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Get By EmailMovie Notes: The Da Vinci Code
= 4 stars
Starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou
Directed by Ron Howard
Amazon Links
Just saw The Da Vinci Code; it was decent, though a bit dull in many places. Tom Hanks unfortunately looked tired the whole time, and there’s technically a limit to how exciting a movie can be made from long lectures on religious symbology and fiddling with anagrams in the characters’ heads.
The good is that the book is followed quite literally scene by scene. All the exciting parts are on screen and it’s neat to see some of the more unfamiliar locations come to life. The film also captures a complex feeling, that of figuring out something on your own, the rare glimmer of inspiration and elation that’s purely mental. Ultimately the film is a kind of forbidden romance story, a sort of “what if”.
There’s a fair amount of suspension of disbelief in any film, and this one asks for quite a bit more than I suppose some religious folks can handle. To believe in the story of Jesus as the Catholics propose (ressurection, son of God, miracles) requires I think, a similar amount of disbelief suspension.
In a larger sense, the film is about how in this day and age, all our institutions from government to the church have failed us, and the concept that power corrupts. Nobody, not even those who claim to be followers of God, are immune to the temptation to wield one’s power in negative ways. To contrast, there is the hope that through sheer intellect alone, the truth can be outed despite the powers that try to hide it.
IMDB: The Da Vinci Code
Wikipedia: The Da Vinci Code
Rotten Tomatoes: The Da Vinci Code 25%
Categories: 4 Star Movies, General, Movies :: Tags: ::
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Incredibly boring movie. Like ‘The Exorcist’, the true effectiveness of the whole thing turns on one’s own religious precepts. Without a background steeped in church dogma, ‘The Exorcist’ was in essence just a film about a sick little girl, and ‘The Da Vinci Code’ is a talky chase movie. The French woman is fine, but Tom Hanks seems as if he’s thinking about something else throughout. The original ‘base material’ book (’The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail’, published in 1982) handled the notion of a potentially destructive ‘church secret’ much better than either fictionalised ‘Da Vinci Code’ account, and one didn’t need to be a card-carrying Christian to be engrossed by the story, either.