Da Vinci Load

The basic premise of both novel and movie is that a man is murdered in the Louvre, and before he dies he leaves cryptic clues to his own murder designed to bring Langdon, whom he knows to be adept at interpreting symbols, and his estranged granddaughter Sophie together to solve the mystery of his murder and learn that he was, in fact, the Grandmaster Flash of a secret organization that for 2,000 years had been keeping the secret of The Real Deal behind the life and death (and nookie) of Jesus Christ.

One of the most fun enjoyable parts of the novel was the character of Sophie Neveu, played in the film by Amelie, aka Audrey Tatou. As the backstory unfolds in flashbacks (annoyingly overused plot device!), we learn that her grandfather was grooming her to be his successor by playing elaborate games with her designed to hone her intellect and her skills as a code-reader. She’s also got a lot of native moxie and is admirably level-headed, so though the men in the book spend a great deal of time talking to her (and by extension, us) like a vaguely idiot child, she does play a crucial role in making sure they all get to their happy ending. No pun intended. Seriously people.

Now, to really properly bitch about the movie, we need to issue a spoiler here, so cover your ears if you don’t want to know. The whole big secret everyone’s hiding is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had babies with her, and that Sophie, unbeknownst to her, is Mr. Christ’s direct descendant. The book and movie claim that the fact that Jesus had sex is so threatening to the Catholic Church that the church founders hushed it up and then spent 2,000 years killing, or trying to kill, anyone who could prove it.

Now, whatever you think of that interpretation of Christianity, whatever you think of the Lost Gospels and the cults of Mary Magdalene, of the Council of Nicea and who decided what, of the Knights Templar and the rest, whatever you believe, it’s difficult to argue that Christianity, doctrinally, has spent a long time taking, shall we say, a limited view of the role of women in society. To take just a small example, the primacy of the image of both Marys, virgin and whore, as cultural touchstones is evident throughout the Judeo-Christian attitudes towards women worldwide. So for urban feminists-types like ourselves, a book that argues that, just maybe, Judeo-Christian cultures don’t necessarily HAVE to consider women so innately inferior, that those sometimes almost-invisible assumptions have deliberate political roots, is a resonant one. Even when the book spends a lot of its time treating the only woman in sight as adorably naive and ignorant, Sophie’s behavior belies that condescension. She’s excessively capable, intelligent, and, if you’ll forgive the male-centric terminology, ballsy. She’s great. She’s just not informed about the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. So setting aside the curious notion that somehow just the public’s knowing that Jesus had a right-hand woman is enough to topple Christianity as we know it, the underlying idea that maybe women needn’t be so culturally marginalized is quite truly subversive and, to us, delightful. Of course the story undermines itself by having her entire enlightenment delivered by the hands of a bunch of know-it-all men, but you could argue that that’s just the manifestation of the legacy of male primacy, because Sophie’s clearly got a lot going on in that noggin of hers.

Ok. Now cut to the movie. It’s obvious that director Ron Howard and writer Akiva Goldsman tried to temper the book’s controversial edge a little bit. Besides having the studio work with various Christian groups to set up forums for discussion in order to head off boycotts (The New Yorker ran an interesting piece about that in the 5/22 issue), the filmmakers made Langdon a much more skeptical character in the movie than he was in the book, and made several of the characters motives a lot more black-and-white to make it easier to take sides. You can also argue, fairly, that some of the changes were necessary just to get a 500-page novel to fit in a 2-hour block, but the most frustrating change is that the Sophie in the movie is little more than a cipher with a French accent and a pretty mouth. They downplay her smarts and her initiative, and almost entirely sideline the story of how her grandfather taught and encouraged her prodigious intelligence, substituting instead the implication that her grandfather was a hardass and she was a poor sensitive girl. So in the end, her legacy as the Salvation of Womankind is embodied in a completely passive, rather bland girl who’s just along for the ride. It’s so, so disappointing.

Add to that the fact that the movie is oddly paced, that the performances are broad and cartoonish (why did Hanks decide to play Langdon as kind of a jerk? Did he realize he did that?), and that if you’ve read the book there’s really no point in seeing the movie because you already know what’s going to happen, The Da Vinci Code may be one of our least favorite films in a long time. Yuck. The only redeeming factor, as always, was Ian McKellan, who we’re beginning to think is incapable of giving a performance that’s less than stellar. Look for a repeat of that sentiment if we get around to reviewing X-Men: The Last Stand any time soon.

Oh, and we happened to like Tom's hair.