(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)You’ve heard the controversies. Now watch the movie, says L Suresh as The Da Vinci Code hits theatres worldwide.
A two-time Oscar-winner and one of the highest grossing actors of all time. A double Academy Award winning director who has etched his name across genres. A singer, songwriter and pianist turned writer who is one of America’s most controversial authors today. And a renaissance man - an architect, anatomist, sculptor, engineer, inventor, musician and one of the world’s greatest painters who ever lived. The perfect setting for a Jeffrey Archer tale of four men from different backgrounds who come together to crack a code and reveal secrets that are likely to ‘shake up the very foundations of mankind’.
Tom Hanks, director Ron Howard, author Dan Brown and the one and only Leonardo Da Vinci (who has contributed to every aspect of the movie, from the clues to the controversies, from the plot to the paintings and from the theme to the title) team up for a potential winner that, in its book version, has generated enough controversy for the world to remember Da Vinci twice this month – on his death anniversary on May 2 and again on May 19, when The Da Vinci Code unravels ‘the biggest cover-up in human history’ on tens of thousands of big screens the world over. (For someone who has been a bigger money-spinner than GE and Wal-Mart put together, it is surprising to know that Leonardo didn’t even have a surname – da Vinci just indicated the fact that he was ‘from Vinci’. If only he knew how men would feed off his work and then take each other to court on copyright issues, he would have written one last book- “How Leonardo got ripped, got sold and got a surname”.)
For those who haven’t read The Da Vinci Code, the plot revolves around famed symbologist Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), two strangers who are thrown together into a whirlwind adventure, with only the cryptic clues hidden in Da Vinci’s works to help them locate an ancient secret that is now threatening to take their lives. In hot pursuit of this duo are the French police, a scary, hooded albino and some extremely powerful enemies who remain in the shadows till the very end. Thrilling chases through Paris, London and Scotland, gruesome murders at chapels and at the Louvre, and innumerable twists and turns mark this cat and mouse game as Howard promises us a blend of exciting action and gripping drama.
While history says that few movies have bettered the book they were based on, Howard has taken on a subject that turns history on its head - so there’s no reason why he can’t disprove the theory. One way that Howard is trying to do this is by taking advantage of the three-layered setting against which the story operates - with Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene and his apostles at one level, Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Robert Boyle and Victor Hugo in the second and the Opus Dei, the Vatican and other powers-that-be in the third - thus offering a backdrop spanning 2000 years for the on-the-run lead pair, Langdon and Neveu. So, while the book features the characters from various time zones as part of the narrative, the movie, according to its director, takes the viewer into each of these time zones – the Last Supper, the clandestine congregations of the Priory of Sion held in dark chambers and the high powered meetings of the clergy.
Looking at the choice of actors, the name that automatically comes to mind for the role of Robert Langdon is Hollywood’s first professor – Harrison Ford. But then, it’s 20 years too late for such wishful thinking. Of course, Dan Brown seems to have had similar ideas, as he not only creates a present day Indiana Jones, but also has the Boston Magazine refer to Langdon in the book as “Harrison Ford in Harris Tweed”. Since Ron Howard has this pact with Tom Hanks according to which they make a movie together every 11 years - Splash in 1984, Apollo 13 in 1995 and now, The Da Vinci Code in 2006 – we shall not contest the matter any further.
The film’s cast clearly indicates that star values and acting abilities have gotten the better of the book’s description of the characters. So Langdon is not a strong-jawed, dimple-chinned character with a ‘thicket of coarse, black hair’, but a puffy-faced Tom Hanks with a receding hairline. And Bezu Fache, the stocky, dark, ‘almost Neanderthal’ man will be played by the tall, lanky, bearded Jean Reno, the man who gives every action movie that extra dose of adrenalin. However one area where Howard seems to have conformed to the book is in building each character up with a peek into their past – the albino Silas who goes about mindlessly obeying his master’s command, the French cryptologist Sophie Neveu – each has a past that explains the reason why they are what they are and we see fleeting glimpses of the same through the younger version of these characters.
Having to pack three different eras, an array of powerful characters that includes everyone from Jesus Christ to Isaac Newton, the impossibly massive Louvre and crypts spewing out conspiracy theories, all in one movie, Howard will have no option but to run it like a flip book that one used to collect of cricketers, where a rapid flip of the book from cover to cover would result individual images forming one continuous action. While it would keep the film fast-paced, it may not leave much room for those rare occasions where Dan Brown has indulged himself as a writer – like the one where Langdon describes his predicament as being’ trapped in a Salvador Dali painting’.
A large portion of Dan Brown’s research and theories have been presented in the book as Langdon’s lectures, so one never knows if any of them will feature in the movie at all. And without the academic parts, the book reads like a racy screenplay that conforms to the Alistair MacLean genre– a ‘ready for the movies’ paperback. (In case Langdon’s lectures don’t figure, please pick up a copy of the book and pick out nuggets like the significance of the number Phi, the secret behind Mona Lisa’s smile, the truth about the Star of David, the hidden symbolisms in Walt Disney’s animation and several other theories – you’ll realize how the thin dotted line separating facts and fiction is soon obfuscated and you are left to decide what you want to believe.)
The more you read about the movie, the more you'll realize that it is not your regular chase-across-the-globe thriller and that it has an academic slant to it as well, but in a movie where a Harvard symbiologist and lecturer and a cryptologist are being tracked down by a man known as The Teacher, what else can you expect?
For those of you who have read the book and know the story, think of it as a journey to places you’ve probably never been to before – the Louvre, the inside of a Swiss bank, some breathtaking cathedrals in London and to an all-powerful secret meeting of the Priory of Sion. But for those who haven’t, it’s time to go to the theatres and do exactly what the tag line says – seek the truth.
A two-time Oscar-winner and one of the highest grossing actors of all time. A double Academy Award winning director who has etched his name across genres. A singer, songwriter and pianist turned writer who is one of America’s most controversial authors today. And a renaissance man - an architect, anatomist, sculptor, engineer, inventor, musician and one of the world’s greatest painters who ever lived. The perfect setting for a Jeffrey Archer tale of four men from different backgrounds who come together to crack a code and reveal secrets that are likely to ‘shake up the very foundations of mankind’.
Tom Hanks, director Ron Howard, author Dan Brown and the one and only Leonardo Da Vinci (who has contributed to every aspect of the movie, from the clues to the controversies, from the plot to the paintings and from the theme to the title) team up for a potential winner that, in its book version, has generated enough controversy for the world to remember Da Vinci twice this month – on his death anniversary on May 2 and again on May 19, when The Da Vinci Code unravels ‘the biggest cover-up in human history’ on tens of thousands of big screens the world over. (For someone who has been a bigger money-spinner than GE and Wal-Mart put together, it is surprising to know that Leonardo didn’t even have a surname – da Vinci just indicated the fact that he was ‘from Vinci’. If only he knew how men would feed off his work and then take each other to court on copyright issues, he would have written one last book- “How Leonardo got ripped, got sold and got a surname”.)
For those who haven’t read The Da Vinci Code, the plot revolves around famed symbologist Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), two strangers who are thrown together into a whirlwind adventure, with only the cryptic clues hidden in Da Vinci’s works to help them locate an ancient secret that is now threatening to take their lives. In hot pursuit of this duo are the French police, a scary, hooded albino and some extremely powerful enemies who remain in the shadows till the very end. Thrilling chases through Paris, London and Scotland, gruesome murders at chapels and at the Louvre, and innumerable twists and turns mark this cat and mouse game as Howard promises us a blend of exciting action and gripping drama.
While history says that few movies have bettered the book they were based on, Howard has taken on a subject that turns history on its head - so there’s no reason why he can’t disprove the theory. One way that Howard is trying to do this is by taking advantage of the three-layered setting against which the story operates - with Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene and his apostles at one level, Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Robert Boyle and Victor Hugo in the second and the Opus Dei, the Vatican and other powers-that-be in the third - thus offering a backdrop spanning 2000 years for the on-the-run lead pair, Langdon and Neveu. So, while the book features the characters from various time zones as part of the narrative, the movie, according to its director, takes the viewer into each of these time zones – the Last Supper, the clandestine congregations of the Priory of Sion held in dark chambers and the high powered meetings of the clergy.
Looking at the choice of actors, the name that automatically comes to mind for the role of Robert Langdon is Hollywood’s first professor – Harrison Ford. But then, it’s 20 years too late for such wishful thinking. Of course, Dan Brown seems to have had similar ideas, as he not only creates a present day Indiana Jones, but also has the Boston Magazine refer to Langdon in the book as “Harrison Ford in Harris Tweed”. Since Ron Howard has this pact with Tom Hanks according to which they make a movie together every 11 years - Splash in 1984, Apollo 13 in 1995 and now, The Da Vinci Code in 2006 – we shall not contest the matter any further.
The film’s cast clearly indicates that star values and acting abilities have gotten the better of the book’s description of the characters. So Langdon is not a strong-jawed, dimple-chinned character with a ‘thicket of coarse, black hair’, but a puffy-faced Tom Hanks with a receding hairline. And Bezu Fache, the stocky, dark, ‘almost Neanderthal’ man will be played by the tall, lanky, bearded Jean Reno, the man who gives every action movie that extra dose of adrenalin. However one area where Howard seems to have conformed to the book is in building each character up with a peek into their past – the albino Silas who goes about mindlessly obeying his master’s command, the French cryptologist Sophie Neveu – each has a past that explains the reason why they are what they are and we see fleeting glimpses of the same through the younger version of these characters.
Having to pack three different eras, an array of powerful characters that includes everyone from Jesus Christ to Isaac Newton, the impossibly massive Louvre and crypts spewing out conspiracy theories, all in one movie, Howard will have no option but to run it like a flip book that one used to collect of cricketers, where a rapid flip of the book from cover to cover would result individual images forming one continuous action. While it would keep the film fast-paced, it may not leave much room for those rare occasions where Dan Brown has indulged himself as a writer – like the one where Langdon describes his predicament as being’ trapped in a Salvador Dali painting’.
A large portion of Dan Brown’s research and theories have been presented in the book as Langdon’s lectures, so one never knows if any of them will feature in the movie at all. And without the academic parts, the book reads like a racy screenplay that conforms to the Alistair MacLean genre– a ‘ready for the movies’ paperback. (In case Langdon’s lectures don’t figure, please pick up a copy of the book and pick out nuggets like the significance of the number Phi, the secret behind Mona Lisa’s smile, the truth about the Star of David, the hidden symbolisms in Walt Disney’s animation and several other theories – you’ll realize how the thin dotted line separating facts and fiction is soon obfuscated and you are left to decide what you want to believe.)
The more you read about the movie, the more you'll realize that it is not your regular chase-across-the-globe thriller and that it has an academic slant to it as well, but in a movie where a Harvard symbiologist and lecturer and a cryptologist are being tracked down by a man known as The Teacher, what else can you expect?
For those of you who have read the book and know the story, think of it as a journey to places you’ve probably never been to before – the Louvre, the inside of a Swiss bank, some breathtaking cathedrals in London and to an all-powerful secret meeting of the Priory of Sion. But for those who haven’t, it’s time to go to the theatres and do exactly what the tag line says – seek the truth.
(Appeared as a slightly abridged version in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 14 May, 2006)
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