Movie Maven

The ads are everywhere. On the TV promos, pounding instrumentals accompany shots of the Louvre glowing ominously in the distance, Tom Hanks with bad hair and Paul Bettany skulking in the shadows of some sort of crypt. I hear mentions of it on the lips of passers-by. It is referenced at gatherings and dinner parties that I attend. I read newspaper articles devoted to the subject, watch as network news shows are forced to shill for the thing by their parent company.

It's everywhere.

It's a conspiracy.

I read The Da Vinci Code after a recommendation by several people who had similar literary tastes as myself. I read. And I read. And I read. Through pages upon pages of description of the Louvre, to the lurid details of self-mutilation, through the preposterous conspiracy theory and irritatingly condescending tone of author Dan Brown. I read and I read. I read through being offended as a Catholic... Well, not really. I'm not a very good Catholic, and I was offended mainly because if someone's going to knock my faith they better have the decency to do it with talent. But still! I finally got through the whole thing, after putting it down on several occasions in favor of more entertaining fare. It boggled my mind how such a convoluted and ridiculous novel managed to garner so much attention and love. All I could hear was the whiny high-pitched voice that I imagine Dan Brown having. "Ooh, look at me!" Brown says. "I'm Dan Brown. I'm the smartest little boy in the whole world! I know sooo much about cryptology! Eat it up, you sheep!"

I hated the book with a fiery passion that is unmatched by any other I have known.

And yet I want to see the movie.

I know what this is. It's the peer pressure of adulthood- a marketing war being waged on so many fronts you can't hide from it. I'm blasted with promos in surround sound at my local theatre. I see them at home. Articles, pseudo-news stories, word-of-mouth, interviews with talk-show hosts... It cannot be escaped. Especially not by me, a self-professed media whore who gobbles up every morsel of marketing like subliminal creme brulee. If drug dealers had this kind of PR I'd be snorting, injecting and smoking everything I could lay my hands on. I admit it. I am a sheep. It's the only explanation for why I have a burning desire to see a film adapted from a novel I hated. With a lead actor I don't like all that much. With a director I don't like all that much.

So what to do? I could give in to my unholy, media-created desires, see the movie, take it for what it is. Many adaptations are completely different from the book they're adapting, and it would be interesting how the script diverts from the original text. I can sometimes enjoy Tom Hanks' company and I'm quite a big Paul Bettany and Audrey Tautau fan, not to mention Ian McKellan and Alfred Molina, all of whom are in the film. At the very least it would make excellent fodder for a post. But I also want to resist the temptation, to stand up and say no, I will not go to a movie just because the whole world is telling me to. I can think for myself, thank you very much, and I have limited funds which I can spend on better things. Food. New clothes. Diamond-studded collars for my dog. I could see a different movie, a better one. Hell, even M:I:3 has Philip Seymour Hoffman in it! And I could go to bed knowing that I'd resisted the marketing, I'd refused to sit through two hours of Dan Brown's ego-tastic extravaganza.

Oh, who am I kidding? Baaaaahhhh.