7/27/2019 Apologetics - Article - Film Review Da Vinci Code - Tina Beattie, The Tablet, 20 May 2006

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FILM REVIEW THE DA VINCI CODEby Tina Beattie

published in The Tablet, 20 May 2006 (what follows is the original version before

editing for publication)

There must be a few people out there who know nothing about Dan Brownsbestselling novel, TheDa Vinci Code, despite the saturation coverage it has received

in spin-offs, merchandising, law suits and flurries of ecclesiastical ire. However, those

who see the film will probably already know the story, and director Ron Howard

therefore has to rely on something more than suspense to hold the audiences

attention. With its focus on the most enigmatic female character in the Christian story,

its theme of the quest for the eternal feminine (whatever that is), and its potential to

draw on the lush visual and musical resources of the Catholic tradition to create an

atmosphere, this might have been a sumptuous cinematic feast. So, setting aside the

quest for the holy grail of historical authenticity, I went along prepared to be

pleasantly surprised. After all, some films are considerably better than the books that

inspire them.

The film closely follows the book (so if you havent read it and want to keep that

element of suspense, skip this paragraph). Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is

a Harvard symbologist who is called to a murder scene in the Louvre where the

curators body has been found in a state of self-inflicted mutilation. The detective

investigating the case, Captain Bzu Fache (Jean Reno), is a member of Opus Dei.

The curators estranged grand daughter Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou), a police

cryptologist, arrives on the scene, and she and Langdon are caught up in a search to

follow the clues left by the murdered man. They are pursued by a murderous Opus

Dei monk called Silas (Paul Bettany), who is working for the Macchiavellian BishopAringarosa (Alfred Molina). Their quest takes them to the French chateau of

Englishman Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), who introduces Sophie to the idea that

Michelangelos Last Supper depicts Mary Magdalene sitting next to Christ. For two

thousand years the Catholic Church has concealed the truth of Christs marriage to

Mary Magdalene and the child that she bore, while the Priory of Sion has preserved

their bloodline and kept the holy grail of Mary Magdalenes body hidden.

The Da Vinci Code exploits an idea that has become widespread in recent years that

Christianity is a masculine religion which destroyed the ancient goddess cults and has

struggled to suppress any resurgence of the eternal feminine. This might invite a

film director to explore those elusive spiritual qualities that could be associated withthis lost feminine ethos. But theDa Vinci Code is just another macho Hollywood

blockbuster, with the usual fare of guns, car chases and scenes of gruesome violence,

and with the central female character being portrayed as a thoroughly stereotypical

ingnue old-style feminine rather than new-style feminist. Filmed mainly in Paris

and London, the photography occasionally lifts it out of the ordinary, particularly

some of the scenes in and around the Louvre, but it also uses soft-focused flashbacks

which add to an already disjointed sense of scenes jumping around without

developing any real sense of narrative or characterisation.

The film therefore suffers from all the same failings as the book. Its representation of

Catholicism is one-dimensional, so that the self-flagellating monk and thecaricaturised bishop are the only Catholic characters we encounter. Its attempt to

7/27/2019 Apologetics - Article - Film Review Da Vinci Code - Tina Beattie, The Tablet, 20 May 2006

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marry a murder mystery with a critique of religion fails because it is too superficial,

so that it becomes a cheap anti-Catholic diatribe as well as a second-rate thriller. One

might contrast it with Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose, which was also turned

into a film and which covered similar themes with considerably more finesse. The

script is banal, and Tatou is lumbered with lines which sap the quality of her acting

which shone with such idiosyncratic brilliance in the filmAmelie. Hanks doesnt faremuch better, playing the part of Langdon with the kind of ponderous worthiness

which seems to have become his trademark in recent years. Indeed, perhaps a major

failing of the film is that the two central characters take themselves too seriously.

Even Silas is a rather insipid villain, and only McKellan plays his part with the kind

of relish which acknowledges how daft it all is, as he delivers the clunking historical

explanations which provide much of the background to the plot. These are largely

based on the book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood

and Holy Grail. Teabing is an anagram of Baigent, so the name Leigh Teabing, like

many of the names in the book, is an authorial joke. (The Bishops name, Aringarosa,

means red herring).

Had The Da Vinci Code been less ideologically influenced by such flakey theories

about Mary Magdalene, it might have found a much more enigmatic story within the

Catholic tradition. Centuries before Dan Brown, it was Catholicism itself which

created the fertile myth and cult of Mary Magdalene. I read theDa Vinci Code on

holiday in France and, moving between the novel and Frances medieval cathedrals, I

realized how ubiquitous Mary Magdalene is in Catholic art and devotion. The stained

glass windows of those ancient churches are the precursors to our modern cinemas,

enticing us into worlds of desire and imagination through the play of light on the

characters who make up the story of Christ. Mary Magdalene deserves a place in the

modern cinema as surely as she did in those Gothic cathedrals for, where Christ goes,

this persistent, elusive woman seems to go too. But what a shame that Hollywood has

stripped away so much of the mystical beauty and subversive quality of the

Magdalene of the Catholic tradition. Instead of fulminating against this mediocre film,

perhaps the Church should look to its own resources and ask why it has been so

reluctant to acknowledge the significance of Mary Magdalene. If one can learn little

about the Catholic Church from theDa Vinci Code, the Church might have much to

learn from its phenomenal popularity.

Tina Beattie is a Reader in Christian Studies at Roehampton University, where she

teaches on Religion and Film.