Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code

When it came out I noted that it had a low rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Well I saw it and I think it's better than most of the critics thought (though Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up). I didn't read the book and I'm not a Christian. I did check the wikipedia page on the book to see what parts are real history and what's made up.

Everyone else probably knows the story better than I so I won't repeat it. It was fun enough to follow, there were a few places where there were some gaps, I just assume something was cut and the book fills it in better. I wasn't expecting the whole story to take place in two days. As such there's very little character development. There are some flashbacks but they're really there for plot. I thought the dialog was a bit rough in places. I can't imagine anyone would say (in their second language) "you have an eidetic memory!"

I knew going into the film that the plot was about a coverup that Christ and Mary Magdalene had a child. For a little bit I was worried that this was going to be the climax at the end of the film but this comes out a little more than an hour into it. There's more stuff, but honestly I found it pretty easy to figure out who was doing what to who. When one of the big things is revealed at the end I was honestly surprised because it seemed so obvious to me that I thought it was explained a couple of hours earlier.

Still it was fun. There's a little too much plot for the film but as a result it doesn't drag and you have to pay attention. The few action scenes were refreshingly normal as opposed to special effects extravaganzas. I don't think there was a single explosion. Since I didn't read the book I don't konw how well the actors did in portraying their characters, but I get the sense that characterization wasn't a big deal and it certainly wasn't in the film, so everyone did fine.

I've heard a lot about how the Da Vinci Code is blasphemous or anti-catholic but honestly that seems absurd to me, this is just fiction. It's a conspiracy theory like The Illuminatus! Trilogy or Foucault's Pendulum. There was a letter in yesterday's Boston Globe relating it The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They're similar in that you only get into trouble if you believe them. The difference is that the Protocols have been used to advance hate and persecurtion, in fact they were created for that purpose. The Da Vinci Code was not, it was published as fiction.

Spoilers

I figure people might ask what I figured out. When we first saw in flashback that Sophie's parents died in a car crash I figured it was murder and that she must be a decendant of Christ. When another flashback showed the sex ritual I was convinced. I found it fairly ridiculous that Teabing needed two canes to walk except when holding a gun, then he could get away with using one. And I also thought it ridiculous that Langdon couldn't disarm him. In the Louvre when the police see Langdon's tracker moving away I knew they just threw the tracker rather than jumped. I was amazed that the Louvre was not video monitored either when Silias killed Sauniere or when Langdon and Sophie went to the Mona Lisa. At the time I didn't understand how Silias knew to show up at Villette, so I suspected Teabing or the Remy, but didn't piece it together until Remy died (before they revealed Teabing was the Teacher).

There is a problem caused by having too much plot to squeeze into a movie. It means that nothing shown is wasted, in other words everything is significant. When Tom Hanks entered the Louvre and commented about the inverted pyramid I knew it would come up. Later when he was in Villette and described the symbols of man and woman I thought of that pyramid and knew it would come up at the end. I had forgotten about it until Langdon left his hotel. Though in that scene I was surprised that someone with an eidetic memory would need to look up an image in his own book!

Finally I think Teabing's plan was lame. If you knew the top members of the Priory but didn't know where the keystone was, would you have a crazy monk kill the members to get the info? There's a lot of evidence these people wouldn't crack under pressure. In fact his plan didn't work because Sauniere led Silias on a wild goose chase. That's why you're supposed to keep them alive while you confirm what they say. It was only coincidence that Langdon and Sophie contacted him with the real clues.