More thoughts added, 5/20/06

I had a ticket to the very first showing of the movie, but darn it all...they added an earlier showing after I bought my ticket. But it doesn't matter. Here's a report on what I saw.

The main issue I wanted to look at was, "Is there anything new in the movie that is not in the book?" My suspicion was that most of the "fact" claims (as found in Ch. 55 of the book) would be left out, narrowed down to just what was absolutely essential to the plot, because Teabing's long speech just wasn't the stuff of an action thriller. That turned out to be right; the lecture was still there, much shorter (I didn't hear my favorite factoids about Mithra, for example!), and spiced with tech wizardry and historical flashbacks. And there's an even bigger surprise...

Tom Hanks (Langdon) actually comes out arguing the other side now and then!

It's most apparent during the lecture. Teabing says that the Council of Nicea decided on Jesus' "immortality" (not "divinity," oddly, but it's still wrong!); but then Langdon shoots back that it wasn't that way at all (and Teabing dismisses his reply as "semantics" in action). Later it's Langdon who says a truer version first, stating that 50,000 women were killed by the church in witch hunts; Teabing shoots back, "some say millions" (true, but "some" are not professional historians). Langdon expresses doubts about who the real instigators were in Constantine's time: pagans or Christians. He rolls his eyes and has an "aw, come on" look while Teabing waxes eloquent about hidden meanings in The Last Supper.

What's going on here?

I can only guess, but I have the idea that one of two things happened. Either the movie's producers decided they could try and avoid controversy by giving both sides "equal time" now and then, or....

....more likely, given what else we see, it's a case of Ron Howard flashbacking to the days of Willow. When Teabing and Langdon start shouting, Sophie dons referee stripes and puts a stop to it with a mini-sermonette about how people have so often killed each other over these things, so "let's not argue." And nowhere is this peacemaker posture made more clear than the final discussion between Sophie and Langdon, in which Langdon throws the final rubber bone by suggesting that "maybe human is divine" and who knows...Sophie could have healed him of his claustrophobia, and maybe she could also turn water into wine if she tried. (She dips her foot in some after that, and of course, does not; or maybe she was trying to walk on water??) Langdon indicates that it is belief that matters and suggests that it would not be good for Sophie to reveal the truth because it is better to preserve faith than to destroy it (which is interesing as a counter to Teabing, who practically foams at the mouth over alleged historical injustices). He professes to have been a Catholic, and as a child was trapped in a well and prayed to Jesus, whom he seems to think answered his prayer.

Perhaps Ron Howard figured he'd throw us some bones, then. Or perhaps they tried to correct some of the errors to avoid more controversy. Or maybe all of the above, with the bottom line held firmly in vuew. It's not just the lecture scene, either; at the beginning, there is what I may be imagining as a subtle "retort" to Brown's use of the Mona Lisa: Those factoids from Brown about the painting are never used, other than a brief hint about the left side of the woman being larger as a sign of the feminine, but tight focus is put on a little sign that gives the Mona Lisa's original French name, and spells the later name properly, Monna Lisa -- am I imagining it, or could this be their way of saying, "Nah, we'll skip all that stuff about it being Leonardo in drag and about it being an anagram of Egyptian gods"?

And some of the minor errors are preserved untouched. Paris is still wrongly the site of the first Prime Meridian. Pope still erroneously presided at Newton's funeral (though that is essential to the plot, after all). At the end, we get to see a library of documents hidden under Roslyn chapel, with dates to the first century, preserved by the Priory of Sion (which is said to be real), but nothing is said of what is in them. Opus Dei isn't seen in quite so bad a light; Silas and his friends are part of a smaller rebel core that the Vatican would excommunicate if it got wind of them. (There is a rather excessive focus on Silas' self-flagellation at the beginning; perhaps they figured some buttocks would ensure a more tantalizing rating.)

But the core message, and what it seems Howard thought was a bone to throw us (if it was that intention) was, "let's not fight, huh, because it doesn't really matter, does it?" Mmm, well, yes, Opie, it does. If this WAS a bone thrown our way, we're not touching it.

Given his Willow phase, if I am right here Howard and the crew behind this may think they were offering us a compromise. But I'm sorry -- there is no compromise with truth. At the very beginning there are shades of the "blind man and the elephant" routine as Langdon fools students into misidentifying symbols by only tightly focussing on small parts of pictures they are in. But the message refutes itself. Langdon corrects the errors by pulling back on the perspective so it is clear what the symbol really means. And so it has been done with history, and no number of rubber bones will change that.

But what else? Teabing reads from the Gospel of Philip and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and even there some rubber bones bounce out, if subtly. Teabing reads from Philip the passage about Jesus kissing Mary, but is interrupted by Sophie before he can say the word "mouth" for the spot where the smoocheroo is given. (That word isn't in the fragmentary text.) Teabing says Mary wrote her gospel; Langdon says, "maybe" she did, with a tone of serious doubt. (In reality, there is no doubt at all; and of course they still don't seem to know that the Gnostic authors would have not been on their side, rejecting any idea that Jesus and Mary had sex, much less children.) Teabing remains uncorrected, though, when he makes the absurd statement that Philip was rejected at Nicea. (It wasn't even discussed; Nicea was not about the canon.)

Technical notes....the film was very dark, and the word "corny" kept popping into my head. This may be because cryptography just doesn't make for good cinema. There is a valiant and sometimes successful attempt to spice things up with historical flashbacks (eg, into the Crusader era), and rather amusingly, Teabing's lecture now features PowerPoint. I also think people who did not read the book will find it hard to follow, and the one person I have met so far who saw the movie but did not read the book agrees. There are other plot changes as well, but I will stick to issues apologists care about where that is concerned.

In sum....it can be said that some effort was made to make things more palatble to those who pointed out the book's errors. I can't be sure of the reason, but I can be sure that it was an effort in vain. Errors remains errors. On the other hand, perhaps we can suppose that the apologetic effort to correct these errors in the book had some effect on the decisions made about the movie.

I'll leave this space for miscellaneous news and data.

It has been reported that the film bombed at the Cannes film festival (see here, with our thanks to a reader) which is interesting but probably not very significant in terms of what popular audiences will think of it.

A theater chain turned down an ad from Campus Crusade about the film: See here. The ad itself can be seen in this blog post about the cancellation/ban here

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