Movie Maven

The Da Vinci Code
Starring: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellan
Written by: Akiva Goldsman
Directed by: Ron Howard
Official Website

Photo by cinematical.com

WARNING: I have scattered spoilers throughout this post with reckless disregard for people's feelings. If you have not read the book or seen the movie and still give a damn, skip this post.

A thousand apologies for my regrettable absence. I've been struggling with two movies I saw last weekend- Da Vinci, and The Notorious Bettie Page (review on that delightful little muffin to come soon.) An unfortunate case of writer's block had me in its stubborn grasp, and I have just now been able to break free.

But I digress...

No doubt all of you have read the harrowing reviews of the film- or at least heard about them. It's boring, it's ludicrous, it's pompous, it's flat. The reviews have been written with a certain manic glee- they're not just panning the movie, they're beating it over the head with a two-by-four, throwing it against a wall and kicking it until it lies cold and limp on the floor.

But it's what the reviewers are not saying that's really interesting. They're completely ignoring the real problem with the movie. The camera-work is not extraordinary, but up to par. The music is fine, the plot developments are coherent enough. The settings are often very beautiful. And the performances are actually quite good. Ian McKellan is especially wonderful, very funny and gets the movie going at a good clip. Alfred Molina does a fine stint as a creepy Cardinal And Paul Bettany can play a murderous, self-flagellating, Albino monk like nobody's business.

Do you see the problem yet?

I'll say that again: "murderous, self-flagellating, Albino monk." That's the problem. The content, the plot, the entire book upon which the movie is based on, is STUPID! I don't know how else to put it- it's stupid! S-T-O-O-P-I-D! Make an anagram out of that, bitches!

And the monk's just the beginning. The symbologist (if that's an actual word) meets up with the cryptologist at the Louvre where the cryptologist's grandfather has just been murdered. They go on a wild, mad-cap chase, involving the "murderous, self-flagellating, Albino monk," go to an extremely weird Swiss bank with blue lights and conveyer belts with boxes with clues inside to find the Holy Grail. Which is not actually a cup, by the way. It's a person. Or a secret. Or a sarcophagus. Or something. One of the main characters ends up being the direct descendant of Jesus Christ, and there's a shoot-out and the corrupt policeman sees the error of his ways and there's this really cool thing buried under the pyramid in front of the Louvre.

See my point? The movie is slow, because the plot is so convoluted it needed to be explained ad nauseum to make any sort of sense at all. And when you think it's about to end, it's not, because Dan Brown, and likewise Ron Howard, can't let anything be a mystery in this story. Nothing can be left to our imagination. Every last damn gritty detail must be laid before our feet. And explained. Preferably twice.

In many ways I actually prefer the movie to the book, much in the same way I prefer the Lord of the Rings movies to the actual literature. In a movie, all of Dan Brown's ravings and endless, badly-worded descriptions can be bypassed. Do I need and 20-page account of what the Mona Lisa's smile looks like? Nope, cause I got the real thing right in front of me. Do I require a sermon about the Church's supposed cover-up of the truth about Christ. Nuh-uh, cause Ian McKellan can say the same damn thing is about two minutes. All adaptations must be compressed for time. Most of the time, this means that something important gets lost in the transference. This time, all it means is that Brown's stilted, wearying literary fat has been trimmed away, for leaner, sexier storytelling.

But there's only so much trimming one can do without becoming unintelligible, and I still stumbled out of the movie feeling like I'd been watching Tom Hanks' greasy hair for about nine hours. It's very unfortunate. I like the themes that both the book and the movie address. The question of faith, the corruption of a legitimate religious institution by fanatics, the fight over who or what Christ was and what that has to do with the message he tried to give us. And, in the end, the subjectivity of history. All of these are wonderful things to write a book about. And make a movie about.

I only wish it had been written by someone else.