Review of The Da Vinci Code (2006) by Anthony D — 16 Aug 2011

A film with an interesting concept but which was very poorly executed, dragging on for far too long and not really maintaining any mystery or suspense. It's not terribly hard to figure out who "the Teacher" is, or who or what the secret of the Holy Grail is once you understand the whole Mary-Magdalene-was-Jesus's-babymama plot device, and furthermore the Holy Grail itself is little more than an enormous Maguffin; the movie would have been fine if it had ended with the Grail never being found, and a lot shorter too.

Since I'm no longer Catholic, I don't really have a problem with the film's portrayal of the Catholic Church as dishonest, corrupt, apostate, and both capable and guilty of great evil. In fact, I agree with much of it, which is a big part of why I eventually left the Church. Yet, the film's portrayal of the Church and especially of Opus Dei is so over the top and exaggerated that even I have to roll my eyes at its ludicrousness. It takes bits and pieces of historical and scriptural fact and weaves them together into a very weird way which, while some of it is interesting to think about (I am totally willing to believe that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife and the rightful heir to the Church, but that the Church suppressed this fact for misogynistic reasons), other parts of it are just plain silly and are rooted in hoaxes and wild conspiracy theories (Jesus definitely did not have any children with Mary Magdalene, nor are there descendants of his with strange if subtle healing powers walking among us on the Earth today). Honestly, even if such a thing were ever "revealed", the Church would have no reason to fight it, because nobody in their right mind would believe it anyway.

I'm sure that the book is way better than this film. Books usually are. But I'm still not really inspired to read it at all. Angels and Demons sounds much more interesting; I think I will check that out first. It's a prequel anyway, or so I hear.