Movie Review

Directed by Ron Howard, starring: Tom Hanks (Robert Langdon), Audrey Tautou (Sophie Neveu), Paul Bettany (Silas), Ian McKellen (Leigh Teabing), 149 minutes, 2006.

Reading a Dan Brown novel (Deception Point; Angels and Demons, DaVinci…) is a lot like eating a whole bag of Cheezies. You know it is not going to be good for you but Oh, the mouth-feel and the bulk! The recipe is reliable; everything happens in 24 hours at breakneck speed, nobody eats, nobody sleeps, there are lots of coincidences, there's lots of fast travel and the villain is always a very trusted insider who betrays the hero's trust. Still, we all like a conspiracy and in a climate of sexual abuse scandals and the publication of "lost" gospels of Mary, Judas and Phillip there's a sense that the church has been lying to us and harbours something shady in its depths.

For my money, I thought the movie was better than the book. I didn't spend as much time saying "arghhhh!" at the simplistic interpretation of history, flat statements about church wrongdoing and unimaginative writing style. In Langdon's debates with Teabing there is more ambiguity, more nuance to other flat claims in the book.

Langdon is a Harvard 'Symbologist' who is called to the scene of the murder of the Director of The Louvre. He is joined at the scene by Sophie, a member of the Paris police force and as it turns out, estranged niece of the victim. Langdon is being treated as a suspect and they are pursued around Paris, the French countryside and England by both the police and by Silas a murderous albino monk in the employ of a cardinal who is a representative of Opus Dei. All of them follow the directions of The Teacher, a mysterious character seeking to discover the secret of the resting place of The Holy Grail, the 'sacred feminine'. The "code" is supposedly found in DaVinci's painting of The Last Supper. If you transpose the figure of John the Beloved Disciple to the other side of Jesus he/ she appears to be a lover leaning on Jesus, i.e. Mary Magdalene. The Grail is not a cup but the vessel Mary who carried Jesus' child, a secret preserved by a secret society (The Priory of Sion) through the ages, a secret murderously suppressed by the church. Quelle surprise that evidence (now thoroughly discredited) of descendents of Jesus being carried in a line of French kings shows up in documents found in the French Biblioteque National.

Langdon and Neveu seek the help of 'code breaker' Leigh Teabing, an eccentric and wealthy Englishman who has been on the trail of The Grail for years.

Alluded to but never explored are the codes embedded in the childhoods of both Langdon and Neveu. Yes, paintings, scripture and symbols need decoding but so do the people. They exhibit memory which we see in flashbacks but almost no interior life. In the book there is an implied attraction between the two but in the film there is not the faintest spark of attraction. Brown's protagonists usually go to bed with the strong female lead but perhaps the notion of going to bed with Jesus' great, great, great…grand daughter was too much.

Brown holds to an old story line; Jesus was great in the simplicity of His basic teaching but the church hijacked the message in the interest of maintaining (masculine) power and both suppressed and killed its opponents. It has viciously suppressed feminine divinity. Consequently there is a secret body of knowledge that is the real faith. This has been kept from the faithful by those saps at your church who purport to be leaders. The pagans were sweet and innocent; their celebration of the sacred feminine was liberating and the few who have kept this secret Christianity are truly heroic.

This is not a new critique but it seems to ignore both the experience of early Christianity that challenged pagan civil religion and its support of Empire Theology, as practiced by Rome and the current experience of local Christians who know that there is no secret narrative hidden in scripture and art. It may not be well practiced locally but the notion of enemies as blessed and fellow insiders as sinners is taught openly and universally.

Still, the film provides a moment for us to reflect on what we think we believe and people are able openly to ask questions that they may not have in the past lest they be thought stupid. This is a highly entertaining flic that has prompted all kinds of conversations between and among believers, skeptics and scoffers alike.