The Da Vinci Code

Laughed off the screen at Cannes, panned by critics nationwide, and despised by various religious sects and historians, the film version of Dan Brown’s controversial novel “The Da Vinci Code” is unlikely to receive a warm welcome from the pessimistic public. This will be the latest of several recent disappointments for its director Ron Howard, a fine filmmaker, whose last film (the terrific Cinderella Man) flopped, and whose masterful sitcom (“Arrested Development”) was cancelled. Yet this latest film has an even greater challenge to overcome: the fact that it’s adapting the most recent literary phenomenon since Harry Potter. It also resurrects an old controversy that was previously stirred up in movie houses by The Last Temptation of Christ; the ambiguous degree of humanity (or, in this case, mortality) that Jesus Christ possessed.

What made Brown’s novel so engrossing was how he allowed the reader to be a participant in uncovering a series of historical distortions and solving the murder mystery that lies at the heart of his story. His superb use of pacing turned his novel into a compulsive page-turner that captivated readers who were probably too entertained to argue about the murkiness of Brown’s conspiracy theory. At a running time of two-and-a-half hours, Howard’s film is so breathless to explain historical and character backgrounds that it may frequently leave the audience dizzy with confusion. It also doesn’t have the time to make each of the character’s discoveries seem natural, and thus their detective work becomes compressed, and leaves the audience as more of a passive observer instead of a participant.

Since cinema is first and foremost a form of visual communication, the various plot threads of Brown’s novel (while effortlessly articulated on the printed page) force the screenplay by Akiva Goldman (who won the Oscar for Howard’s Beautiful Mind) to occasionally devolve into a series of flashbacks. All of this finally exposes The Da Vinci Code as a story about ideas, not characters. Its protagonists and antagonists are merely used as symbols to play out the questionable argument that its author is making. And while the book has no doubt repeatedly identified itself as a work of fiction, the questions it raises still continue to tantalize.

Therefore, while Howard’s film fails on a character-level, it eventually succeeds, and even fascinates, purely on the level of thought-provocation. The uniformly excellent cast do all they can to guide the audience through the plot’s many twists and complexities (which, in many cases, seem to be their only job). The detective-like protagonists are portrayed by two immensely likable actors, Audrey Tautou (of Amelie) and Tom Hanks (of every other American film in the last two decades), whose charms are fairly wasted by the mere fact that the majority of their facial expressions must either evoke confusion, alarm, or solemnity (think Eric Bana in Munich). Their performances nevertheless avoid one-note territory (even if their characters do not), while Paul Bettany is efficiently ghoulish as Silas, a homicidal member of the Catholic order, Opus Dei.

Yet the film doesn’t really take off until Professor Teabing (a marvelous Ian McKellen) makes his entrance. As a colorfully witty, eccentric conspiracy-theorist, Teabing carries the task of introducing the audience to the seductive details of the actual “Da Vinci Code”. It is the complexity and humor McKellen brings to his role that turns the film’s last half into high-flying entertainment. And while none of the code’s details necessarily make a shred of sense, it’s the implication of historical distortion over the centuries that continues to fascinate and enthrall. As Hanks’s character Robert Langdon makes clear in a speech near the film’s beginning, we cannot fully understand the meaning of our culture’s symbols and ideologies until we follow the path of their origination. It is this intriguing concept that lies at the heart of Brown’s story and Howard’s film, which both use the Catholic Church as a mere pawn in their structural (if not factual) argument.

Is the film worth seeing as a work of muckraking importance? No…too fictional. As great cinema? No…too many flaws. As thought-provoking entertainment? Absolutely. It will offend anyone who seeks to be offended, and will surprise everyone else with its even-handed outlook at Catholicism, epitomized by a final speech that Hanks gives as less of an obligatory Hollywood uplift, and more of a genuine beam of optimism in a story drenched with shadowy cynicism. And for anyone who always thought that Mona Lisa’s haunting smile hid unspeakable secrets, The Da Vinci Code will undoubtedly continue to work its hypnotic, if historically artificial, spell.

Final note: The gloriously atmospheric score is by Hanz Zimmer.

Rating: *** (out of *****)