Cast: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina, Paul Bettany, Jürgen Prochnow.

The first few scenes of The Da Vinci Code are impressively dramatic and well shot. A violent murder in the Louvre Museum, cutting to an international lecture given by famed writer and scholar of symbology, Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks, looking quite authorly and scholarly), gives a good balance of necessary esoteric information about the ambiguity of symbols with the intrigue of violent action. Unfortunately, after that the film dwindles into melodrama and unsatisfying revelations.

Overlong and manipulative, The Da Vinci Code is just like the book, and it’s a shame some good performances – notably Ian McKellen and Paul Bettany - were wasted in this unexciting tosh. I’ve seldom been less engaged at the end of a movie. I can’t remember being less thrilled during a thriller, or less intrigued by a so-called mystery, or so bored by the action bits, such as they are. But then I’ve had the misfortune, like most of us curious to see what the fuss was all about, of reading the badly written, derivative drivel that is the book. The book manifestly proves a piece of bad writing can become a best seller, as long as the writer insists that much of it is fact and the large amount of esoteric information is given in short bursts alternating with fast action. The so-called facts have since been proved to be a hoax, but fooled author Dan Brown has not backed down. Knowing the facts are not true, however, takes most of the fascination out of the film. It becomes just another cynical exercise to capitalise on a popular money-spinner. In the hands of director Ron Howard, and despite some impressive scenic cinematography and atmospheric soundtrack, it has unfortunately become a mediocre cynical exercise.

In case you’re the one who hasn’t read the book, the story is of a secret war between two millennia-old covert societies: one – Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic wing, desperate to prevent the revelation of an explosive lie at the very heart of Christianity that threatens to tear the Christian Church apart, and the other the Priory of Sion, an organisation sworn to guard the Holy Grail and the lineage of a royal bloodline. Robert Langdon is hauled away from a book signing to help solve the mysterious murder of Sauniere, a friend and the Curator of the Louvre Museum whose body has been daubed with some esoteric symbols. Together with police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), granddaughter of the murdered man, he sets out to follow a series of cryptic clues left by Sauniere which hint at the secret war of the Priory and Opus Dei. Followed by suspicious Police Captain Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) who is a member of Opus Dei, their quest takes them through Paris, to London and Scotland.

Part of this convoluted plotline is the idea, largely unexplored, of the Sacred Feminine. Based on the theory that Mary Magdalene was not the harlot she is painted by the Church but in fact the beloved wife of Jesus, leader of the early church, and mother of his child, Sophie’s part in the drama is as a possible direct descendant of that royal bloodline. Various hints that Sophie has compassion and ability to heal include a scene in the Bois de Boulogne, notorious haunt of prostitutes, where Sophie takes Langdon while on the run from Fache, and where she gives a junkie 50 Euros for his kit. Langdon later has to mention, because it’s not otherwise indicated why this otherwise incomprehensible scene and location is included, that maybe the junkie will never have another hit. Her hands on Langdon’s head may also have cured his claustrophobia. But these seem inserted into the main action of running from the police and solving mysterious riddles, and are not as convincing as Sophie’s violent confrontation with Opus Dei fanatical monk and killer, Silas (a riveting Paul Bettany), who killed her grandfather.

Both in the book and the film, the author teases with cryptic clues that appear solved only to have deeper alternate meanings, in what seem in the end to be a huge joke at the audience’s expense. Sometimes the revelations are ridiculous (like the final cryptex clue); mostly they are simply unbelievable, unworthy of the dramatic lead up. The characters’ names, while not explored in the film, are a case in point – cryptic games and anagrammatic wordplay that function as spurious diversions (such as the Opus Dei Bishop Aringarosa, the name literally a translation of red herring.) Sophie means ‘wise’, Neveu means ‘descendant’, Bézu is a Templar fortress, Fache is French for ‘cross’ – not the Christian symbol, but ‘angry’, and Langdon is the name of an ambigrammist and wordplay expert (who designed the logo in the film for the Depository Bank of Zurich) and whose name simultaneously hints at language and teaching in a pseudo-scholarly way. The character Leigh Teabing is a transparent anagrammic combination of the names of two of the authors of the 1982 bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent, from whose ultimately flawed research Brown took the main supposedly-factual basis for The Da Vinci Code. So much frivolous punning and pseudo-cryptography points to a less than serious premise. Incidentally, anagrams for The Da Vinci Code include ‘A Hidden Vice Cot’, ‘Catch Divine Doe’ (dough?), ‘Idiot cache vend’ and my favourite, ‘Hide Avid Con etc’.

The film is intriguing in one aspect, that the difference between authentic dramatic tension, created by the actors, and imposed dramatic tension, imposed by directorial and editorial means, is widely disparate. Scenes with Hanks, Tautou and Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing, in which much of exposition of the esoteric lore is unravelled, are enthralling. McKellen has never been more masterful or more beguilingly textured and scenes with him almost make the whole movie worthwhile. The contrast with cuts to fleets of police cars closing in on Teabing’s mansion, or in fact any of the swarming police scenes, supposed to increase tension and suspense, are simply annoying. In camera angles and pacing, melodrama is frequently directorially substituted for what these competent actors could easily achieve simply by interacting. Another jarring plot element is the unbelievably instantaneous police intel as to where their quarries are at all times, juxtaposed with their apparent inability to catch them. Prostitutes in the Bois de Boulogne, one would assume not well known for helping police, report Sophie’s and Langdon’s departure from the Bois de Boulogne. Is this meant as irony?

Jean Reno’s character Fache is allowed only a small serving of his superb range. Audrey Tautou is beautiful, a little mysterious but never quite layered enough.  Tom Hanks varies from believable to silly – notably in the very last scene, back at the Louvre where everything started, where he kneels in knightly fashion over the tomb of the Magdalene. Paul Bettany’s driven monk Silas, in constant pain from the self-mortifying cilice he wears on his thigh and repeated self-flagellation, is an unforgettable, disturbing, ultimately moving portrait of fanaticism and betrayal. Alfred Molina is suitably unctuous as Bishop Aringarosa.

The main feeling of having been conned comes at the end when the movie’s themes and emotions prove too insubstantial to stay with one.  As frivolous entertainment, that at 153 minutes goes on too long, it might be worth waiting for the DVD or a slow night.

© Avril Carruthers   17^th May 2006