The Da Vinci Review
Well I never did get around to writing part four in my series on The Da Vinci Code, mostly because I was swamped last week studying for finals and whatnot, but also because I finally decided there wasn't much point. Everyone knows the book (and now the movie) is just a work of fiction and they take it as such. And from talking to people it doesn't sound like anyone really takes the premise seriously anyway, so there's no need for me to get into details. In any case, I finally saw the movie today (it was sold out on Friday when I originally wanted to see it), so I thought I'd write a short review.
Overall, it was very well made. Ron Howard has yet to make a bad movie. I like Tom Hanks, and I thought his portrayal of Robert Langdon was pretty good. All of Teabing's long speeches about the oppression of the church could have been a huge drawback for the pace of the movie, but no one can deliver a monologue like Ian McKellen, and he pulled it off rather nicely. And of course, Hanz Zimmer's music was amazing as always, especially at the very end when the camera sweeps down to reveal Mary Magdelene's tomb under the Louve (by the way, that was a spoiler. If you haven't seen the movie yet, don't read the last sentence).
I noticed a few interesting things about the movie. First, Robert Langdon sounded more like the voice of reason to Teabing's raving, anti-Christian conspiracy theorist. For the first part of the movie he seemed to be very skeptical of Teabing's theories. The turning point for Langdon was when he found out that Mary Magdelene's child was supposedly a girl, which would have added "insult to injury" as Langdon put it and given the Church even more motive to want to cover it up. The funny thing is that after Teabing's long methodical display of all the "evidence" to support his theory, he throws out this little tidbit (he even somehow knows the child's name was Sarah) without mentioning a single source for his information or any spec of proof. Of course, that's because there isn't any. Also, when Sophie confronts Silas on the plane, she says "your God doesn't forgive murderers, He burns them!" She makes a great point, in fact she makes the same point I made. The Bible, which was supposedly put together by power-hungry men in order to secure their rule over the growing Christian "empire", doesn't support any of the activity of those evil men. Deciding that Jesus was divine and omitting a few Gnostic gospels doesn't give the church or anyone else the right to commit murder in the name of God. Sophie's comment only proves that the two thousand years of oppression and atrocities by the Catholic church don't reflect orthadox, Biblical Christianity. There's no need to reject the Bible and turn to paganism in order to be free of such oppression. And then there's the Council of Shadows. These men seem to know full well that Jesus was only a mortal and that he did have a child through Mary. And yet they are still portrayed as devout followers of Christ, not much different than your average Catholic. This doesn't make any sense. Who can actually believe in something they know is a lie? Silas can be so devoted to his faith that he mutilates his own body because he believes it to be true. This is the biggest problem with the entire conspiracy theory. Many of the original twelve Apostles, as well as others who had seen Jesus, were tortured and executed by Rome for their faith. This was in the earliest days of Christianity, when there wasn't even any notion that the Christian religion could become dominant and powerful in Rome. So we are to believe that men like Peter, Paul and John, who knew that Jesus was not God and that their faith was a sham, were willing to die for a lie. It's easy to convince others to die for a lie, if you can convince them it's the truth, but how many people would still be willing to die for what they know is a lie?
And of course, at the end of the movie (in an effort to avoid truly offending anyone), Langdon says something along the lines of, "all that matters is what you believe." As if to say, "hey, it's ok if you want to be a Christian, and it's ok if you want to be a goddess worshiping pegan, and it's ok if you want to be an athiest. After all, truth is relative." So basically, Langdon was condoning the actions of Silas, Teabing and the rest of the movie's villians, beacuse they were simply doing what they belived to be right. :D
In the end, the whole movie was just a big "what if?" The movie itself admits that there's no reasonable proof that any of it is actually real, but then goes on to tell the story of what would happen to these chatacters IF it somehow were real. It was good entertainment, which is all it's meant to be.
Anyway, it was a good movie. Definately worth seeing. As a side note, they showed the trailer for the new James Bond flick, Casino Royale. It looked really good, but I'm still really unsure about the new Bond, Daniel Craig. He's blonde (but as he pointed out, so was Roger Moore) and has bright blue eyes. He really just doesn't look the part, but I think he could grow on me, depending on how good the movie is. Here's the trailer, if you want to check it out.
Oh, one last thought. As it turns out, I decided I wasn't really all that thrilled with the Superman Returns trailer, but I recently saw the international trailer and it's way better. Here's the link for it, it's the third one down. Ok, Goodnight all!
Overall, it was very well made. Ron Howard has yet to make a bad movie. I like Tom Hanks, and I thought his portrayal of Robert Langdon was pretty good. All of Teabing's long speeches about the oppression of the church could have been a huge drawback for the pace of the movie, but no one can deliver a monologue like Ian McKellen, and he pulled it off rather nicely. And of course, Hanz Zimmer's music was amazing as always, especially at the very end when the camera sweeps down to reveal Mary Magdelene's tomb under the Louve (by the way, that was a spoiler. If you haven't seen the movie yet, don't read the last sentence).
I noticed a few interesting things about the movie. First, Robert Langdon sounded more like the voice of reason to Teabing's raving, anti-Christian conspiracy theorist. For the first part of the movie he seemed to be very skeptical of Teabing's theories. The turning point for Langdon was when he found out that Mary Magdelene's child was supposedly a girl, which would have added "insult to injury" as Langdon put it and given the Church even more motive to want to cover it up. The funny thing is that after Teabing's long methodical display of all the "evidence" to support his theory, he throws out this little tidbit (he even somehow knows the child's name was Sarah) without mentioning a single source for his information or any spec of proof. Of course, that's because there isn't any. Also, when Sophie confronts Silas on the plane, she says "your God doesn't forgive murderers, He burns them!" She makes a great point, in fact she makes the same point I made. The Bible, which was supposedly put together by power-hungry men in order to secure their rule over the growing Christian "empire", doesn't support any of the activity of those evil men. Deciding that Jesus was divine and omitting a few Gnostic gospels doesn't give the church or anyone else the right to commit murder in the name of God. Sophie's comment only proves that the two thousand years of oppression and atrocities by the Catholic church don't reflect orthadox, Biblical Christianity. There's no need to reject the Bible and turn to paganism in order to be free of such oppression. And then there's the Council of Shadows. These men seem to know full well that Jesus was only a mortal and that he did have a child through Mary. And yet they are still portrayed as devout followers of Christ, not much different than your average Catholic. This doesn't make any sense. Who can actually believe in something they know is a lie? Silas can be so devoted to his faith that he mutilates his own body because he believes it to be true. This is the biggest problem with the entire conspiracy theory. Many of the original twelve Apostles, as well as others who had seen Jesus, were tortured and executed by Rome for their faith. This was in the earliest days of Christianity, when there wasn't even any notion that the Christian religion could become dominant and powerful in Rome. So we are to believe that men like Peter, Paul and John, who knew that Jesus was not God and that their faith was a sham, were willing to die for a lie. It's easy to convince others to die for a lie, if you can convince them it's the truth, but how many people would still be willing to die for what they know is a lie?
And of course, at the end of the movie (in an effort to avoid truly offending anyone), Langdon says something along the lines of, "all that matters is what you believe." As if to say, "hey, it's ok if you want to be a Christian, and it's ok if you want to be a goddess worshiping pegan, and it's ok if you want to be an athiest. After all, truth is relative." So basically, Langdon was condoning the actions of Silas, Teabing and the rest of the movie's villians, beacuse they were simply doing what they belived to be right. :D
In the end, the whole movie was just a big "what if?" The movie itself admits that there's no reasonable proof that any of it is actually real, but then goes on to tell the story of what would happen to these chatacters IF it somehow were real. It was good entertainment, which is all it's meant to be.
Anyway, it was a good movie. Definately worth seeing. As a side note, they showed the trailer for the new James Bond flick, Casino Royale. It looked really good, but I'm still really unsure about the new Bond, Daniel Craig. He's blonde (but as he pointed out, so was Roger Moore) and has bright blue eyes. He really just doesn't look the part, but I think he could grow on me, depending on how good the movie is. Here's the trailer, if you want to check it out.
Oh, one last thought. As it turns out, I decided I wasn't really all that thrilled with the Superman Returns trailer, but I recently saw the international trailer and it's way better. Here's the link for it, it's the third one down. Ok, Goodnight all!
posted by David at
1:00 AM
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