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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

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

ellipsis7 wrote: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)...

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."

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:

ellipsis7 wrote: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.

Antoine Doinel wrote:

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:

ellipsis7 wrote: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.

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

The Invunche wrote: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 wrote:

The Invunche wrote: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.