of a concert in Shepherds Bush, London, that she was ashamed that the President of the United States was from Texas, which outraged rightwing groups back in their homeland. This film documents the band over the next three years through the pointlessly huge controversy Maines' comment created, and the anger and hatred levelled at them by their main fan base, the South.

A well made film, there is however a little unevenness about Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's documentary, as although it was almost certainly begun and continued at least partly as a publicity film, what comes through is a very interesting piece on exactly what the First Amendment actually means to many Americans. And it's these parts that are the most engaging, as well as the most worrying. We are shown how a throw away comment made by a musician, someone of no real political importance, can get jumped on by media groups eager to forward their own agenda, and how the public will do whatever they are told to stay on the bandwagon.

What we see is an apparently inherent problem in how parts of America, mainly the Southern, "red" states have the attitude of 'You're Either With Us Or Against Us'. Let's face it, musicians using their music to protest a war is nothing new, but the fact that a Country and Western band, the genre of the South, dared to hold an opinion that went contrary to the idea that 'American Can Do No Wrong' seems to be so amazingly unconscionable to them that they have to react by totally ostracising them. Cue footage of rednecks burning CDs and calling for the Dixie Chicks to be executed for treason. Overkill anyone? What's seems strange is that the ideal of Free Speech, so integral in American politics and history, can be interpreted so wildly. As one protester puts it: "Free speech is all well and good, but sayings things about us in another country isn't right." Free Speech seems fine to them, as long as you don't say anything they don't want you to.

And on a further level it highlights an important issue in American politics nowadays, how it has become so polarised and as soon as something becomes political you seem to have to pick one of two opposing sides and stick to it. There seem to be a perception that there can be no shades of grey.

But slowly the film's focus moves back to the band and how they cope with their fall in sales and change of identity, from darlings of the South to political rebels and tries show, despite all this, they're still good ole fashioned Southern girls. At times you cynically realise that this is at least partly an attempt to win back their old fans, and you get the idea the band are trying to apologise without apologising; 'We're not going take back anything we said, but we wish we hadn't upset y'all. We need you to like us again.' And at times it does seem to be Natalie doing all the decision making. Admittedly it was her who made the original comment and most of the hate was focused at her, but band-mates Emily Robson and Martie Maguire seem to be just following her lead and wanted to just let it all go, with Maines taking it all personally and their manager, though with all good intentions, clearly seeing this as the best opportunity for the band to promote themselves globally. It would have been nice to see more opinion or interviews with the individual members to get their opinions rather than just footage from meetings showing Maines refusing to be apologetic again and again.

I think that Kopple and Peck have, almost seeming like they didn't mean to, have made a very interesting critique of the polarization of politics in America today and how the media sets agendas and public opinion, but once it moves on to how the Dixie Chicks are reidentifying themselves as a band in this new environment it just becomes a lot less interesting to anyone who wasn't already a fan of the band.

There is an episode of The Simpsons which has a joke news report referring to an army training base as a "Killbot Factory". Here the comment is simply part of a throwaway joke, but what Patricia Foulkrod's documentary does is show us, scarily, that it is not that far from the truth. After World War Two the US Army decided to tackle a problem they faced throughout the war; that many soldiers got into battle and found themselves totally unable to kill another human being unless it was a matter of 'me or them'. Since then the training process of the US army has been to remove all moral scruples and turn recruits into killing machines who don't think of combatants as people. To develop in them a most unnatural state: "The sustainable urge to kill".

First off, this isn't an antiwar movie as such. Whilst it certainly paints war in a very bad light, Foulkrod focuses rather on an aspect that doesn't get as much media attention as, say, the debate over the legality of a war or it's physical successes or failures; the affect the process of turning a man into a soldier has on that person as a human being. It's the paradox that to train someone to be a soldier to defend society makes them totally unsuitable to live as part of that society themselves, and whilst most of the examples and interviewees are from the current Middle East conflict Foulkrod makes the links to past conflicts, especially Vietnam, painfully clear. This isn't about any particular war, it's about the problems caused by war in general.

Structurally the film seems to be split into three sections; how recruits are drawn into the army and the training they receive, how they are treated once they are in combat, and what happens once they leave the army. Once this point is reached you realise that the main target of this film is actually the policies that are inherent in the armed forced, policies that are put into place to make soldiers into an affective combat force but removing all humanity from the individuals. Those interviewed tell the camera how the recruiting process seems so clean and simple, how word like "democracy" and "freedom" are banded around, but once the training begins they become "enemy" and "kill" and "destroy". How once in action soldiers don't care what they are ordered to do, as they are ingrained with the idea that as soon as they carry out an order, whatever it may be, they are one step closer to going home. They have no political or social ideals to fight for but fight and kill as that's what they've been trained to do.

But The Ground Truth's main goal is to highlight the way the US Army discards those who have fought for their country once they return home. There is no real rehabilitation given to soldiers returning, and many are forced to go home unable to cope with what they have seen and done, and most policies in place seem to be to make sure the army has no legal responsibility whatsoever for psychological affects their soldiers pick up. This is the final indignity, that once they are used they are cast away.

If there is a flaw in the film it is that Foulkrod doesn't attempt to show another side to the argument. You would get the impression that every single soldier who ever went to war would come back with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It would have been interesting to see those of a… less liberal upbringing give their opinions of how the army handles training and policies. There is never a chance for the other side of the argument to make itself known.

But other than that this is an expertly crafted documentary, and Foulkrod's use of stock footage and music is perfectly utilised to get across a side of war that too often get s passed by when discussing the fallout of war.