The Da Vinci Code (Ron Howard, 2006)

[flyonthewall2983]

Here's the first trailer...

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pict ... inci_code/

Tom Hanks looks a bit like Don Henley, strangely enough.

[bunuelian]

I wonder if they've sanitized the ending to avoid Last Temptation of Christ style lambasting from the evangelicals. Probably not.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

I'm really not to interested in checking out this film (or the book) but I ran across a fascinating article in The New Yorker that documents how Sony has been marketing the film to Christians to avoid a nasty backlash. Even if you aren't interested in the movie it is a good read:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/a ... 522fa_fact

Incidentally, the film does not seem to be getting good advance critical word at Cannes.

[leo goldsmith]

Also, the normally tepid A.O. Scott has written a hilarious pan of the film in the Times.

[ellipsis7]

Screen daily/Screen international (no I'm not laughing, that's someone else, honestly!...)

The Da Vinci Code


Mike Goodridge in Cannes 17 May 2006



Dir: Ron Howard. US. 2006. 152 mins.

If Dan Brown's soaraway bestseller The Da Vinci Code was clumsily written but a page-turning guilty pleasure, Ron Howard's film version is well-made but chronically devoid of the guilty pleasures it needs to make it succeed as first-rate popcorn entertainment. Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman have remained rigidly faithful to the chronology and events of the book, but make ponderous work of the delicious conspiracy theories and treasure hunt which are the phenomenon's raison d'etre.

The problem is that the preposterous particulars of Brown's one-night chase across French and English monuments become markedly silly when depicted with such sombre portentousness as Howard adopts here. Rejecting the exhilarating adventure pacing of other treasure hunt hokum like Raiders Of The Lost Ark and National Treasure, the film-makers attempt to overlay the pulpy material with a thick coating of dramatic solemnity more evocative of adult fare like The Ninth Gate or Eyes Wide Shut.

The murky, often turgid result will be disappointing to many fans of Brown's wildly successful book and its many imitators, but that cannot stop this juggernaut from becoming one of the year's biggest blockbusters when it rides into the world's theatres this weekend after its world premiere as the Cannes opening night film today. Not even Sony Pictures could have predicted the excitement, anticipation and column inches that The Da Vinci Code is generating. Indeed no film would ever be able to meet these expectations or this hype.

The closest thing to a model is probably Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone which set about bringing another venerated book to the screen with global box office results of over $950m in 2001. The Da Vinci Code will probably fail to reach those dizzy numbers but its initial impact will be seismic as the enormous want-to-see is indulged by millions, both fans of the book and those who want to know what all the fuss is about. Its descent from those heavenly heights will be rapid and steep due to lukewarm reviews and so-so word-of-mouth, but by then Sony will no doubt have raked in a holy grail's worth of box office gold.

Howard and cinematographer Salvatore Totino opt for an almost gloomy palette of night-time shades and colours in their visual treatment, setting the tone for their drama in the darkly-lit opening sequences.

Their actors likewise play it grimly straight, Tom Hanks making for a solid, unexciting Dr Robert Langdon and Audrey Tautou a distinctly flat and ill-humoured Sophie Neveu. Not that the crowded, didactic screenplay allows them much to work with. They spend most of the time discussing the vagaries of history, she questioning, he explaining.

Langdon is lecturing in Paris when he is summoned to the Louvre to help police chief Bezu Fache (Reno) with his investigation of the murder of Louvre curator Jacques Sauniere (Marielle). As it happens, in his final moments, Sauniere has left a series of clues in the museum's famous paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci to Langdon and his grand-daughter Sophie (Tautou) as to the location of a secret for which he has clearly paid with his life.

Fache, however, a member of the Catholic sect Opus Dei, has other plans for Langdon who, he is convinced by the manipulative Bishop Aringarosa (Molina), was responsible for the murder of Sauniere and three other murders. In reality the four killings were all committed by Aringarosa's henchman Silas (Bettany), a tortured Albino monk with a penchant for self-flagellation.

Langdon and Neveu go on the run following the clues that will lead them to uncover the existence of the Priory Of Sion, a covert organization which protects the secret of the Holy Grail.

Thank heavens for Ian McKellen, whose Sir Leigh Teabing enters the plot halfway through. Injecting the film with its only humour as the wry conspiracy theorist with whom the fugitives seek refuge, McKellen gleefully hams it up as he describes in pompous educational detail the "true" secret of the Grail - the facts that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene, that they had a child and that a royal bloodline exists to this day.

McKellen brings a much-needed vigour to the film, seriously flagging at this point, which lasts through the subsequent sequences in London. The spark has been extinguished, however, by the time the film gets to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland where the final revelations are revealed with unintentionally comic gravity.

As if afraid to reshape any of the source narrative, the film weighs in at a lengthy 152 minutes but even at that length, its twists and turns are far too numerous for a film to encompass without compromising on character development and narrative momentum. Howard relies on Hans Zimmer's omnipresent score to keep the drama intense and a multitude of flashbacks, often cumbersome and unnecessary, many over-loaded with CGI, to give the story coherence.

The production's use of real locations from the Grande Galerie of the Louvre to Chateau de Villette outside Paris to various exteriors in London benefits the film enormously and will no doubt contribute to the growing tourist industry surrounding Dan Brown's creation.



Prod cos
Imagine Entertainment, Skylark Productions, Columbia Pictures.

Worldwide dist
Sony Pictures

Exec prods
Dan Brown, Todd Hallowell

Prods
Brian Grazer & Ron Howard, John Calley

Scr
Akiva Goldsman, from the novel by Dan Brown

DoP
Salvatore Totino

Prod des
Allan Cameron

Eds
Dan Hanley & Mike Hill

Mus
Hans Zimmer

Main cast
Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina, Paul Bettany, Jurgen Prochnow, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Etienne Chicot

[tryavna]

MSN has posted an amusing story on the overall reaction at Cannes:

here

[jesus the mexican boi]

I'm going to see it just to piss off the evangelicals.

[The Invunche]

What I'm really enjoying about this movie is seeing all the Christians on TV trying to convince us that Brown made it all up. Oh the sweet irony.

[David Ehrenstein]

Saw it last night. Not bad as bigtime chase thrillers go (and that's really all it is) but the piling-on has started full-blast and its become quite fashionable to declare it "a disappointment" What were people expecting?
Going My Way with nookie? After all it's not like Ron Howard was adapting Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum or Pierre Klossowski The Baphomet -- two infinitely superior novels that deal with the sam material with a richness and compexity far beyond Brown's ken.

Hanks and Tautou are perfectly OK. I don't understand all this chatter about Hanks' hair. He wears it longer than usual. So what?

Ian McKellen chews the scenery with great elan. As Silas the Albino hitman Paul Bettany does his best to update Conrad Veidt in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari but still looks ludicrous. Especially when talking on a cell phone or driving a sports car.

See it with someone who's been excommunicated.

[tavernier]

Also, the normally tepid A.O. Scott has written a hilarious pan of the film in the Times.

It's definitely A.O.'s finest hour since he began his movie reviewing job at the old grey lady.

[ellipsis7]

McKellen has dubbed it "a load of potential codswallop" based on script, which he felt wasn't as convincing as Dan Brown's seductive prose (which I have not read and do not intend to)...

If Tom Hanks' hair is the same jet black, dyed not grey look he has on the Cannes red carpet pics, then I understand crit of same...

Seems reading the reviews the movie takes itself ludicrously and portentously seriously to point of laughter... At heart of the DA VINCI CODE is one key idea I understand (potentially liberal and feminist) that Christ sired a child with Mary Magdalene, and begat a line, and the church has been repressive and conservative in suppressing this...

Needless to say it appears neither novel nor film took the trouble to explore this line to any adequate degree...

[David Ehrenstein]

The movie doesn't take itself thatseriously. McKellen wouldn't have been cast had that been the case.

Alltogether now : Ingrid-- it's only a movie!

[ellipsis7]

Interesting - so does it perform as an 'entertainment' movie, another strand of crit i've read, compares it adversely to THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (!?) and HARRY POTTER, re. effective dramatic revelations, unexpected surprises etc... Hanks & Tautou are also a '2 D characters' saith the sages...

Have to add no review seriously doubts it will make loadsamoney....

[THX1378]

Going to see the film at a preview screening tonight. I knew the film couldn't live up to the hype since the book couldn't also. This movie and book for that matter are pretty much in the field of love it or hate it. For the life of me I wish that they would have done a film of Brown's other book Angels and Demons first since it's a better book and more fitted to be made a movie out of.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

McKellen has dubbed it "a load of potential codswallop" based on script, which he felt wasn't as convincing as Dan Brown's seductive prose (which I have not read and do not intend to)...

McKellen didn't actually say this, did he? Brown's prose is "seductive" in the same way as a 600-pound woman in a thong.

[John Cope]

I hate to sound like an elitist ass but why in the world would anyone be surprised by Ron Howard turning in a mediocre movie? The only thing I've ever liked of his was Cinderella Man and I liked that because it was such an unapologetic melodrama--the scenes in which Braddock flashes on his children's faces and the late bills being tacked to the door are breathtakingly brazen. This was not just some half assed biopic, aspiring and failing to be great; it was sheer sentimentality with real conviction invested. Howard usually is unwilling to recognize his own limitations and proceeds to bore. He is the quintessence of competent.

[ellipsis7]

What McKellen said as reported in The Guardian...

Amid an unprecedented amount of hype and hoopla for an opening movie at the Cannes film festival, it took the inimitable Ian McKellen to knock Dan Brown and his swollen bestseller down to size with a single word - "codswallop".
Sir Ian, who plays the Earl Grey-loving grail expert Sir Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, said before the film's world premiere yesterday: "While I was reading the book I believed it entirely. Clever Dan Brown twisted my mind convincingly.

"But when I put it down I thought, 'What a load of ... [eloquent pause] potential codswallop."

[Lino]

Saw it last night. It's a competently made film by a competent director. No art here. Just mild fun for those who have read the book, like me (Yes, I do like to keep track of what's going on these days -- I hate making judgments on things I don't know).

McKellen was spot on as Teabing and he is the real stand out for me. Funny that he always seems to rise above mediocrity in every project he works on. Kudos to him for that.

There are some changes to the book, mostly near the end but overall it is faithful to Brown's text. Speaking of which, he was one of the Executive Producers of the film. Hmm...

[Antoine Doinel]

McKellen has dubbed it "a load of potential codswallop" based on script, which he felt wasn't as convincing as Dan Brown's seductive prose (which I have not read and do not intend to)...

Brown's prose is "seductive" in the same way as a 600-pound woman in a thong.

Seconded.

I read the book and was shocked that not only did the book get rave reviews, but that it was being embraced by such a huge audience. It's certainly fun if you're into conspiracy theories but Dan Brown writes sentences, not prose.

[tryavna]

McKellen has dubbed it "a load of potential codswallop" based on script, which he felt wasn't as convincing as Dan Brown's seductive prose (which I have not read and do not intend to)...

Brown's prose is "seductive" in the same way as a 600-pound woman in a thong.

Seconded.

I read the book and was shocked that not only did the book get rave reviews, but that it was being embraced by such a huge audience. It's certainly fun if you're into conspiracy theories but Dan Brown writes sentences, not prose.

Was it "almost inconceivable"? My new favorite phrase!

[tavernier]

It's certainly fun if you're into conspiracy theories but Dan Brown writes sentences, not prose.

I don't think anyone has even remotely claimed that the book is great literature. Like Stephen King and John Grisham, etc., Dan Brown is an entertainer, and nothing more than a competent writer.

[The Invunche]

He's worse than those two. The parts in both Robert Langdon books where he's falling in love with the female lead is painful to read.

[tavernier]

He's worse than those two. The parts in both Robert Langdon books where he's falling in love with the female lead is painful to read.

I've never read Grisham, but King is often painful to read also. Of course I think "Misery" was the last King book I made it through. I read both "Da Vinci" and "Angels & Demons" and found them moderately diverting, if only for the great locations Brown set his plots in.

[skuhn8]

He's worse than those two. The parts in both Robert Langdon books where he's falling in love with the female lead is painful to read.

I've never read Grisham, but King is often painful to read also. Of course I think "Misery" was the last King book I made it through. I read both "Da Vinci" and "Angels & Demons" and found them moderately diverting, if only for the great locations Brown set his plots in.

Read it too. I enjoyed it immensely, but I must say that I enjoyed it despite the painful prose and asinine chase. If I remember correctly the protagonist is a researcher who during the course of the story is exposed to the internet for the first time? Uh-huh. Makes me think of those novels supposedly taking place now but without any mention of a mobile phone.

I enjoyed the story merely as a vehicle to ponder the puzzle pieces of the great Catholic Conspiracy. I know it's juvenile, but I still get a kick when someone comes along and gives the hallowed fortress a good shake. That's why I enjoy the hoopla now and such priceless moments as when spokesmen from the Vatican insist that the story isn't based on facts without even a wink of irony. Yup, priceless.

But this thread is about the movie, right? Sorry, haven't seen it. Saw a trailer and it looked ok.

[David Ehrenstein]

It's breaking all-time box office records in Italy.

Will the last person to leave the Vatican please blow out the candles.