So Dark the Con of Movies
I love a good conspiracy. I rapturously read the Chappelle Theory, about a powerful cabal featuring Oprah, Whoopi, and other African American leaders who pushed Chappelle off TV at his height. I was stunned during a Nostradamus program narrated by Orson Welles about how he predicted that in 1999 a Middle Eastern prince would fire missiles at our skyscrapers in New York (this program was produced waaaaay before 1999 let alone Sept. 11, 2001). I remember watching a video about the Rapture, the moment in the future when God will bring his chosen ones to heaven leaving all the sinful at the mercy of a Hitler-esque leader in a totalitarian world (I kid you not someone mentioned the U.N. as evidence we were heading this way).
The worse the conspiracy the better. Because they are all based on outlandish claims and incomplete evidence, they have an immense entertainment value which comes from the idea that it will change forever how you view the universe as we once knew it. The Da Vinci Code comes up with a doozy and then supports it with the wit of colorful revisions of things you already know. It’s like the Matrix in that somehow the film makes you feel like you can see outside of it and into the truth or as Tom Hanks’ character calls it “original truth.”
The Da Vinci Code is no more believable than any other conspiracy. The fact that society has given its theory a big thumbs up (60 million copies sold) shows that even if it is hogwash, it at least present some truth….or at least the true feelings we have towards the church, Jesus, and Frenchmen. It may smear Catholicism, but it is a smear of vanilla since calling Christianity a paternalistic religion is not exactly a revolutionary accusation. If anything, the book and film are valuable for the way they present symbols as a unifying subconscious force in the world (Joseph Campbell would have a field day with this) and the way they present religion as being subject to the whims of interpretations of men, not gods.
The film is slightly more absurd than the book. As Dan Brown’s prose is at best rudimentary, he invests his more useful moments in lecturing about historical events and figuring out anagrams and poetic trivia questions. It works well on the page in spite of itself…meaning that as a series of digressions we are diverted from ever caring that the story is so thin. The movie though cannot avoid this fact. It must realize that its characters do not possess compelling human qualities and that its premise could easily fall flat through the same lecturing that served the book.
Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman does nothing to allay those fears. As you watch the film, you are struck by how its qualities are not derived from their cinematic nature but simply how they are derived from the book. This is a film that cares deeply about faith…and the 60 million copies of the book read by its faithful readers. It was disappointing that we didn’t get a movie that could redeem the book’s flaws, and yet it wasn’t an utter disaster as reported. Again, all this will probably depend on how you esteem the book.
The most absurd moments are the film’s action beats. The one where Audrey Tautou’s character can suddenly navigate the crowded streets of Paris with a car in reverse like she just emerged from a John Frankenheimer film. The one where Hanks, held by gunpoint, is saved by a bird that swoops down. The one where Hanks and Tautou escape through a flock of nuns, surely a cinematic in-joke if I ever saw one. And my favorite, the one where Tautou bashes a man’s head to the ground in an act of excessive violence…something happened to Amelie on the way to the forum.
At 2 hours and a half, the movie suffers from horrendous pacing. From the beginning the movie needles you into thinking you’re watching a foreign film. Taking a cue from Catholic Mel Gibson, the entire film is shot in its original languages (Latin, French, English) and subtitled accordingly. And along with that is a dose of pretentiousness as the film labors its editing to the point of exhaustion. Just as the movie starts to wrap up it pulls out yet another mystery that needs solving.
While significantly less fun than it should have been, Da Vinci Code movie is of the philosophy of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Which basically amounts to The Goonies for old people…sans the truffle shuffle.
