THE VATICAN:The Vatican yesterday condemned the US film The Golden Compass, which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God.
In a long editorial, Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romanoalso attacked Philip Pullman, the best-selling British author of the book on which the family fantasy movie is based.
It was the Vatican's most stinging broadside against an author and a film since it roundly condemned The Da Vinci Codein 2005 and 2006.
"In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events," the editorial said.
The film, which premiered earlier this month in the US and stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is an adaptation of Pullman's acclaimed novel Northern Lights.
The Vatican newspaper said "honest" viewers would find it "devoid of any particular emotion apart from a great chill".
In the fantasy world created by Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, the church and its governing body, the magisterium, are linked to cruel experiments on children aimed at discovering the nature of sin and attempts to suppress facts that would undermine the church's legitimacy and power.
In the film version all references to the church have been stripped out, with director Chris Weitz keen to avoid offending religious cinema goers.
Still, some Catholic groups in the US have called for a boycott, fearing even a diluted version of the book might draw people to read the best-selling trilogy.
The Vatican newspaper said the film and Pullman's writings showed that "when man tries to eliminate God from his horizon, everything is reduced, made sad, cold and inhumane".
The newspaper called the movie "the most anti-Christmas film possible" and said that it was "consoling" that its first weekend ticket sales were a disappointing $26 million (€18.12 million). New Line Cinema, a unit of Time Warner, had hoped the film would pull in between $30 million and $40 million. It is doing better overseas, but New Line sold the foreign distribution rights to help cover the costs. The film is currently showing in Dublin.