Since The Da Vinci Code first hit the bestseller lists, the book has screamed for my attention every time I've walked into the grocery store or Costco. 'You haven't read it?' friends would ask, 'It's really good.' These queries became more insistent as the book moved into the rarified territory of 'cultural phenomenon.' The ancillary merchandise—puzzles, games, etc.—started piling up in the aisles of Target, the History Channel seemed to be running shows about it 24-7, and my sister told me she wanted to go on an 'authorized' Da Vinci Code tour throughout Europe. Still, though I'd picked up the book several times and gazed at the portrait of the Mona Lisa on the cover, it never made it into my cart.
The largest part of my resistance had to do with my overriding love for movies. Once I realized that obviously any book this popular was going to be made into a movie, the die was cast. I'm a voracious reader but popular fiction is not usually my genre of choice, and I much prefer seeing the big bestsellers in their big-screen transformations, though the success of these, I admit, is spotty at best. Have many great movies have been made from Stephen King, John Grisham or David Baldacci books? Uh-huh. Nevertheless, I patiently waited throughout all the hype, the plagiarism trial, the protests by the Catholic Church about the book's contents, and the 'controversy' over Tom Hanks' long hair for the movie. By purposely flipping channels and averting my eyes online I managed to make it to the screening with only a hazy idea about what I had come to assume was a mystery thriller.
Well, The Da Vinci Code is certainly a mystery, but one so dense with mind-numbing back story as to almost make your brain hurt. It is the visual equivalent of a Rubik's Cube—one sits patiently as its characters talk and talk until they figure out the next clue, the next piece of the riddle. These are interspersed with a series of not particularly believable chase sequences. Basically the movie is talk/chase/talk/chase for two and a half hours. But again, the talk is dense and the thrills are incredulous and negligible. 'We've been dragged into this world by people who take this seriously,' Tom Hanks says at one point, perfectly summoning up the exact problem with the movie. It's weighed down by the supposed importance of all the religious claptrap. The idea of Da Vinci leaving clues in his paintings is tantalizing, but is ultimately as gimmicky as hearing 'Paul's Dead' when playing Sgt. Peppers' backwards.
The premise is thus: Robert Langdon ( Hanks ) , a history professor, author and expert in symbolism, and the petite police woman Sophie Neveu ( Audrey Tautou ) , meet when Sophie's grandfather is found murdered in the Louvre. The chief inspector, Captain Fache ( Jean Reno ) , sends for Langdon, who had an appointment to meet the grandfather earlier in the day, ostensibly to see if he can shed any light on the crime scene. Apparently, after being shot at close range, the elderly gentleman stripped off his clothes, carved symbols into his chest and wrote out a series of numbers that are of course believed to be clues. The Da Vinci connection soon arises.
We know the murderer is the obsessed mad albino, Silas ( Paul Bettany ) , because we've seen him do the shooting in the opening scene. At this point we've also seen Silas strip down in his meager room and had a good look at his muscular white body riddled with scars as he flagellates himself with a much used whip. Silas seemed to fall right in step with a long line of quirky James Bond villains—Rosa Kleb with her knife-wielding shoe, Blowfeld with his shark tank, Jaws with his steel teeth, etc. For much of the rest of the picture, Silas will skitter around Paris wearing a monk robe and not draw so much as a glance. Nor do we get the fun of watching Silas go up against a Bond-type character. Giving Bettany as the mad monk a run for his money in the ham acting department are Alfred Molina and Sir Ian McKellan as a rogue priest and a fabulously wealthy Da Vinci scholar. But they add a bit of juicy support to the paper-thin leads played by Hanks and Tautou.
Everyone is either protecting or trying to unearth one of those secret societies that the characters care about, but we do not. Apparently, this group is covering up a secret so provocative that the Catholic Church has spent centuries trying to stamp it out.
The end result is not quite the Dud Vinci Code, as many reviewers have said, nor is it a masterpiece. Though none of the lightness, fleet of foot or humor that lifted National Treasure, another movie whose plot turns on antique artifacts, is apparent here, this is still a workmanlike effort—par for the course from director Ron Howard. Perhaps now would be a good time, at long last, to go back and read the book, as I felt at the movie's conclusion just as Tom Hanks did when he commented at one point 'I'm out of my field here.' What was all the fuss about?
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A notable recent cinematic release is Dead Man's Shoes. It stars Paddy Considine, so memorable as the born-again Christian briefly toyed with by the decadent rich beauty in last year's sexy lesbian romance, My Summer of Love. Considine and Shane Meadows have co-written ( with Meadows directing ) a terse film that was shot in 2004 and is finally getting a well-deserved theatrical release here.
Considine plays Richard, a soldier who returns to his small town in the midlands of Ireland to exact brutal revenge on the gang of listless thugs that toyed and tortured his mentally challenged brother, Anthony, while he was away. Following in the footpath of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, the film is told via tripped-up flashbacks. The movie does not stray from its focus which, considering the maddening grief and anger of the brother and his single-minded solution to that grief contrasted with the insolence of the disaffected slags he picks off one by one, is intensely uncomfortable and, yet, highly watchable.
Dead Man's Shoes is at Loews Esquire 6, 58 E. Oak; ( 312 ) 280-0101.
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Of all his classic endeavors, Alfred Hitchcock loved the lesser-known Shadow of a Doubt the best. This 1943 stunner focuses on dear Uncle Charlie ( Joseph Cotten ) , the effete bachelor brother of Emma ( Patricia Collinge ) , who makes a rare visit to her and her family. Emma and her husband live with their children in a bucolic little town that screams 'family values' to the Big City sophisticate. Uncle Charlie's female namesake ( played by Teresa Wright ) instantly worships him but slowly suspects that he's the dreaded serial killer of wealthy widows that is the subject of an intense national manhunt.
A cat-and-mouse game develops between the two in which innocence is almost trumped by evil and plays out within the formality of the small-town rituals. Unspoken but clear to queer audiences are the underlying clues that suggest that Uncle Charlie, with his 'feminine' sophistication and hatred of women, is gay. Cotton and Wright give tremendous performances under Hitchcock's typical masterly direction. The film will screen Thursday, May 25, as part of the 'Treasures from the Library of Congress' month-long series at the Gene Siskel Center. Casabalanca, Cat People, The Maltese Falcon and other classics are also scheduled. See www.siskelfilmcenter.com .
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See www.knightatthemovies.com .
