The Da Vinci Code

You know how much they paid Dan Brown for the rights to this movie? Six million dollars. Six MILLION. Blimey. I hated the book, but I can’t deny it’s a true phenomenon. And now there’s a film, too.

And you know what? The critics have been a little too harsh on this film. The acting isn’t appalling. The plot isn’t THAT confused. And Tom Hanks’ hair definitely certainly wasn’t what you would call noteworthy.
In the end, the film was quite enjoyable. The novel begins in very conventional crime thriller fashion, which suits the movie well. The characters are cartoonish and their flashbacks feel incredibly tacked-on, but this is a story about ideas and the actors go through the motions (or ham it up to a hilarious extent, in Ian McKellen’s case) without being offensively dull. The music was a little uninspired, but the cinematography, especially the location photography, was beautiful. And best of all, since everything was kept brisk and exciting to fit the blockbuster mould, one of my biggest gripes about the book disappeared: stupid, simple puzzles got solved in moments, rather than being milked for pages and pages while you got increasingly frustrated at how stupid these leading cryptologists and so-called professors of symbology are. Thank goodness.

In fact, despite people calling this a slavish adaptation, there were a fair few changes, some good, some not so good. One cryptex got removed, which detracted nothing from the plot. The role of Opus Dei changed considerably: from people who want to seize the grail to control the Vatican to people who want to find the grail to destroy it. Jean Reno’s Javert-like policeman also became an Opus Dei member, the whole plotline getting resolved in such a perfunctory way that it seemed almost like a waste of time to begin with. The conclusion changed, too: no sign of Sophie’s brother, and the grail documents got discovered earlier than I remember them being found in the novel. At least Langdon became a sceptic here, though, rather than everyone being so self-congratulatory in their mutual appreciation of esoteric Grail lore and back-slapping.

The first half of the film was enjoyable enough, a rush from location to location finding clues and escaping the police. It soon began to get repetitive, though, and the ending felt half and hour too long. Still, there was entertainment enough in the improved dialogue, pretty scenery and the illustrations of the conspiracy theories around The Last Supper that it wasn’t tiresome to get through the film. And that’s something I can’t say for the book.