The Secret’s Out

Signs, signs, everywhere signs: Cryptographer Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) and symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) in The Da Vinci Code . (Photo Simon Mein/Columbia Pictures)

Warning: spoilers ahead. Okay, they’re only spoilers if you’re one of the 37 people who hasn’t burned through The Da Vinci Code during an airport layover, debated the book’s veracity, watched a Da Vinci-inspired reveal-all documentary, taken the Da Vinci Code walking tour or purchased the special collector’s Da Vinci Code Last Supper Flatware and I-Can’t-Believe-It-Was-Once-Water Wine Goblet Set.

The Da Vinci Code is, of course, the best-selling 2003 conspiracy thriller by Dan Brown (60 million copies in print and counting), a book that’s made the conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei as famous — or infamous — as Tom Cruise has the Church of Scientology. As a prose stylist, Brown has a tin ear and two left thumbs, but even for literary snobs, the book’s premise is undeniably compelling.

The film version begins promisingly enough: scenes of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) giving a lively lecture on religious icons are intercut with shots of the curator of the Louvre being chased through the museum by Silas, a limping albino monk (Paul Bettany). When the body of the curator is later found naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, Langdon is called in to assist with the investigation. What follows is a 24-hour police pursuit through Paris and London, a crash course in Catholic history, a survey of the work of Da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton and a bombshell of blasphemy — namely, that Jesus Christ was a mortal who had a child with Mary Magdalene, a favourite disciple and Jesus’s rightful successor as the head of the Christian church. This history, which The Da Vinci Code suggests has long been suppressed by the anti-women, anti-sex leaders of the Catholic Church, is about to be exposed by the centuries-old riddle Langdon is chasing with the help of Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), a police cryptographer.

Felonious monk: Silas (Paul Bettany) threatens Sophie in The Da Vinci Code . (Photo Simon Mein/Columbia Pictures)

There’s Hitchcockian camp in the pacing and set-up of the opening scenes, but Howard doesn’t maintain it for long. Bezu Fache (Jean Reno), the sourpuss police captain in charge of the investigation, has tapped Langdon for the murder and it’s only through the intervention of Sophie that Langdon escapes the Louvre, fleeing in a product-placement Smart Car that zips the wrong way down the sidewalks of Paris. Sophie just happens to be the curator’s estranged granddaughter and the dead man has thrown her and Langdon together on a treasure hunt to track down the evidence of a secret — the true Holy Grail — that could destroy the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, a group of mysterious Opus Dei-affiliated clerics, including Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) is hatching up a plot to find the Grail themselves and destroy it. Doing their bidding is poor, creepy Silas, the emotionally tortured hitman who carries a cellphone and a gun in his monk’s robe (who knew they had pockets?), and who flagellates himself vigourously with a cat-o’-nine-tails.  

To adapt the book to screen, producers called in the go-to team of the Hollywood middlebrow: director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man), screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (ditto, ditto) and Hanks. Hanks’s hairdo has stirred up as much controversy as the film’s subject matter. A variation on the McDreamy — let’s call it the McDorky — the coif is meant to convey academic gravitas. And, boy, is this film long on the gravitas. Caught between the opposing pull of obsessed Brown fans and irate Catholics, Howard has sucked all the guilty pleasure out of the page-turner. This gloomy, dutiful film drabs down Paris and London and dampens the considerable on-screen charm of Hanks and Tautou.

While Brown’s beach-read thriller seemed like a sure-thing film adaptation — clunky dialogue aside, the book is nothing if not fast-paced — the big screen just magnifies its weaknesses. For a leading symbologist and a highly trained cryptographer, the film’s code-cracking is Scooby-Doo-level difficult (one clue is written backwards and must be read with a mirror). The whodunit murder mystery is as tough to figure out as the culprit on any given episode of CSI.

Howard and Goldsman dispatch quickly with some of the meandering backstory, but get bogged down by the novel’s pages and pages of exposition. Howard utilizes chintzy, PBS-style historical flashbacks to cover discussions of the Knights Templar, the Nicean Creed and the Church’s persecution of women in the Middle Ages, as though dubious of the audience’s ability to follow the dialogue. True, most of it is delivered by Hanks with an exhausted grimace, while Tautou cocks her pretty head and listens, doe-eyed. (For a story that makes an argument for the sacred power of women, Tautou’s character has little to do but look on.) And in what must be a sop to Christian viewers — and a divergence from the book — Hanks’s Langdon makes a half-hearted argument for Christ’s divinity and the necessity of faith.

In the face of a millions-strong audience that’s bought into the book and a significant number of people who loathe its very existence, Howard is too timid to challenge the suppositions of either Brown or the Church. The Da Vinci Code is faithful to its source, but dully uninspiring to its audience.

So thank heavens for Sir Ian McKellen, who shows up one hour into this two-and-a-half-hour penance as Sir Leigh Teabing, a dotty but brilliant expert on the Priory of Sion, the clandestine society that has long protected the secret of Jesus’s humanity. In a delightfully hammy performance, McKellen careens from flirtatious to fervent to raving bonkers. In a film about a religious mystery that has sparked debate among atheists and believers alike, Teabing stands out as the only player with any passion at all.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.

Letters:

I saw "The Da Vinci Code" last night. Even with my ADD I found myself paying attention to every moment of the movie, even when the people sitting next to me let their cell phone ring, and ring...you get the idea. I read the book last year. Loved it. I expected the typical let down at the theatre. However, the movie was as true to the novel as a movie can be.

I've seen countless bad reviews for "The Da Vinci Code". All I can tell you is it showed in 3 theatres in the cinemas I went to last night. All were packed, and people were buzzing about it afterward. Forget the reviews, see it for yourself. Critics have as their job the duty to say horrid things about every release.

You really won't be disappointed.


April Burrows
Hamilton, Ontario

Your review of "The Da Vinci Code" movie is rather misleading: Paris looks great. London looks great. Tautou does more than you say. The historical flashbacks are painterly. I can't stand Hanks, but that's me. Generally, I think a lot of craft has been put into the making of the film.


E. Pascoe
Toronto, Ontario

I thought the movie was very good - the book was excellent. It makes you think and question your faith. The more the church objects, the more free thinking people say "maybe there is something to this" and the more it becomes a must see for everyone. Interesting outcome.


John Schultz
North Bay, Ontario

I was very very impressed with the interpretation of the book. Tom Hanks did an excellent job as did Sir Ian McKellen. The young girl and Silas were not quite how I pictured them but nevetheless I found it impossible to take my eyes off the screen. Well done Ron Howard and cast. What a marvellous movie!!


Cynthia MacLean
Windsor, Ontario

I loved the book and I enjoyed the movie immensely. On opening night, in the theatre I was in, people clapped at the conclusion of the movie. No one fell asleep from boredom or laughed at the climax as most of the reviews have suggested was the case at Cannes. The poor reviews have me wondering what is behind the backlash. Is the church really that insecure? "The DaVinci Code" is a really good story, nothing more.


Louise
London, Ontario

Despite all the 'high-brows' making fun of the Da Vinci movie, I think it was a solid two hours of good entertainment with fine acting, fine directing, fine scenery, and one of the best movies that I have ever seen.


Peter Johnson
Campbell River, British Columbia