da vinci code and tom hanks and audrey tautou

When someone tallies up all the achievements and failures of 2006, The Da Vinci Code will go down as an uninspired and uninspiring movie which converted a successful page-turning novel into a rather boring film. But, in my judgment, Director Ron Howard really was kind of in a pickle from the get-go, since if he just imitated what was in the book, everyone will know the flow and ending and not be in suspense at all, but if he vared too much the flow of the novel, he would have had to come up with all kinds of imaginative scenarios to move the movie along. As it was, he decided to follow the "script" of the book, if not religiously but with enough attention to its flow so that you could recognize how almost every scene was anchored in the narrative. But the problem with this approach is that it makes the attentive viewer not really focus on the action (or inaction) but on the way that scenes had been cut or reshaped from the novel. Perhaps that is a liability of adapting a story from a book--but Ron Howard does this particularly badly. Three ways that the film is particularly bad are in the weakness of its ideas, the spiritless acting of the leads and the director's inability to bring the film to a satisfactory conclusion.

1. The Ideas

The Da Vinci Code is supposed to be a thriller or suspense type-of-movie, with the quest for the Grail being the idea moving it along. But the Grail is not the chalice of the Last Supper, sought after by medieval knights. It really isn't very clear what the Grail is in the mind of the Director, other than perhaps the records of a deception perpetrated by the Church for 2000 years and the person who is the living descendant of Jesus Christ and needs to be protected. Yet it is here, relating to the basic idea of the movie, that it founders so gloriously. The "Grail" or its secret is protected by the Priory of Zion, a society which has extended back in time for hundreds of years, and supposedly has the records showing Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene. This secret is of such dramatic importance that the Catholic Church's militantly conservative arm, the Opus Dei, will do anything, and I mean anything, to keep it from getting out. But here is the problem. If the Priory has possessed the Church-shattering secret for years, why doesn't it just go public with it? Why all the intrigue? Why all the suspense? If I were in the Priory, I would just go forward to show the hypocrisy of the Church and watch the cardinals twitter away as they fall to earth, with their caps and robes fluttering around them. Thus, the action of the film arises precisely because the major premise is unanswered--why would anyone keep this story secret when it is such a blockbuster secret? The response that "It is not yet time," might have worked for Orson Welles when he was advertising wine, but it doesn't ring true for such an important theological secret.

The Acting

I have never really been a big fan of Tom Hanks, but his role in Da Vinci Code didn't make him grow in stature for me at all. Ron Howard actually introduced us to Hanks (as Harvard Professor of Religious Symbology--no such title of course) giving an engaging lecture to hundreds of French students on the plasticity of religious and ideological symbols. Symbols, as he argued, don't carry an inherent meaning with them; they vary in connotation depending on their social and mythological location. Armed with this insight, Professor Hanks/Langdon is thrown into the maelstrom surrounding the murder of Louvre courator Jacques Sauniere and the symbols connected with that death. Sauniere was himself an accomplished scholar, and the pattern of his death and the clues left behind in blood send Hanks/Langdon and his very attractive French cryptologist friend, played by Audrey Tautou, on journeys hither and yon, to find the "key" to the clues left behind by Sauniere. But the scenes often are stilted in their presentation, so that you wonder whether Tom Hanks is going to laugh or be serious when he is climbing down stairs, poring over books, getting an insight, etc. There is an air of faint boredom, I thought, as several of the scenes unfolded. It was almost as if Hanks had a kind of "you mean I have to film this scene again?" look on his face as the film plodded on.

Hanks was not only the only disappointment. The French police inspector Fache, who played or could have played an important role in the unfolding of the plot, was hamstrung not only by a poor character portrayal, but by the fact that Ron Howard made him into a closet "Opus Dei" member whose loyalty to that order seemingly exceeded that of his loyalty to his country and his job. By making Fache such a smarmy figure, without any personal depth to the portrayal, however, Howard just left us sort of confused. It was another loose end which was never really tied up.

Loose Ends

Finally, the thing that made the film most unsatisfying was the sense that it, like a plane lost in the fog, really doesn't know how and whether to land or to go on to the next airport. For several minutes--about 40, it seemed to me--the film crept endlessly on, going from Church to Church, from hole to crypt, while the audience was getting more and more bored. Finally, when the "family" of Sophie, the direct descendant of Jesus Christ, finally shows up to say that it would protect her, I heaved a sign of relief, knowing that the movie would soon be over. At least I was not disappointed in that one..

I hope that the Da Vinci Code phenomenon has peaked. I believe it has, and it is prompted by issues that make it interesting for this time in our history, as I describe in these essays. But now with this phenomenon having peaked, we can get back to other important cultural things, whatever they are.

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