Audience of One

The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code in film form is an excellent adaptation of the book – which if you’ve read the book, isn’t saying much. Like the book, I found it to be a gripping story. Also like the book, I didn’t particularly like it, even though it gripped me.

Most of the film’s faults seemed to lie in the plot and the acting, with a couple of exceptions. Tom Hanks was probably planning to look slightly dazed throughout the film, as it is rather a confusing plot for the characters themselves to go through. However, looking dazed (or occasionally scared when in enclosed spaces) for the whole film got a little irritating. He’s done some good work, but this isn’t among it. Audrey Tautou wasn’t bad, but she wasn’t anything special either.

The plot, of course, is legend. A secret society called the Priory of Sion have been keeping the secret of the Holy Grail safe from the Catholic Church, who want to destroy it, as the Grail would rock the whole Christian faith to the core. What is the Grail? That Jesus, far from being the Son of God, was a normal bloke who got married to Mary Magdalene and had a child. This child was the first of the royal bloodline, whose existence is protected by the Priory of Sion. The code of the title is the clues that Leonardo da Vinci left in his work to this truth, as well as the series of clues left for Tom Hanks’ character to trace the location of Mary Magdalene’s last resting place.

What the film (nor indeed the book) never explains is why, if Jesus isn’t the Son of God, this is such a big issue. So there’s someone alive who’s descended from a man executed by the Romans two thousand years ago. If Jesus isn’t who Christians believe he is, what does this matter? Sure, the revelation would shock the church to its core, but it doesn’t make the descendants anything special, nor Mary Magdalene herself. However, right at the end of the film we find Tom Hanks kneeling, seemingly in prayer, at the grave of Mary Magdalene. This doesn’t seem to make any sense.

So parts of the film don’t make sense. Other parts, like in the book, are just lies. Part of the book’s controversy arose from Dan Brown’s introduction, in which he claims that most of the book is based on fact. The film also presents particular things as fact. For example, the council of Nicea voted on what books to put in the Bible and what not to put in. This much we know. The film/book claims that they chose the books that confirmed what they wanted to put out – that Jesus was the Son of God. As a result, they got rid of all the books which contradicted this.

What the film doesn’t tell you is that not only is it all the earliest writings that talk of Jesus’ divinity, the canon of the New Testament was pretty much agreed apon by (if my memory serves me) the middle of the second century, two hundred years before Nicea. The Gnostic gospels mentioned in the film (the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Philip) were written about a hundred years later.

So that’s just one example. There are many other inaccuracies, but as I’m not an expert I’d read one of the many books on the subject if you’re interested. There are far too many “facts” assumed that have almost no historical basis. It was the same with the book of course.

What else to say? Well, for a film full of historical inaccuracies, illogical events and ridiculous co-incidences, it was reasonably enjoyable, but so bad that I felt guilty for enjoying it. It’s one of those things which I don’t regret having seen, but if given the choice again I’d have seen something else. There were some brilliant moments though. When Langdon (Hanks) and Neveu (Tautou) take refuge from the police with Sir Leigh (Ian McKellen), they neglect to tell him of their pursuers. When he discovers the police arriving at his door, his out-of-the-blue response is along the lines of “not to worry, we can fly my jet to Switzerland”. Or later, with Langdon beating himself up over an obvious clue: “Of course, why didn’t I see it?! A pope doesn’t mean ‘a pope’, it means Alexander Pope! How stupid was I!” Or the albino monk Silas speaking Latin into a mobile phone. So, not all bad then. Ridiculous on so many levels, sometimes funny, mainly not.

Matthew @ 14:04, May 22, 2006 to Reviews | Comments (0)