I was in high school when I was given Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. I remember finishing reading the last book on the balcony of the house during a spring afternoon. On that day there was a fiery red sunset that extinguished the vital energy of the clouds as the adventures of Lyra and Will, in the book, were ending. Even in that final closure, in the world of the two protagonists, the sun took over the gray of death and the day was colored with brightness to reaffirm its majesty. It wasn’t strange. I believe that in that instant a little boy, grappling with versions of Greek and first loves, had entered His Dark Materials, between the pages written by Pullman, in the limbo with which this wonderful story is sprinkled. Because that’s what makes a book great, isn’t it? When a book involves you so much you can enter that world with all your emotional strength, with all of yourself. What shape would my dæmon look like? I’ve been asking myself this question for years, believe me.
The series taken from the novel is essentially the same as its paper equivalent: visionary, spiritual, fascinating. These Dark Materials never fails to be conceptually refined and manages, with extreme delicacy, to take a path that is never banal, suspended between lyrical and mystical. The adventures of Lyra and Will frame a story designed to become an allegory of human condition, a philosophical reflection full of questions that are close to our hearts. The fantasy genre is mixed with quantum physics theories and theological issues as we witness the rise of the free will, the only true engine of the world. His Dark Materials captivates with the way it outlines its own story, a story in which everything is a means to tell something else, everything is a metaphor for an incurable rift.
Lyra and Will remember Dante’s journey through the otherworldly worlds, but take on the characteristics of a liberating march towards humanity devastated by the command of authority. In These Dark Materials Paradise, the last outpost of the afterlife, is earthly life: a life free from impositions in which autonomous thinking is in force as the most beautiful characteristic of man. This salvation of the planets comes through a prophecy that sees Lyra retain the power of Dust, the alteration of her ideas. If we think about it, how many times has a prophecy been at the center of a fantasy story? Too many. But this time we are facing a different omen, far from the usual stereotypes, because the theme of the inner dimension of each of us is addressed, of the importance of the soul that recognizes itself as flesh. A story in which the weight of the themes sinks but does not disturb thanks to the infiltration of adolescent themes and dialogues full of everyday vocabulary.
These Dark Materials and the pleasure of a story suitable for everyone
His Dark Materials has an absurd desire to tell a story suitable for everyone. Every child will love the idea of a guide animal, a daimon who identifies with our mission and shares every surrogate: a friend with whom to feel less alone and heartbroken. Adults, on the other hand, will find bread for their teeth and poetry for their eyes when magic, religion and nature mix as if they were born of the same womb. In the series, as in the novels, i concepts of good and evil are renamed in the name of a destiny that must be written daily, away from fear and its monsters. Re-discovery is connected to this common thread of innocence, in my opinion the most important theme of the entire narrative arc. It is thanks to the profound sense of rediscovery and lost innocence that Dust is saved from its flight into the abyss: with the revelation of love Will and Lyra save the Earth. The two boys, the new Adam and Eve, bring no sin but only eternal spring.
This love will save the Earth. Also in this case, the love between the two boys follows an unconventional and unique logic, distant from any picture already seen in other television transpositions. The love that Pullman talks about is not the classic feeling that we say we are connected to from birth. Love, in His Dark Materials, is the common thread that connects souls beyond the body. Will and Lyra will find themselves in birds and flowers and even in the golden dust that hovers in the rays of the sun. The strength of love pierces the worlds and the gashes in the sky to enter the cellular mazes, the sweet memories that never stain black but only red. Love has no beginning or end and for this reason it hovers next to the hope of touching a hand that we can’t even touch, of embracing someone even if that body is no longer with us. The atoms of Lyra and Will, in His Dark Materials, will be so close to each other that they cannot detach, that they cannot let go, that they always cross like pieces of a puzzle, beyond worlds.
A history full of teachings
These Dark Materials has left us, in addition to a journey full of emotions, so many teachings to carry in the baggage of life. The series faithfully and coherently respected Pullman’s novel, keeping intact the magic of the pages and the exceptional introspective level of the protagonists. The latter are called to challenge no dragon or monster, but something greater, immensely great: the power, the influence on the minds. These Dark Materials comes to the belief that good and evil are just names for what people do, not who they are, and that we must all act as if we are not subject to fate.
