Controversial fantasy saga opens on big screen

Ever since the first Lord of the Rings film opened in 2001 Christmas has become the season for noisy fantasy epics. Two years ago, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe stormed box offices throughout the world and inspired some liberal commentators to condemn the adaptation of CS Lewis's allegorical tale as Christian propaganda.

Yesterday's release of The Golden Compass, a lavish translation of the opening section of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, has induced fulmination among foot soldiers on the other side of the cultural wars.

"Atheism for kids. That is what Philip Pullman sells," Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a conservative American pressure group, wrote on the organisation's website.

"We are fighting a deceitful stealth campaign on the part of the film's producers. Our goal is to educate Christians so that they know exactly what the film's pernicious agenda really is."

Chris Weitz's film, which features Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, cuts the ending of Pullman's 1995 book (titled Northern Lights outside the US), but otherwise stays reasonably true to its gripping source. Set in a parallel universe where all humans are accompanied by a manifestation of their soul (or id) in the form of an animal, the picture stars Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra Belacqua, a young girl compelled to join forces with glamorous witches, fighting bears and a cowboy aviator against a conspiracy organised by a sinister body called the Magisterium.

Even Mr Donohue has been forced to admit that the film tones down some of Pullman's more explicit anti-theistic language. Indeed, European pundits have, in the run-up to the release, worried that the story may have been eviscerated to avoid antagonising middle-American Christians.

Though robust believers should still enjoy the film, few will mistake the Magisterium - an authoritarian, quasi-religious force that stifles debate and promotes belief in a class of original sin - as an allegorical model of the Campaign for Real Ale. The books' implied criticism of organised religion remains very much in evidence.

No wonder Pullman, a 61-year-old humanist from Norfolk, has remained broadly supportive of the project.

Something has, however, been lost in translation. Kidman is creepy as the villain, but the story feels rushed, the pounding score is awful and Richards seems somewhat out of her depth. Still, the film has enough appeal to guarantee two further Christmases spent with Pullman's absorbing saga.