The Da Vinci Code 



In the interest of honesty, I must confess in disclaimer that I have never read the book, having instead listened to the unabridged audio version during a driving trip to and from Montana in the summer of 2004. This is not because I prefer listening to reading of novels or because my life is a confusing mishmash of conflicting schedules and the innumerable distractions that modern life has become, but because every time I picked up a copy of Dan Brown's novel in Borders (I miss Hawley-Cooke) or Barnes & Noble and tried to read a little snippet to get a feel for the book and try to decide if it was worthy of my coin, I was struck full-in-the-face with just how poorly written his book truly is. However, in the spring and summer of '04 we can all remember the publicity the book was getting and I was finally compelled to buy the audio version from Audible.com. Thankfully, in the hands of a competent narrator, even a novel whose author has only the merest passing acquaintance with the concept of proper sentence structure, can turn an excruciating read into a fairly enjoyable listening experience.

After 40 million copies of the novel — in hardback, I don't know what the paperback sales have been like — and all the press the film and its attendant controversy have garnered the last month or so, I would assume everyone (or at the very least, all my loyal readers (hi to both of you)) is familiar with the basic outline of the story and I needn't do an exposition of the plot or introduce the characters and can just get right into the review. Judging by the weekend box office numbers, I may be reviewing too late – domestic take was $77 million, not huge, but respectable, while worldwide gross was the second biggest opening weekend in history at $224 million.

As I write this, two days after having seen the film, I can say that quite frankly, it was not a very memorable film as already it is fading from my memory nearly as fast as the Nathan's Cheese Fries (yes, I know I shouldn't eat stuff like that with my heart and my diabetes) I was munching on early in the film. Lynda had booked our seats Friday through MovieTickets.com for the 3:35 showing Saturday afternoon in the Director's Hall at the Showcase Cinema Deluxe 16 megaplex. We hopped in the Rav and hauled ourselves across the county to the theatre. Because I had concerns about protests from the Religious Right, I swung around to the back of the theatre (can park closer in to the doors anyway) and came in through the back. We went our separate ways to buy our munchies (they didn't have my unsalted pretzel nuggets in the concession stand where she got her popcorn) and I got my fries in nothing flat while she had a LONG wait because of the new kid behind the counter. We got settled into our cushy leather ASSIGNED seats (O the suffering your noble movie critic endures for your enlightenment). Well, if I am gonna sit still for 2 hours and 29 minutes, I AM going to be COMFORTABLE!

We endured the ads and the previews, including one for World Trade Center with Nicholas Cage that I thought looked interesting and one for The Lake House with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves that Lynda wants to see and I have dubbed Speed Bump; it may be pretty good, but I couldn't resist the pun.

I am not going to get into the controversy surrounding the novel and the movie, as I really don't buy into it. The story is a murder mystery of a sort, twisted around a grail quest of a sort. I propose that the grail story is nothing more than what Alfred Hitchcock used call a MacGuffin, a plot device that purports to move the plot along or even be the central theme of the plot, but is nothing more than a diversion or a red herring. In this case, it deflects the reader/viewer from the fact that there is not really that much to the story other than series of puzzles and little cliffhangers. To those protesting outside the the theatre, get a life folks; it's a work of fiction and poses no threat to the church as such. The bigger question posed by the controversy is whether or not the church considers its members adult enough to make their own choices about what to read and what to watch. All this hubbub will only make people curious and will drive people to see the film. Folks, it ain't that good, if you are seeking a greater truth, go see Over the Hedge.

A lengthy Wiki article on the book, its attendant controversy and history of its purported back-story can be found here. Likewise, an evolving Wiki about the film may be found here .

The movie remains fairly faithful to the book considering it has to condense things down to two and a half hours. Opening credits are a bit dark and foreboding and matched in dread with Hans Zimmer's score. The action opens with Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle), the Louvre 's curator being chased through the Louvre by the albino Silas (Paul Bettany), Ron Howard leads us through the shadowy galleries where the hunter and the prey are quite literally watched by a thousand eyes hanging on the walls. A deceitful ploy is offered; murder by slow death; clues painstakingly and painfully put into place and we're off and running. We next find ourselves in an audience for a lecture by noted Symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) promoting his new book The Divine Feminine.

The book-signing afterwards is interrupted by a Paris Police officer requesting Dr. Langdon's assistance and that he accompany him at once to the Louvre. There we are presented the shocking tableaux of the naked body of Jacques Sauniere arranged as Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man with symbolic clues drawn or written around the gallery in Sauniere's own blood. From the shadows strides in Captain Bezu Fache (Jean Reno), whom the symbologist notes is wearing a pin with a cross within a globe — the symbol of Opus Dei — on his lapel. Fache gets right to work on getting Dr. Langdon's help in unraveling the symbols and clues in the murder scene — but unbeknownst to Langdon, Fache has already uncovered clues which implicate Langdon as the murderer — and some of the mysterious clues begin to shed their cloaking shrouds as Langdon explains them to Fache. We are abruptly interrupted (somewhat jarringly so in this movie, as it seems to be the way to introduce new characters to the plotline) by the arrival of Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) with an IMPORTANT message from the US Embassy on HER cell phone for Dr. Langdon. Sophie, we will later learn is not just a Police Cryptographer, but also Jacques Sauniere's granddaughter.

Ok, at this point I will stop the blow-by-blow recitation of the movie plot. We have met the all important characters, save one who I will get back to in a moment and another who has had his importance to the plot and back-story reduced in the movie, which I will briefly address momentarily.

The plot and the acting up to here have been satisfactory, though there hasn't been much of an acting challenge. Hanks' performance is his usual stuff, but there seems to be a sense of playing it safe, that just doesn't really jive with the character of Dr. Langdon. I don't know, maybe the fact that Hanks is a decade older than Robert Langdon, and that Langdon himself is something more than the Everyman that is Hanks' forte in film. Maybe it's the hair; really, what's up with that Tom?

My greatest disappointment however was Ms Tautou's performance. I really have to question whether she speaks in English in real life — most Europeans do nowadays, but she is French, and we know how they can be about this — as her readings sounded as if she had learned her lines phonetically and was reciting them in rote. I don't think I am being unkind in noting that Tom's fellow castaway in the like-named film delivered his lines with more animation and conviction than Ms Tautou; but then Wilson was a much more rounded actor than she is.

The movie continues on its way through various twists and turns until we finally arrive at the villa of the eccentric Englishman Sir Leigh Teabing (whose name, Dan Brown meant as a homage to the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who of course later sued Brown for supposedly stealing the premise of their book as the central plot of the Da Vici Code) the world's leading Grail expert. The movie regains some much needed life at this point, thanks to the delightful scenery-chomping of Sir Ian McKellen. We get an elaborate multimedia exhibition of the real Grail message that the Priory of Sion has been tasked with protecting, go plunging through the back forests of Teabing's villa after Fache has tracked them down, off to London on Teabing's jet, et cetera, ad nauseum. I have left out many plot points, as have the filmmakers, but then they also changed several things (the cryptex code for one) and the readers of the book will wonder why the Priory rituals were cut down to just a fleeting, almost non-sensical glimpse when it was so important in the estrangement of Sophie and Jacques. They have also reduced the role of Bishop Manuel Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) who was instrumental in the darker dealings of Opus Dei in the plot, but also in the back-story of Silas the Albino. Truth be told, with all the time devoted to exposition in the film, I am afraid that if you haven't read the book, the movie-goer might be wondering what the heck is going on. The controversy surrounding the film is way overblown as is the hype for this film. When we left the theatre, we did see protesters out in front, but by now hopefully, they have given up and gone home. It had potential, but on the whole, was not quite my cup of tea. Lynda gave it an 8 out 10 though, but agrees that the book was better (see my disclaimer above) and one would be lost without reading the book first.


6 out of 10 stars

IMDB Link

Official Site


 

Posted: Mon - May 22, 2006 at 09:52 AM          

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