The Da Vinci Code was a great book. And the film version was a stunningly faithful reproduction of the book. So if you've read the book, you have already gotten 99% of the thrill. The film adaptation is incapable of delivering any more drama. In fact...
The Da Vinci Code is a ponderous film that needed to take liberties with the book and just didn't. It made the biggest mistake a film of this import could make which was to leave it as a mystery. Let me put it this way, in the entire movie, there are never more than 40 people in a scene, unless there was a scene I slept through. If you are on the verge of discovering a mystery that would purportedly blow the entire world up, it would be nice to have some people get excited about it.
I mean there are plenty of fans of the Gnostic Gospels. How about a subplot in which it is revealed on the internet that new clues about the Priory of Scion have been discovered. How about some drama in which one Bishop captures another Bishop and puts part of the Catholic Church in check? Nothing of the sort, not even a phony CNN voiceover. The Da Vinci Code film never goes outside the bonds of a murder mystery and there's not even romance. Even Bond flicks have more plot diversity.
The movie is solidly competent. If you haven't read the book, it's definitely worth seeing. The problem is that if you have read the book, all the mystery is gone. Plus, there is something about reading about such revelations that seem more impactful than watching people say so, or was it that I just don't buy Tom Hanks as a university geek any more than I did Indiana Jones? Still, the scene in Teaing's living room was very well done, and generated a bit of energy. The problem was that the intensity of this trialog was not kept up throughout the film. I bit more passion, I think, might have saved this film from mediocrity.
There's nothing about the theological controversy this film may have generated that gets me going. I don't know if I should have expected more or paid closer attention. But it seems to me that Christianity in its current state is so completely, how shall I say.. inured to contradiction, that there's really nothing to challenge. Or perhaps I should be more specific to say that the Catholic Church is the only one in the US with rules tight enough to be broken. So many Christian sects and communities pay so little attention to theological dogma that such matters don't count.
Such are big tent issues.
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