The Da Vinci Code
Last Friday I went with Thijs to the Da Vinci Code. He wanted to see it and I well, had little else to do and was curious how bad it would be. Well, bad is not really the right word. It is euhm… different and entertaining. I fear I laughed harder than was intended and there were quite some people looking annoyed. But I can’t really help it… I mean the cinema was filled with ‘believers’!
The story itself was entertaining but for a movie with a briliant cast like this it remained very very flat. Thijs told me that it was comparable to the book, which I haven’t read, but I expected more from actors like Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou. Tautou played such a wonderful part in ‘Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain’ where she proved to be one of France’s greatest actresses. Amélie is arguably one of the greatest stories ever written for film and I would cut off my left arm in order to be able to write stories like that.
Anyways I appreciated the fact that the Code was nearly an entire European production. It was filmed in Paris and the UK and besides Tautou there were several more great European actors cast. Ian McKellen was of course great and arguably the best actor in the film. Especially near the end where he gleefully cackles like a lunatic, priceless. However Jean Reno was not into his thing I fear. I have seen him do so many better movies like Leon and stuff. The movie missed any chemistry between the characters. I didn’t really connect and probably wouldn’t have cared much if Hanks got shot or anything. Neither was there any fire between him and Tautou. Not that it needed any heavy romance or something but a bit of sparkles and electricity would have made a difference. Somewhere in the last scene you feel like they give it a try but it crashes before it even takes off. Using the last scene for sparkles is a bit too late in my opinion anyway.
About the story, well, besides being rushed through it in two-and-a-half-hours, it remained as I said a bit flat. All the essentials are covered and explained. The public is really taken by the hand during a very straightforward quest. There are no sudden plottwists except the ‘surprises’ any such story needs. However it would help if the ‘surprises’ would be a bit more surprising. As it stood I was half expecting most of them and there aren’t many to begin with. I felt like Mr. Brown wanted to put as much Christian mythology into his story as he got his hands on. Everything from Gnostic texts, the Knights Templar, Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. I was more or less waiting for the Arc of the Covenant (yesyes I *know* that is Judaic), the Judas Gospel and the other Dead Sea Scrolls. In his stead (said the unpublished writer jealously about the bestselling author ;-) ) I would have cut my facts by half, got them straightened out and kept the ending open. Because that’s in my opinion the worst thing about this story. I would have appreciated it if at the end of the story the mystery remains wether or not Miss Sophie is the blood of Christ. Something to chew on after the story is finished. Please give me as the reader/public a bit of credit since I am very capable of drawing my own conclusions thank you very much. I don’t need an author to spell out every last line for me.
With all these supposed facts I have a bit of a problem that most of them are just historically wrong. I know that it isn’t a factual story although Dan Brown claims a hundred times he did his ‘research’ (I mean a holiday in France doesn’t really classify imho!). During the movie when Teabing (McKellen) starts explaining his theory I really had a hard time not getting annoyed. If you claim to write a conspiracy which could have happened (something, if succesful, I really appreciate) at least get your facts straight! At his death Emperor Constantine did not rule the Roman Empire from Rome but from Constantinople. There was no large civil war between Christians and pagans and no Constantine did *not* edit/rewrite the Bible. Especially not because, as Brown correctly claims, the Emperor remained pagan until his deathbed. The modern version of the Bible itself is based on the medieval Vulgata which was designed by St. Jerome in the sixth century (about two centuries after Emperor Constantine!). Jerome was a true editor and cut the number of gospels back to the current four and restructured them so they were essentially all the same story. He added and removed stuff at leisure under protection of Pope Donatius (the Second I believe). Donatius was a bit in conflict with the Patriarch of Constantinople over supremacy in the church so the entire work must be placed in a larger political context. Anyways, I digress. No Christian sect was going to accept the gospel as rewritten by a pagan. More annoying was the description of the Council of Nicaea as some hugely orchestrated conspiracy. Gnostic sects had held Christ as divine for at least a century before the Council and it was certainly not newly conjured up by bad bad men trying to influence the course of modern history...
So all in all, the Da Vinci Code was entertaining but there are a zillion better religious-thrillers out there. My favourite number one is Rupert Wainwright's Stigmata (great artistic document with lots of contrast and great acting). Followed closely by Dogma (cynical genius with Alanis Morisette as God and Alan Rickman as the Metatron, the voice of God). Devil’s Advocate is great too especially the second half with Al Pacino’s monologues as the Devil: pure genius! The grand-daddy of the supernatural-thrillers is of course The Prophecy with Christopher Walken as the fallen archangel Gabriel, super creepy! As long as I am at it, Constantine based on the American comic series with Keanu Reeves is also a favourite. Well beyond those there is a whole list of other productions at equal level as the Code: Crimson Rivers I and II (German/French with Jean Reno), The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski and Johnny Depp etc. etc.
Well so much for my opinion :) I also found this one, quoting LadySisyphus from LJ:
Saw the DaVinci Code movie, had problems not cracking up during Teabing's pseudo-history of Christianity, had problems not falling asleep during the rest of it. When I again got hung up on the ridiculous history and my geologist stepfather tried to give me a hard time about it, I tried to put it in terms of thriller predicated on the premise that the earth is hollow, and that everything you've ever been taught in your earth science classes is wrong and that there's a huge conspiracy of geologists to keep you from knowing that the earth is hollow -- and then asked him to take that one seriously. Bonus points for giving Tom Hanks' character some actual reasonable counter-arguments to Teabing's flights of fancy, and for not harping on the sacred feminine any more than absolutely necessary, but I still stand by my assessment that it's Jurassic Park for church historians.
Amen to that.
The story itself was entertaining but for a movie with a briliant cast like this it remained very very flat. Thijs told me that it was comparable to the book, which I haven’t read, but I expected more from actors like Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou. Tautou played such a wonderful part in ‘Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain’ where she proved to be one of France’s greatest actresses. Amélie is arguably one of the greatest stories ever written for film and I would cut off my left arm in order to be able to write stories like that.
Anyways I appreciated the fact that the Code was nearly an entire European production. It was filmed in Paris and the UK and besides Tautou there were several more great European actors cast. Ian McKellen was of course great and arguably the best actor in the film. Especially near the end where he gleefully cackles like a lunatic, priceless. However Jean Reno was not into his thing I fear. I have seen him do so many better movies like Leon and stuff. The movie missed any chemistry between the characters. I didn’t really connect and probably wouldn’t have cared much if Hanks got shot or anything. Neither was there any fire between him and Tautou. Not that it needed any heavy romance or something but a bit of sparkles and electricity would have made a difference. Somewhere in the last scene you feel like they give it a try but it crashes before it even takes off. Using the last scene for sparkles is a bit too late in my opinion anyway.
About the story, well, besides being rushed through it in two-and-a-half-hours, it remained as I said a bit flat. All the essentials are covered and explained. The public is really taken by the hand during a very straightforward quest. There are no sudden plottwists except the ‘surprises’ any such story needs. However it would help if the ‘surprises’ would be a bit more surprising. As it stood I was half expecting most of them and there aren’t many to begin with. I felt like Mr. Brown wanted to put as much Christian mythology into his story as he got his hands on. Everything from Gnostic texts, the Knights Templar, Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. I was more or less waiting for the Arc of the Covenant (yesyes I *know* that is Judaic), the Judas Gospel and the other Dead Sea Scrolls. In his stead (said the unpublished writer jealously about the bestselling author ;-) ) I would have cut my facts by half, got them straightened out and kept the ending open. Because that’s in my opinion the worst thing about this story. I would have appreciated it if at the end of the story the mystery remains wether or not Miss Sophie is the blood of Christ. Something to chew on after the story is finished. Please give me as the reader/public a bit of credit since I am very capable of drawing my own conclusions thank you very much. I don’t need an author to spell out every last line for me.
With all these supposed facts I have a bit of a problem that most of them are just historically wrong. I know that it isn’t a factual story although Dan Brown claims a hundred times he did his ‘research’ (I mean a holiday in France doesn’t really classify imho!). During the movie when Teabing (McKellen) starts explaining his theory I really had a hard time not getting annoyed. If you claim to write a conspiracy which could have happened (something, if succesful, I really appreciate) at least get your facts straight! At his death Emperor Constantine did not rule the Roman Empire from Rome but from Constantinople. There was no large civil war between Christians and pagans and no Constantine did *not* edit/rewrite the Bible. Especially not because, as Brown correctly claims, the Emperor remained pagan until his deathbed. The modern version of the Bible itself is based on the medieval Vulgata which was designed by St. Jerome in the sixth century (about two centuries after Emperor Constantine!). Jerome was a true editor and cut the number of gospels back to the current four and restructured them so they were essentially all the same story. He added and removed stuff at leisure under protection of Pope Donatius (the Second I believe). Donatius was a bit in conflict with the Patriarch of Constantinople over supremacy in the church so the entire work must be placed in a larger political context. Anyways, I digress. No Christian sect was going to accept the gospel as rewritten by a pagan. More annoying was the description of the Council of Nicaea as some hugely orchestrated conspiracy. Gnostic sects had held Christ as divine for at least a century before the Council and it was certainly not newly conjured up by bad bad men trying to influence the course of modern history...
So all in all, the Da Vinci Code was entertaining but there are a zillion better religious-thrillers out there. My favourite number one is Rupert Wainwright's Stigmata (great artistic document with lots of contrast and great acting). Followed closely by Dogma (cynical genius with Alanis Morisette as God and Alan Rickman as the Metatron, the voice of God). Devil’s Advocate is great too especially the second half with Al Pacino’s monologues as the Devil: pure genius! The grand-daddy of the supernatural-thrillers is of course The Prophecy with Christopher Walken as the fallen archangel Gabriel, super creepy! As long as I am at it, Constantine based on the American comic series with Keanu Reeves is also a favourite. Well beyond those there is a whole list of other productions at equal level as the Code: Crimson Rivers I and II (German/French with Jean Reno), The Ninth Gate by Roman Polanski and Johnny Depp etc. etc.
Well so much for my opinion :) I also found this one, quoting LadySisyphus from LJ:
Saw the DaVinci Code movie, had problems not cracking up during Teabing's pseudo-history of Christianity, had problems not falling asleep during the rest of it. When I again got hung up on the ridiculous history and my geologist stepfather tried to give me a hard time about it, I tried to put it in terms of thriller predicated on the premise that the earth is hollow, and that everything you've ever been taught in your earth science classes is wrong and that there's a huge conspiracy of geologists to keep you from knowing that the earth is hollow -- and then asked him to take that one seriously. Bonus points for giving Tom Hanks' character some actual reasonable counter-arguments to Teabing's flights of fancy, and for not harping on the sacred feminine any more than absolutely necessary, but I still stand by my assessment that it's Jurassic Park for church historians.
Amen to that.
posted by Gertjan at
10:06 pm
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