Dan Brown may be a bumbling neophyte when it comes to history, but he is an absolute genius when it comes to writing a best-seller. Let's see...what demographic buys and reads fictional novels? Women. How can I get them to buy it and feel personally connected? Invoke reverence for women by referring to "the sacred feminine" and goddess-worship. Also, refer to lots of art. Women dig art. OK. That's all great stuff but I need something that is going to make these people buy it and then talk about it and then force it upon their friends and co-workers, male and female alike. What can I write about that will elicit a strong emotional response? How can I rattle people to their very core? Write about Jesus. Attack the church. Shake the foundations of faith upon which so many of them stand. Brilliant!
Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code, has sold over 50 million copies (and counting) and is the most popular work of fiction in U.S. History. This movie needed no hype. In one sense, Ron Howard's job as director of the film version was a cake walk. The film was destined to be a Box Office hit based on the pre-existing fan base alone. On the other hand, this is not simply a murder mystery or treasure hunt flick. The sensitive issues, bold claims, and invective against the Christian church are not ones to be dealt with lightly.
On the surface, this movie is very similar to the movie National Treasure which was a surprise hit in 2004. Both feature the hunt for a hidden treasure that has been protected by a secret society through the ages which featured prominent figures in history (because let's face it, if they were people we've never heard of before how boring would that be?). And in both movies, the secret societies thought it would be a good idea to keep clues lying around so that if someone was just smart enough and persistent enough (and darn lucky to get the meaning behind some of these clues, I might add) they could have access to their secret, hidden treasure. Both are quite fun if you are willing to suspend disbelief, however for my money National Treasure is the most entertaining.
In any case, our two treasure hunters in The Da Vinci Code are Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a professor of symbology from Harvard (I guess you can be a professor of just about anything these days...I'd like to be a professor of...well let's not go there for I digress) and Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), a cryptologist but obviously not a very good one since she leaves all of the code-breaking up to the symbologist. These two are on the hunt for clues, the first of which were left behind by Sophie's murdered grandfather (not to be confused with her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather whom we'll discuss shortly). Langdon's job, for the most part, is to decipher the clues and point out how they all have to do with the "sacred feminine" and/or lies and cover-ups by the Christian church. Sophie's job is to agree with him without ever questioning anything.
Along the way, they encounter a wizened yet ebullient British and independently wealthy scholar named Sir Leigh Teabing (portrayed marvelously by Ian McKellan) who has prepared some really fancy Powerpoint slides to back up their absurd claims (as in real-life, it is more about the presentation than the actual substance). Among the claims are that Constantine, who was a life-long pagan, compiled the New Testament at the Council of Nicea and made up the idea that Jesus was the Son of God so that he could control Rome and put women in their place. Furthermore, Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus, pregnant at the crucifixion, and fled to France where over the course of 2000 years, the family tree has had a single branch instead of flowering out to a multitude of people. The Priory of Scion, a secret society which included the Knights Templar, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Isaac Newton, has protected this secret (though not very well since Teabing seems to know all about it...mostly because Da Vinci painted little clues about it in his artwork) and the identity of the bloodline. And finally, to top it all off, the Holy Grail is not a cup, but is instead the bones of Mary Magdalene (which would be a bit awkward to drink out of, I'd suppose).
This movie is very true to the book, with perhaps one subtle yet very important exception. In the book, Robert Langdon and Leigh Teabing agree on everything when it comes to the "lies" and "falsehoods" of the church and of Christianity itself. However, Hank's portrayal of Langdon shows us a man who has not given up on his spirituality nor is he acrimonious towards early Christians. In fact, when some of the biggest bombs are dropped on Christianity such as the claim that they started wars with the pagans, Langdon argues with Teabing rather than affirm his every claim. The result is that the movie version softens the blow since the protagonist seems a bit confused himself. I'm not sure why that was done except maybe that the audience would seem to identify more with a soul-seeker than a pompous Harvard professor who knows everything.
Ironically, yet purposefully, the nasty villain in this movie is a monk. He is an albino monk, named Silas (played by Paul Bettany who likes to get naked on film...see A Knight's Tale to see what I'm getting at). Silas wears a dark, hooded monk's robe that makes him look a bit like Darth Maul from Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace. The robe is very simplistic and he looks especially out of place on the modern streets of Paris or London. But apparently there is a pocket in that robe somewhere to hold a cell phone, because that's where he gets his instructions from "The Teacher."
All in all, I think that Ron Howard did a great job at staying true to the book and producing an exciting hunt. Some of the slower parts in the book were sped up on film to give it more pace and drive. Performances from Ian McKellan and Paul Bettany were outstanding, however I was disappointed in the under-utilization of Jean Reno as Bezu Fache. I know it didn't call for it, but I kept expecting to see him kill someone (a la The Professional or Mission Impossible) or better yet, I was expecting to see Steve Martin find his way on screen as Inspector Jacques Clouseau from The Pink Panther.
In the end, Dan Brown's ludicrous conspiracy theory will do a lot of people a lot of good. The closed minded won't read the book, see the movie, or allow its ideas any possibility, so it really isn't applicable to them. The weak minded may be overly influenced by it perhaps destroying what faith they may have had; however, in a couple of years the next new-age philosophy will whisk them away in a new direction. The reasonable minded will perhaps do some research (unlike Brown himself) to discover the truths or falsehoods behind his bold but unsubstantiated claims and wind up with a stronger faith for having done so, for what good is faith if it can't be questioned? I purposefully chose not to place my own counters to the claims of Dan Brown in this review because I truly feel that everyone needs to investigate this on his/her own rather than having it spoon fed.
I was pleasantly surprised and disagree with critics who have blasted this movie. The ideas it spews forth may be blasted, but the movie itself is well done.
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