CriticSociety- film reviews

Review

The Da Vinci Code

Director

Ron Howard

Year

2006

Rating

Reviewed by

José Ruiloba a.k.a. Morris

Review date

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Here’s the thing: I’m one of the few people in the world who never read Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”. I had the chance, but I never wanted to, and besides I usually like it better to see the movie. Despite all the controversy and hoopla surrounding it, I was surprisingly able to find out as little as possible about the plot before going to see it. In a nutshell, here’s a review from someone who knew almost nothing going in.

After the Louvre’s curator is murdered, Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is called by Captain Fache (Jean Reno) to help in the investigation. It so happens that the dead man was able to leave behind a series of strange symbols before passing away, something in which Langdon is an expert. But the arrival of beautiful Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou), granddaughter of the deceased, puts a bigger scheme in motion. She warns Langdon that he’s going to be accused, so they opt to run and try to find out what it is that her grandfather wanted them to find out.

I’ve heard from more than one person that the story plays better in the book (a page-turner they call it) than in the movie. But I’ve also heard that Dan Brown’s literate skills leave a lot to be desired. So what do we get? An escapist movie based on material that was light and silly to begin with, but which contained intriguing and controversial elements that made it interesting for the general masses. That’s why the movie is being positioned as a big summer blockbuster instead of an art flick. It is what it is, there’s no point expecting more.

If Ron Howard’s movie suffers from anything, it is its literate origin. There are so many things that need to be explained, that so much talk may produce boredom to impatient moviegoers. I have to say that I was mostly intrigued, especially by Sir Leigh Teabing’s (Ian McKellen) explanation of the “secret” that is at the movie’s core, but I also felt the movie dragged at times and was definitely overlong. I am no expert so I don’t know what a good solution might’ve been (a tighter script?) but the movie is, by nature, repetitious (clue after clue, revelation after revelation) and there needed to be something more to exhilarate or create tension. Howard tries putting some action sequences here and there, including a quick car chase that is clumsily shot and edited. I definitely got a stronger kick out of the quieter scenes.

I do have to credit author Dan Brown for how ingenious his story is. The movie is essentially about solving a puzzle, one left by a dying man who was able to fabricate a major ploy that in the real world would be impossible to crack. But this is a movie, and that’s good for us because the more difficult the next clue is, the more we are entertained. There are plot holes and historical inaccuracies, but who cares? Did anyone in their right mind expect this to be a history lesson? It is fiction, and as fiction it can do as it likes. Much of the controversy surrounding the movie has to do with a big revelation that dates back to the days of Jesus. It is so dull and far-fetched that I feel there’s no reason for it to be taken seriously. At the end of the day Brown creates a whole adventure surrounding this hot topic and it’s amusing to watch how he got there and where he’s heading.

The Catholic Opus Dei congregation is represented in a bad light though, and that should not be taken seriously either. I happen to know a lot of members of the group and they’re all sane and healthy people. If there are any traces of extremists in the congregation that I don’t know of, they are definitely a minority. No naked self-flagellation or murderous conspiracies. I did see a friend steal a lollypop from a little girl once though.

The movie ends with a dialogue-free sequence that was definitely a high for me. I loved this sequence, what it meant and how it was put together. Hans Zimmer’s haunting score took even more resonance in it.

Kudos as well to Ron Howard’s inventiveness in putting together the movie’s visual style. He uses different movie techniques to show how Langdon cracks codes, whether it’s solving an anagram or finding something “off” about Isaac Newton’s tomb. That was fun. And the use of real locations in the European countries where the story takes place pays off. At least if you’re bored there’s something else worth looking at the screen.

The cast is a powerhouse, although nobody really stands out. Not one character is fully fleshed-out, so they all do what they have to do. Ian McKellen seems to be having the most fun though, and I liked every minute he was on-screen. Hanks is Hanks, and Tatou is adorable. I was creeped-out by Paul Bettany’s Silas. And Jean Reno and Alfred Molina are always welcomed.

“Witness the biggest cover-up in human history.”

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Review

The Da Vinci Code

Director

Ron Howard

Year

2006

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

I don’t want to sound like a prophet, and I don’t quite feel like one, but the moment I heard “The Da Vinci Code” would be adapted into a movie, I knew it wouldn’t work. Today everyone is either dismissing it as bland entertainment or trashing it as faulted moviemaking. I still looked forward to seeing it though; I both wanted to “see” all that I had read and I wanted to know why exactly it didn’t work, if in fact it didn’t.

The story has Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) getting involved in the freak murder of Louvre curator Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle) while in Paris, and finding himself a suspect. Aided only by police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou), Langdon escapes from the claws of Captain Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) and tries to solve the riddles that Sauniere left behind, which might reveal not only who murdered him but also why and what’s to do about it. Neveu has a personal interest in the case, so she becomes a fugitive with Langdon. As it seems, it all has to do with a millenary secret kept by an organization called the Priory of Sion, with such members as Isaac Newton and Leonardo Da Vinci. In the latter’s art, there’s a lot of hidden messages concerning the secret; a secret that can shake the foundations of Christianity.

I enjoyed the book. The moment I read it, even though I knew it was causing so much controversy and getting so many counter-arguments from experts and Catholics, I took it seriously for the sake of entertainment and ended up sort of convinced that what I’d read was true. Not that I actually believed it, but it rang true inside the book’s reality, and that made up for a very satisfying experience. Then I started reading a lot about the book and its arguments and understood what a sloppy job Dan Brown had done in his research, and I laughed about it but I had still enjoyed the book a lot and I would still recommend it to anyone. The secret is not only that it’s so well crafted and full of hooks; it’s mainly that it believes in itself.

Ron Howard’s movie doesn’t believe in itself. It doesn’t believe what it’s saying, and it even seems ashamed to present its material. Akiva Goldsman’s script avoids compromise and sets so many self-denying arguments on the table that by the end the viewer has no idea what to believe, and the natural reaction is to laugh at it all and forget about it a day later. The reason why I thought the film wouldn’t work is because the book is so full of fun riddles and codes to decipher which couldn’t be given enough screen time to be made as interesting. But it’s even worse than that. The emphasis is on the action and most of the code stuff is gone or undermined. The key character of Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), Langdon’s friend who’s obsessed with the Priory’s secret, is turned into a clown. Evil Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) and his henchman Silas (Paul Bettany) are even shallower than in the book. And Langdon’s discussions with Teabing, probably added to diminish the controversy, are a complete bore.

Yet, somehow I still had a lot fun. I didn’t mind the film being two and a half hours long and I still cared about the story and the characters. Not much though, certainly not as much as the story deserved, but it was a good time. The fact that by the end I found more comedy than thrills wasn’t a good sign, but at least I didn’t want to run out. The performances are engaging and Hans Zimmer’s music is appropriate, and all in all, Howard’s craft is successful. Sadly, the film as a whole isn’t.

“So dark the con of man...”

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