Da Vinci Code
The Carpenter Resartus
Just saw the Da Vinci Code. It was ok. Hanks was ok. It was a pretty good movie. Two orbs. Maybe two and a half.
There were some problems of course.
I found The woman, essentially the central character uninteresting in a moderately good looking way. I could never work up any interest in whether she lived or died, was upset, unsettled, frightened or was or was not the grail.
There was some unbelievable use of the fortuitous moment. Pigeons distract a trained, ruthless, cold-blooded killer by suddenly fluttering thirty feet above his head so two amateurs can turn and run fifty feet, hide behind a pillar and run out the door and up the street before the darn distracting pigeons stop fluttering and the killer is able to think about his prisoners again. Seemed to happen in two seconds tops. Still I enjoyed the lighting and framing of the pigeons. I thought it was worth seeing. I can still picture it and that applies to both that particular scene and the whole movie.
The strange thing was it seemed to me to be five different movies. It sort of pulsed.
And the evil eminence gris didn’t so much incrimentally reveal himself or go thru character development as suddenly, unreasonably be a totally other person in the succeeding scene. Here is a man who is so well known to the hero that Hanks can guess esoteric questions uttered in fun, about whether to use lemon or milk in what type of tea, but about whose hidden basic depravity he has no insights at all. There was a lot of that. Hanks is asked to drop by the Louvre to give his opinion on certain symbols found on and by the body but it turns out is really the chief suspect in the murder.The bank manager was first a thorough going professional then a rescuer then an attempted thief and potential killer and finally an ineffectual idiot emptying his pistol at an armored car. Bishops were killers, a nun was a secret acolyte of a secret society, a deeply religious monk was morally monstrous, and the lead police official was a member of and cooperating with a secret organization of the church which organization was composed of high ranking religious officials who were authorizing multiple murders in an apparent humanitarian attempt to save the faith of the faithful by hiding the truth that the faith was founded on a lie. The Butler even did it. When nothing (everything?) is always not what it seems you come to know what everything always is and what everyone is or is not going to be.
In fact about the only character in the movie who got to be what he was ultimately revealed to be was Hanks. That made about as much contextual sense to me as the premise that everything in Moby Dick is metaphor except the whale. Perhaps things were just too subtle for me. I know I never noticed that Hanks was healed by the laying on of hands by the woman who is said to be the “Grail Vessel”. That should have given Evangelicals some pause. There she is, the descendent of the Christ who is said to be “Just a very good man” and she casually heals a man from a deeply set psychosis using a method, “the laying on of hands”, slightly disguised, that her mother used to use on her which always worked. She may joke about walking on water as she walks off but …. She healed a man using an ancient Christian ceremony (ordinance?) and neither she nor the man seems to notice the implications of that. Are we to think ….”hey, wait a minute! As a purported descendent of Christ who is only a man how come she is exercising the powers of Christ who is God”? I think so, but people who don’t know the drill miss the nuances and get upset about a denigration of Christianity when it may be a quiet, almost coded, affirmation. Come to think of it, there were a couple of unexplaned things that could be taken that way. The “memory flash-backs” were eeriely more than flash-backs, appearing almost interactive. The little girl she was turns and looks at her and gives her an enigmatic look. And the scene where they go into the chathederal is preceeded with strange photography that seems to show multitudes going into to the building but who are not really there. In the schema of the whole movie those elements almost nudge one to the presence of a higher power or the existance of unseen directive hands. Who was the director? Twice characters emphasized the line that “people see pretty much what they expect to see”.
I want to congratulate Howard for not going the Mel Gibson route. When the Monk strips and beats himself with about the same whip Gibson had Christ beaten with it only made nasty indentation wounds but didn’t result in five quarts of blood all over the floor or cobblestones. It didn’t result in any blood at all, come to think of it. Hmmm.
I have seen a review of the movie that complained that there was too much talk. I think that is unfair. Dialogue stitched things together and taught history in a way that couldn’t be done without special effects and making the movie another couple of hours long. It’s that or become another Ring trilogy. The talk was so well done, so dramatic and moving, that I think that this is the way to present all history. Professors take note(s). I liked it. The last talking head segment was the best and presented some intriguing premises that probably are worth thinking about. I forget what they were but they were deep and memorable and really made me think. Oh! What was it?… “Perhaps man himself is god?” or was the entire premise that “perhaps God himself is man?” I wasn’t sure what Howard or Brown or whoever was trying to say but perhaps we have misjudged him or them and the movie.