![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Saw the Da Vinci Code last night...
Sunday, May 21st, 2006 05:58 pm.
Clearly it should have been a movie from the get-go. The writing in the book is excrutiatingly bad, so clumsy it's embarrassing. I understand that Dan Brown was trying to get the information out to a new audience in the form most likely to be popular, but couldn't he have taken a few writing classes first?
It made an ok potboiler movie, but there were a number of things that I'm sorry didn't make it in. There was almost no discussion of what the ritual Sophie witnessed actually was, so the audience is left with a "devil worship" impression, even though that's exactly what it wasn't. As a pagan, that really irritated me. But at least there was some talk of the Goddess, which is awfully nice after such a long dry spell. It's been years since I saw a movie or TV show that even mentioned the Goddess, let alone put her at the center of the plot! And I wish more of that could have made it into the movie. But this book suffers from the same problem as Stranger in a Strange Land, in that the plot is just a web to hang all the conversations on, and those are really what the book is about. Which, of course, is a damn hard thing to deal with in adapting it to a film.
I was also rather annoyed that Langdon was turned into a skeptic, which he most definitely was not in the book. He was just as into the whole Grail thing as Teabing was, albeit not as personally invested in it. But all this "It's a MYTH, damnit!" crap is obviously a sop to all the people who are yelling about TEH SAKRILEGEOMG!!!11!!! Annoying, that. If the filmmakers don't have the balls to keep the movie true to the whole damn idea of the book, they got no business making the thing, in my opinion. They knew it was controversial going in, so...FEH.
But I have to say that when I first came across that albino monk (I heard it as an audiobook), I rolled my eyes so hard they practically popped out. Talk about a friggin' cliche, and so counter-intuitive, too. Let's see, we have to send out an agent who'll get this super-secret info and kill anyone who won't play along. Who can we send that'll be able to infiltrate and go unnoticed? I know! We'll get that 6'3" crazed zealot albino who goes around in a Dominican monk's robe with cowl, and who DRIPS BLOOD WHEREVER HE GOES! Yeah, he'll be just right for the job. Jesus, my creative writing teacher in sophomore high would've taken away ten points just for that!
But all in all, not that bad a film. Tom Hanks did well with what he was given (which wasn't much), Audrey Tatou was cute and big-eyed (when will that stop being a prerequisite for actresses, I wonder?), and it goes without saying that Sir Ian was a major hoot, all frothy delight and lovely high-toned British Disdain For Frenchness. He was the best thing about the film; in fact, he was the reason I knew I had to see the film. I can't say how great it was to hear him espousing all that stuff about Mary Magdelene and the Goddess, reading from the Gnostic Gospels and all. (But what was that crap about cutting him off just before he finished the line about Jesus kissing Magdalene? Ron Howard is a bit of a coward, methinks.)
Clearly it should have been a movie from the get-go. The writing in the book is excrutiatingly bad, so clumsy it's embarrassing. I understand that Dan Brown was trying to get the information out to a new audience in the form most likely to be popular, but couldn't he have taken a few writing classes first?
It made an ok potboiler movie, but there were a number of things that I'm sorry didn't make it in. There was almost no discussion of what the ritual Sophie witnessed actually was, so the audience is left with a "devil worship" impression, even though that's exactly what it wasn't. As a pagan, that really irritated me. But at least there was some talk of the Goddess, which is awfully nice after such a long dry spell. It's been years since I saw a movie or TV show that even mentioned the Goddess, let alone put her at the center of the plot! And I wish more of that could have made it into the movie. But this book suffers from the same problem as Stranger in a Strange Land, in that the plot is just a web to hang all the conversations on, and those are really what the book is about. Which, of course, is a damn hard thing to deal with in adapting it to a film.
I was also rather annoyed that Langdon was turned into a skeptic, which he most definitely was not in the book. He was just as into the whole Grail thing as Teabing was, albeit not as personally invested in it. But all this "It's a MYTH, damnit!" crap is obviously a sop to all the people who are yelling about TEH SAKRILEGEOMG!!!11!!! Annoying, that. If the filmmakers don't have the balls to keep the movie true to the whole damn idea of the book, they got no business making the thing, in my opinion. They knew it was controversial going in, so...FEH.
But I have to say that when I first came across that albino monk (I heard it as an audiobook), I rolled my eyes so hard they practically popped out. Talk about a friggin' cliche, and so counter-intuitive, too. Let's see, we have to send out an agent who'll get this super-secret info and kill anyone who won't play along. Who can we send that'll be able to infiltrate and go unnoticed? I know! We'll get that 6'3" crazed zealot albino who goes around in a Dominican monk's robe with cowl, and who DRIPS BLOOD WHEREVER HE GOES! Yeah, he'll be just right for the job. Jesus, my creative writing teacher in sophomore high would've taken away ten points just for that!
But all in all, not that bad a film. Tom Hanks did well with what he was given (which wasn't much), Audrey Tatou was cute and big-eyed (when will that stop being a prerequisite for actresses, I wonder?), and it goes without saying that Sir Ian was a major hoot, all frothy delight and lovely high-toned British Disdain For Frenchness. He was the best thing about the film; in fact, he was the reason I knew I had to see the film. I can't say how great it was to hear him espousing all that stuff about Mary Magdelene and the Goddess, reading from the Gnostic Gospels and all. (But what was that crap about cutting him off just before he finished the line about Jesus kissing Magdalene? Ron Howard is a bit of a coward, methinks.)
