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Just after I had posted my views on The DaVinci Code,
afriend sent me this. I think it's from The New
Yorker.
eugene
---
HEAVEN CAN WAIT
"The Da Vinci Code."
by ANTHONY LANE
Issue of 2006-05-29
Posted 2006-05-22
The story of "The Da Vinci Code" goes lik this. A
dead Frenchman is found laid out on th floor of the
Louvre. His final act was to carve number of bloody
markings into his own flesh indicating, to the expert
eye, that he wa preparing to roll in fresh herbs and
sear himsel in olive oil for three minutes on each
side. This however, is not the conclusion reached b
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a professor o symbology
at Harvard, who happens to be i Paris. Questioned by
Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) the investigating policeman at
the scene Langdon starts rabbiting about pentacles an
pagans and God knows what. But what does God know,
exactly? And can He keep His mouth shut?
Help arrives in the shape of Sophie Neveu (Audrey
Tautou), a police cryptographer. She turns out to be
the granddaughter of the deceased, and a dab hand at
reversing down Paris streets in a car the size of a
pissoir. This is useful, since she and Langdon are
soon on the run, convinced that Fache is about to nail
the professor on a murder charge-the blaming of
Americans, on any pretext, being a much loved Gallic
sport. Our hero, needing somebody to trust, does the
same dumb thing that every fleeing innocent has done
since Robert Donat in "The Thirty-nine Steps." He and
Sophie visit a cheery old duffer in the countryside
and spill every possible bean. In this case, the
duffer is Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), who
lectures them on the Emperor Constantine and the
Council of Nicaea, in 325 A.D. We get a flashback to
the council in question, and I must say that, though I
have recited the Nicene Creed throughout my adult
life, I never realized that it was originally
formulated in the middle of a Beastie Boys concert.
Fache is not the only hunter on Langdon's scent. There
is also Silas (Paul Bettany), a cowled albino monk
whose hobbies include self-flagellation, multiple
homicide, and irregular Latin verbs. He works for Opus
Dei, the Catholic organization so intensely secretive
that its American headquarters are tucked away in a
seventeen-story building on Lexington Avenue. Silas
answers to Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina), who in
turn answers to his cell phone, his Creator, and not
much else. Between them, they track Langdon and Sophie
to England, where a new villain, hitherto suspected by
nobody except the audience, is prevented from shooting
his quarry because, unusual for London, there is a
gaggle of nuns in the way-God's Work if ever I saw it,
although I wouldn't say so to a member of Opus Dei.
The task of the Bishop and his hit man is to thwart
the unveiling of what Teabing modestly calls "the
greatest secret in modern history," so powerful that,
"if revealed, it would devastate the very foundations
of Christianity." Later, realizing that this sounds a
little meek and mild, he stretches it to "the greatest
coverup in human history." As a rule, you should
beware of any movie in which characters utter lines of
dialogue whose proper place is on the advertising
poster. (Just imagine Sigourney Weaver, halfway
through "Alien," turning to John Hurt and explaining,
"In space, no one can hear you scream.") There is a
nasty sense in "The Da Vinci Code" that, not unlike
Langdon, we are being bullied into taking its
pronouncements at face value. Such nagging has a
double effect. First, any chance to enjoy the
proceedings as hokum-as a whip-cracking quest along
the lines of "Raiders of the Lost Ark"-is rapidly
stifled and stilled. Second, one's natural reaction to
arm-twisters of any description is to wriggle free,
turn around, and kick them in the pentacles. So here
goes.
There has been much debate over Dan Brown's novel ever
since it was published, in 2003, but no question has
been more contentious than this: if a person of sound
mind begins reading the book at ten o'clock in the
morning, at what time will he or she come to the
realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer,
in my case, was 10:00.03, shortly after I read the
opening sentence: "Renowned curator Jacques Saunière
staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's
Grand Gallery." With that one word, "renowned," Brown
proves that he hails from the school of
elbow-joggers-nervy, worrisome authors who can't stop
shoving us along with jabs of information and opinion
that we don't yet require. (Buried far below this tic
is an author's fear that his command of basic,
unadorned English will not do the job; in the case of
Brown, he's right.) You could dismiss that first
stumble as a blip, but consider this, discovered on a
random skim through the book: "Prominent New York
editor Jonas Faukman tugged nervously at his goatee."
What is more, he does so over "a half-eaten power
lunch," one of the saddest phrases I have ever heard.
Should we mind that forty million readers-or, to use
the technical term, "lemmings"-have followed one
another over the cliff of this long and laughable
text? I am aware of the argument that, if a tale has
enough grip, one can for a while forget, if not
forgive, the crumbling coarseness of the style;
otherwise, why would I still read "The Day of the
Jackal" once a year? With "The Da Vinci Code," there
can be no such excuse. Even as you clear away the
rubble of the prose, what shows through is the folly
of the central conceit, and, worse still, the pride
that the author seems to take in his theological
presumption. How timid-how undefended in their powers
of reason-must people be in order to yield to such
preening? Are they reading "The Da Vinci Code" because
everybody on the subway is doing the same, and, if so,
why, when they reach their stop, do they not realize
their mistake and leave it on the seat, to be gathered
up by the next sucker? Despite repeated attempts, I
have never managed to crawl past page 100. As I sat
down to watch "The Da Vinci Code," therefore, I was in
the lonely, if enviable, position of not actually
knowing what happens.
Stumbling out from the final credits, tugging
nervously at my goatee, I was none the wiser. The film
is directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva
Goldsman, the master wordsmith who brought us "Batman
& Robin." I assumed that such an achievement would
result in Goldsman's being legally banned from any of
the verbal professions, but, no, here he is yet again.
As far as I am qualified to judge, the film remains
unswervingly loyal to the book, displaying an
obedience that Silas could not hope to match. I
welcome this fidelity, because it allows us to propose
a syllogism. The movie is baloney; the movie is an
accurate representation of the book; therefore, the
book is also baloney, although it takes even longer to
consume. Movie history is awash, of course, with fine
pictures that have been made from daft or unreadable
books; indeed, you are statistically more likely to
squeeze a decent movie out of a potboiler than you are
out of a novel of high repute. The trouble with
Howard's film is that it is far too dense and
talkative to function efficiently as a thriller, while
also being too credulous and childish to bear more
than a second's scrutiny as an exploration of
religious history or spiritual strife. There is plenty
going on here, from gunfights to masked orgiastic
rituals and mini-scenes of knights besieging
Jerusalem, yet the outcome feels at once ponderous and
vacant, like a damp and deconsecrated Victorian
church.
This is grim news for Tom Hanks, who has served Howard
gamely in the past. How does the genial mermaid-lover
of "Splash," or the jockish team player of "Apollo
13," feel about being stranded in this humorless
grind? Apart from Paul Bettany, who finds a leached
and pale-eyed terror in his avenging angel, the other
players seem bereft. Molina, so violently vulnerable
in "Spider-Man 2," is given no room to breathe, and,
as for Audrey Tautou, it is surely no coincidence that
Howard sought out and hired almost the only young
French actress who emits not a hint of sexual
radiation. "The Da Vinci Code" may ask us to believe
that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that she bore him a
child, and that the Catholic Church has spent two
thousand years not merely concealing this but
enforcing its distaste for the feminine (and thus for
all bodily delight), but did the movie have to be
quite so pallid and prudish about breaking the news?
Whose side is it on, anyway?
Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall
be to all people, except at Columbia Pictures, where
the power lunches won't even be half-started. The
Catholic Church has nothing to fear from this film. It
is not just tripe. It is self-evident, spirit-lowering
tripe that could not conceivably cause a single member
of the flock to turn aside from the faith. Meanwhile,
art historians can sleep easy once more, while fans of
the book, which has finally been exposed for the
pompous fraud that it is, will be shaken from their
trance. In fact, the sole beneficiaries of the entire
fiasco will be members of Opus Dei, some of whom
practice mortification of the flesh. From now on, such
penance will be simple-no lashings, no spiked cuff
around the thigh. Just the price of a movie ticket,
and two and a half hours of pain.
--
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