When a Movie Contains a “Flashback” to the Council of Nicea . . .
May 26th, 2006
. . . you know you’re in for some silliness. Such is the case with the recent movie adaptation of The Da Vinci Code.
Yes, Porpoise and I are back from Hawaii, and I plan to recount some of our adventures on The Ottery. But first I have to blog about Da Vinci, because I’ve been holding it in for almost a week now. Plus, we’re going to see X-Men 3 (yay! another movie featuring Ian McKellen acting silly!) tomorrow, and I can’t juggle two movie blog entries in my head simultaneously.
So, yes, we saw The Da Vinci Code in Hawaii, which normally I would have considered a waste of valuable hiking time. However, we had been badly roasted by the sun the previous day, and nothing sounded better than sitting in a cool, dark place for a couple of hours and laughing our heads off. Which is what we did.
Anyway, back to the Council of Nicea. I don’t know whose idea it was to attempt to render Leigh Teabing’s monologue about suppression of the “sacred feminine” less boring by interspersing it with historical flashbacks, but whoever thought of it has about as much storytelling sense as Dan Brown, which is to say, about as much storytelling sense as the dead muskrat perched atop Tom Hanks’ head.
The “Council of Nicea” scene features a room evenly divided down the middle, with white-bearded men in togas yelling and gesticulating threateningly at each other. You almost expect one of them to leap across the room and start beating a representative from the other side, à la Brooks’ caning of Sumner in the U.S. Senate. Either that, or you hope that it’ll somehow turn out to be a Monty Python-esque sketch, complete with singing and dancing.
Alas, The Da Vinci Code ‘tis a silly place, but it doesn’t know it. If Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman weren’t so darn earnest, they could have taken the unintentional camp of the novel and run with it. Instead, they stick reverently to the high-blown cheesiness of the original.
Take another moment from the Teabing monologue (which, in the book, is a Dan Brown monologue divided between Teabing and Langdon—more on that change later), when he recites the “proof” that Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ had a romantic relationship. The book quotes the Gospel of Philip thus: “Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth.” In the movie, Teabing quotes thus: “Christ loved her more than all the other disciples and used to kiss her often on her—,” at which point Sophie breaks in with another question. Now, the movie version is actually more accurate, as Goldsman must know: in the manuscript of the Gospel of Philip, the object of the preposition is illegible, which creates some pretty funny possibilities. If you know that, it makes you laugh at the line’s movie treatment. But if you don’t know that, it makes no sense.
There’s actually one aspect in which the novel is even superior to the movie—which really does not speak well for the movie. Brown, in spite of his horrific prose, does keep you hooked with cheap tricks and mysterious escapes that aren’t explained until the next chapter. It’s manipulative and lazy on the author’s part, but it works. The movie couldn’t even provide that kind of cheap thrill—the action sequences simply come off as flat.
That said, I am intrigued with some of the changes the movie made to the character of Robert Langdon, the Harvard “symbologist.” I spent most of the novel wanting to kick him, because he’s this suave know-it-all who is quite obviously Dan Brown’s image of himself. Tom Hanks’ Langdon is more unsure (perhaps because of his hairdo) and more humble. And, poor thing, he had a traumatic childhood experience that left him claustrophobic. When Teabing declares something to be fact, Hanks’ Langdon inserts, “It’s merely a theory”—a change perhaps intended to pacify the book’s critics, but one that also seems in tune with Langdon’s character as presented in the movie. Langdon’s doubts about Teabing’s assertions turn the film into something of a conversion narrative for Langdon. Though Teabing, as interpreted by Ian McKellen, is mad, Langdon and Sophie gradually come to accept the theory as truth.
Or do they? By the end of the movie, as Langdon and Sophie are discussing the impossibility of proving that she is descended from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, Langdon makes a statement something along the lines of “Faith is whatever you choose to believe.” Though it’s a pretty insipid message, I was fascinated with how the movie’s ending made room for mystery and doubt as part of faith. In contrast, Dan Brown presents his account of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as gospel truth, his gospel truth. The one true story, which has only one interpretation. In short, Dan Brown is a fundamentalist. He just happens to preach different fundamentals from the Christian fundamentalists he decries.
Yet what the film gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. It gives us a portrait of faith as mysterious, but then, at the end, when Langdon kneels at what the clues suggest might be the tomb of Mary Magdalene, instead of leaving us with his unproved and yet newly held belief, the camera takes us down and shows us what he can’t see, that Mary’s sarcophagus really is down there. Blah. So inconsistent with what the film was, at times, trying halfheartedly to make its theme.
Again, in Langdon’s and Sophie’s conversation about faith, Langdon asks, referring to Jesus’ nature, “Why does it have to be human or divine?” Um, well, it doesn’t, which is kind of the point of Christianity. The paradox of Jesus being human and divine is the central paradox of the Christian faith, one that, if accepted, has to be accepted as a mystery that we will never fully understand in this life. But the film can’t leave it there. Instead, Langdon has to tidy things up, to tie up loose ends in a nice little aphorism, by saying “Maybe human is divine.” Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you go. No more worries to boggle your mind.
Both the novel and the movie of The Da Vinci Code, I would argue, underestimate their readers/viewers and condescend to them. However, I’m glad for both, because they’ve opened up room for some intelligent discussion (and some stupid discussion, too, of course) about faith and religious history—and art, too, I suppose. People, if given access to information, are smarter than Brown and Howard and Co. give them credit for. They can handle facts, and they can handle mystery. And they can also have fun with both, which is more than I can say for the pomposity of The Da Vinci Code.
7 Comments Add your own
1. K | May 26th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
I’m glad you’re back! And I will have to post again once I have myself seen the “Da Vinci Code,” which should happen sometime in the next week. My motives will be the last addendum to your comment, “…because they’ve opened up room for some intelligent discussion (and some stupid discussion, too, of course) about faith and religious history—and art, too, I suppose.” Although I don’t expect to find much of it (art, that is) in the film. =(
I will hang on for the sake of Ian McKellen, and then go watch “Amelie” afterwards to reintroduce a gamine Adrey Tautou. And to think about garden gnomes rather than reductionist interpretations of religion, art, and mystery!
Otherwise, your comments agree with several other reviews that I’ve read, all of which regret the fact that the directors were 1, so fundamentalist in their use of Dan Brown’s book as script for another medium, and 2, less than gamine themselves.
ooh, I got to use “gamine” twice!
2. theotter | May 26th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Have you seen Tatou in Happenstance (which came out in 2000, the year before Amelie)? I just saw it a few months ago, and it’s remarkably similar to Amelie. Not quite as good (no gnomes, alas), but I think you’d enjoy it.
By the way, I saw an article recently that described Tatou as “barely surpassing 5-foot-3.” As if that’s ridiculously short! Grrr. Gamines of the world, attack!
3. Possum | May 30th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
I totally agree! (with both the Otter and Caryn James of the NY Times) — the most valuable thing about this film is that its blundering, unconvincing attempt at revisionist history (as well as America’s-moral-center-Tom-Hanks’s constant reminders about the distinction between accepted historical fact and theory) demands that the audience raise their own questions about history, faith, and story-telling, and go read primary texts and artifacts themselves (which apparently, according to the movie, are all in one location anyway, so we should all make a pilgrimage to… I’m avoiding saying the name of the place for those who haven’t seen it, but it’s a nice place, and I think we’d all have a good time there.) Thus, the movie embodies the old maxim: “there are no bad questions, only bad ____ (fill in the blank).”
Actually, there are bad questions (mostly asked by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman), but not in the case of this movie, which makes me wonder — and Otter carefully avoided this question in the blog — why would anyone protest this movie? After all, horror movies like The Omen have just as many (and worse) mis-representations of Catholicism as Da Vinci Code (and the movie version of the Code conveniently puts all the criticisms of the Catholic Church in the mouth of a psychopath.) Protesting this movie for its characterization of corrupt Catholics is like protesting Mission Impossible 3 for its characterization of corrupt spies. While there are many reasons to protest both movies, and these reasons apply even more strongly to X-Men 3, they are entirely aesthetic ones.
Meanwhile, for the math geek dwelling deep within all of us, I have a question. After two thousand years, would there really be only one descendent of Jesus? (I realize that in the story Opus Dei has been killing them off, but still… mathematically speaking, how likely is this?) And wouldn’t she be North-East African and not so ghostly pale? (I mean no offence to pale people.) So, considering Brown’s ethnocentric unwillingnes to explore any connection to the horn of Africa, the most important question for us to ponder here (and keep in mind that there are no bad questions except for Thomas Friedman’s), is this: what would Bob Marley think about the Da Vinci Code? And how would he have solved it were he, instead of Robert Langdon, asked to do so?
4. theotter | May 30th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Oh, yeah. That reminds me: the bit about the documents all being located in one very nice place is an innovation of the movie. In the book, such documents seem only to be located in Langdon’s head–convenient, as it’s hard to verify them that way. The movie also added that whole part with all the Priory of Sion people spontaneously appearing together in the same place as the documents. Great idea, that. A brilliant opportunity for Opus Dei or the Council of Shadows or whatever to kill ‘em all–and burn the documents, too.
It doesn’t really add much to have the documents or the people (other than the grandmother) there, so they stretch credibility for no good reason.
No doubt Thomas Friedman is now the Priory Grand Master. I mean, The Lexus and the Olive Tree? The Lexus symbol is clearly an inverted “V” or chalice, so it’s spreading the story of the true Holy Grail, and the Olive Tree–well, olive trees grow in Palestine and they represent the continuance of Christ’s seed. And you only thought the book was about globalization.
5. K | May 31st, 2006 at 5:56 pm
i’m back… and i am no longer a “da vinci” virgin. yikes! that has several resonances, but at least it’s wordplay… which somehow disappeared in the sleight of hand a la dan brown (both book and movie).
i am not sure what more to add to the reviews that are already out there. i watched the movie. i actually got caught up in the story of the thing as leigh teabing (ian mckellen) and his manservant remy (jean-ives berteloot) did their double-crossing. there was some real acting. it didn’t seem like tom hanks got caught up in his acting until the moment of debate w/ sir teabing when sophie had to step in to separate the two sparring experts. it was the most invested his character seemed all evening.
i have to agree that princess sophie being the one surviving heir of Christ is a stretch… although it was perhaps intended to recall the original girl child borne by the magdalene (and it gives landgon a nice revisionist line, “or until the heir decides to reveal HERself.”)
i think i’m missing the sacred feminine in this movie, though. almodovar pulls it off better (in “all about my mother”)…
if i have to say something about the visuals in this movie; they weren’t. there were some cheap tricks like the ghostly attendants at sir isaac newton’s funeral (”pirates of the caribbean”-esque), and one sequence of gazes exchanged between the paintings in the louvre itself that was quite effective. but the whole thing could have been filmed rather than offering a pedantic play-by-play (mostly of words, but even when incorporating blows of physical violence).
i’ve summarized my frustration w/ dan brown’s book for a friend before seeing the theater version as follows, and i think it still holds;
it is like watching a poor magician attempt card tricks. i love detective novels, murder mysteries, art, its history, religion and the same… but there is no mystery left in this movie except how leigh teabing finds out the text scrawled by the departed sauniere (find robert langdon) before the rest of us do. how else would the teacher instruct bishop aringarosa to reveal a ‘confession’ from the murderer to bezu fache? this was one added complication to the plot (if i remember correctly, making captain fache face his own crisis of faith in the transition from book to movie) that didn’t make sense.
6. K | May 31st, 2006 at 5:58 pm
but at least bezu fache realizes that he was being manipulated…
7. theotter | June 1st, 2006 at 2:25 pm
As I recall, Fache didn’t have much of a crisis of faith in the book (though I could be wrong). Instead, in the book, Aringarosa got to have a nice little repentance scene in which he promises not to have people killed again, and in which he asks Fache to distribute the blood money among the families of the deceased senechaux. Oh, goody.
The movie definitely gave us a more internal version of Fache. It made me wonder if they were trying to tap into Javert/Valjean associations (without going to the trouble of actually developing the characters).
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