A Review of The DaVinci Code Movie

It was just a movie.

After reading the book, seeing countless books get published debunking the book, watching the Biography and History Channel, and A&E all formally change their names to The DaVinci Code Channel, and listening to everyone get their feathers all ruffled-up and bent out of shape, it turns out The DaVinci Code is just another movie. No more, no less. And in the end, The DaVinci Code’s grail quest turned out to be a more intellectual, but less entertaining movie, than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Since it’s a Monday and I am in a great mood, lets start out with the good:

- Ian McKellan (Sir Lee Teabing in the movie) is officially being entered into the Voiceover Hall of Fame, joining charter members Anthony Hopkins and Morgan Freeman. This guy could say anything and it’d sound regal … “You’re about ready to witness the greatest colonoscopy the world has ever seen.” I love listening to him talk and explain things, which probably saved the movie since McKellan’s character rambles on like a drunk chick at a bar who just broke up with her boyfriend, for half the film.

(SPOILER ALERT: One of the best scenes of the movie is the look on Tom Hanks’ face as McKellan kept talking and talking and talking and talking while getting arrested and dragged into a police car - and yet still wouldn’t shut up! The expression Tom gives us during that scene is the reason he has won two Academy Awards)

- The movie is under three hours long and Ron Howard did a great job pacing the film. The movie never drags and he doesn’t waste a lot of screen time on unnecessary subplots or plot points. On behalf of my ass and bladder, I thank you Mr. Howard.

- For all the calls to protest and boycott the movie (by the way, it grossed over $200 million worldwide last week), The DaVinci Code doesn’t make a whole lot of “factual” claims outside of the ones necessary to tell the fictional story. Robert Langdon (Hanks’ character) was consistently skeptical of the historical theories tossed around by the other characters and the movie doesn’t approach the “factual” rhetoric used by Dan Brown in recent interviews. Not surprisingly, the book tries to present itself much more as historically accurate than the movie does. But when you evaluate the entire movie, it’s easy to see that Opus Dei is not portrayed as an out-of-control, evil organization (at best you could say they had two bad apples who were manipulated), the claims about Jesus and Mary do not, or rather should not, destroy Christianity or cause a crisis of faith, and that the assertions about Christianity (while they may be historically inaccurate) are told in a way that make the movie entertaining and worth seeing.

That being said, let’s not throw The DaVinci Code in with The Godfather, Casablanca and American Beauty quite yet …

Here were the problems:

- Tom Hanks was not a good choice to portray Robert Langdon. Hanks became an iconic movie star by playing the “everyday” sort of guy, not the intellect. If you look at Tom’s most successful roles: Forrest Gump (playing as simple as a character as there is), Big (playing a child in an adult body) and Saving Private Ryan (a high school grammar teacher), he thrives with characters who are not all that different from the average movie audience. Even in movies where he plays smarter characters: Catch Me If You Can, Cast Away, Apollo 13, you never got the sense Hanks was a brilliant thinker. That isn’t a knock on Tom Hanks, he’s obviously intelligent, but his relate-ability to the audience is what makes him great. In The DaVinci Code, Robert Langdon is an Ivy League professor, a genius of symbols, and you never totally buy in to Hanks being that guy, mostly because he seems too much like you and me - and most of us aren’t going to be lecturing in Cambridge anytime soon. As my friend Ryan remarked as we were leaving the theatre, “You never forgot you were watching Tom Hanks.” Hanks didn’t kill the movie by any means, even though there were some scenes and lines where his acting seemed fake and forced (very un-Hanks-like), but an actor like Josh Lucas (A Beautiful Mind, Glory Road, Sweet Home Alabama and Poseidon) would have been a much better choice.

- There was more chemistry between Ron Burgundy and Baxter in Anchorman, than there was between Hanks and Audrey Tautou (Sophie). This isn’t Sleepless in Seattle, so I didn’t want them to fall in love on the Empire State Building, but a good rapport there was not. I never got the sense either of them were enjoying the greatest journey in the history of mankind. If it wasn’t for a few lines here and there uttered by the long-winded Teabing, none of the characters seemed to appreciate what they were discovering. It is amazing to me how un-suspenseful finding the most important artifact EVER, could be. I mean, you are dealing with Jesus, DaVinci, the Vatican, Popes, Emperors, hidden codes, famous museums, knights, priceless works of art – freakin' act like it! On top of all of that, Sophie saw her grandpa’s murdered body, helped an accused murderer flee the country, learned secrets about her family and her true lineage, yet she doesn’t seem all that phased by those events. I think if someone had said, “Robert and Sophie, Jesus himself is waiting for you by the Mona Lisa,” they would have intensely stared at each other for a couple of seconds and then matter-of-factly walked to the end of the hallway like Jesus visits France everyday. At least in Indiana Jones, you got the feeling Harrison Ford and Sean Connery sensed how momentous their discoveries were.


But Sophie kinda looked like the third wife, Margene, from Big Love, so that was fun.

For me, there are two things that you have to do well for a movie to be considered phenomenonal: character development/arc and story. Most of the time it’s easier for a movie to succeed with a weaker story and strong characters, than the other way around. That’s why goofball comedies like Zoolander and Old School, and cheesy action films like Face/Off and Armageddon, are entertaining, and movies with great stories like Munich and The Passion of the Christ, disappoint. Unfortunately, The DaVinci Code is closer to Passion, than Zoolander. Robert Langdon was strictly a vessel to tell the story through. We knew no more about him at the end if the film then we did at the beginning (except for he had a terrifying incident with a well when he was a boy). We knew a little bit more about Sophie, but she certainly didn’t arc. Teabing’s big secret was surprisingly unemotional, mostly because we didn’t know much about him and he didn’t arc either. I can’t help but think that given how charged the story was, had The DaVinci Code nailed the characters, the film would have tremendous.

One final thought about all the controversy …

My friend Nicole, who is a devout Christian, saw the movie this weekend (she didn’t read the book), emailed me today and wrote, “What's all the fuss about exactly?” She’s right. The DaVinci Code movie certainly wasn’t all that radical of a film. In JFK, it’s suggested that Lyndon Johnson was instrumental in having Kennedy assassinated. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, regardless of what kind of person you are, drinking out of the Holy Grail will give you eternal life (not exactly a Biblically-based theory). Movies have taken shots at the Catholic Church for years (in The Godfather, Part III, the Pope gets whacked by corrupt Catholic clergy) and movies regularly take far-fetched theories, unpopular opinions and selective historical evidence, and convincingly tell a story. That’s what movies do.

The bottom line is, regardless of what Dan Brown has said in interviews, or what was written in the book, there is nothing overtly offensive to Jesus or Christianity in the movie. You may disagree with its conclusions or its interpretation of history, but it is just a movie.

The Passion of The DaVinci Code

“This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”

Recognize this quote? It’s from the opening shot of the movie Fargo. You know what the best part is? It’s total bs. Despite its claims, Fargo is 100 percent a fictitious film. No events even remotely close to what was depicted in Fargo ever happened in Minnesota, or anywhere else for that matter (and thank God, that wood chipping scene would have kept CSI and Forensic Files drooling for years).

In a few weeks, The DaVinci Code and Tom Hanks’ creepy, yet effective hairline will debut in theatres, and if Christians have their way, a disclaimer along the lines of “this movie is a work of fiction” will accompany the start of the film. Of course, it doesn’t take Forrest Gump to realize that most movies are works of fiction in the first place, and that those movies that are based on real events, usually are Hollywood-ized.

Fargo claimed to be true, but was actually completely false and a deliberate joke. Same with The Blair Witch Project. A Beautiful Mind was “based” off the life of John Nash, yet that film left out little details like John Nash was a bisexual, had an illegitimate child, and divorced his wife. JFK claimed to be true, too, but pretty much every substantial assertion is more from the creative mind of Oliver Stone, rather than historical or forensic fact. I don’t recall reading a disclaimer about the authenticity of Braveheart, even though they claim a romance between William Wallace and Princess Isabelle occurred, and that she was pregnant at the time of Wallace's execution. Historically, the real Isabelle was a nine year-old girl still living in France at the time, meaning she never met Wallace, and married Edward II after he became king and after Wallace had died, seven years earlier. Oh, and Braveheart forgot to add in the bridge during the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Did anyone get upset that there wasn’t actually a Jack and Rose on the Titanic, or that the Heart of the Ocean diamond was courtesy of the imagination of James Cameron?

So what’s the big fuss?

Obviously the reason The DaVinci Code is being so passionatley persecuted is because 1) it’s about the authencity of The Bible and the life of Jesus Christ, and 2) it claims to be mostly historically accurate (that’s assuming the movie will make the same claim the book does – which isn’t a given since movie adpatations often differ from their book counterparts).

In 2004, Braveheart director Mel Gibson made a little film called The Passion of the Christ. Maybe you heard of it? The movie grossed like $611 million (25th all-time) and inspired Christians worldwide. So what about the accuraccy of Passion?

Well first of all, I don’t think Jesus was half-Irish, as James Caviezel is. Jesus was not European, yet traditionally Christian artists and now moviemakers, incorrectly depict him looking like he is of German/Irish descent. More accurately, Jesus was Jewish and from Israel, and was probably short (rather than tall and slender, as we usually “see” him) and most likely closely resembled someone of Middle Eastern descent, rather than someone of European descent. You can draw your own conclusions on why a Jesus who looks like he is from Iraq or Iran would make us feel more uncomfortable than a Jesus hailing from the United Kingdom.

Also in Passion, Jesus the carpenter, constructs a table and chairs in upright form. Jesus did not invent the modern-day table and chairs, nor is that ever suggested in The Bible that he did.

Jesus’ journey to his place of execution is one of the longer sequences in Passion (the fourteen stations of the cross), yet the Bible does not delve into any substantial detail about this journey and the images regarding this walk shown in Passion, have little historical evidence to support it.

On a DaVinci Code-related note, Passion identifies Mary Magdalene as the prostitute in the Gospel of John (chapter 8). This may be true, but there is no evidence for it in The Bible.

And finally, how about Jesus getting nailed through the hands at the crucifixion? This is almost certainly historically wrong, given that the Romans usually nailed people through the wrists.

So if Passion can misrepresent Jesus’ physical appearance, fictionalize powerful scenes/images that are not written in The Bible, exaggerate or plainly lie about Jesus’ accomplishments, and incorrectly depict how Jesus was crucified – especially since the nail-through-the-hand is one of the more substantial symbols of Christianity, why is The DaVinci Code being pressured to include a disclaimer about it’s authenticity at the beginning of the movie? Since Passion isn’t totally “historically accurate,” or “Biblically accurate” either, why didn’t they place a similar warning at the start of that film?

The reality is, every movie – true or false – contains a disclaimer at the end of its credits. We have all seen it. It states that “the characters and the events depicted in this film are fictitious …” Yada, yada, yada. Or, if it’s based on a true story, the disclaimer reads, “although this film is based off of actual events, some of the characters and stories have been fictionalized …” The DaVinci Code will have one of those disclaimers. Just like The Passion of the Christ. Isn’t that two paragraph disclaimer in the film’s ending credits good enough?

Artistic license allows Joel and Ethan Coen to make the “true story” joke at the beginning of Fargo. It’s the same license that allows Mel Gibson to leave out the bridge in the Battle of Stirling Bridge and have Jesus being the inventor of the modern-day table and chairs. And it’s the same license that allows Ron Howard to claim (again, assuming he will, as Dan Brown did in the book) that the theories in The DaVinci Code are historically accurate. More than 75% of Americans believe JFK to be an accurate portrayal of the Kennedy assassination. Yet if you watch A&E or The Biography Channel anytime around November 22, you’ll quickly learn JFK is a work of fiction, just like The DaVinci Code.

In the end, what is the cinematic difference between the opening title shot in Fargo and the “fact” claims of The DaVinci Code?

There is none.

(Look out! Here comes the soapbox!)

We should be able to watch our movies without jeopardizing the filmmakers’ artistic license or having political or religious warnings and disclaimers as a preamble. Let us decide what we choose to believe. Education comes in many forms; sometimes it’s doing our own research to figure out that The Blair Witch Project was a hoax; other times it is reading a World War II book to find out that Oskar Schindler was far from a saint and spent most of his post-World War II life living off of the Jews he saved. Fact or fiction, right or wrong, true or false, educating yourself about a movies’ subject matter is one of the best parts of going to the movies. If anything, I hope The DaVinci Code will encourage more people to learn about the life and times of Jesus Christ and the history of Christianity. Isn’t that what Christians should be promoting instead, not boycotting the film and asking for warnings?

Now lets take this whole silly disclaimer idea and toss it into the wood chipper.