The plot opens intriguingly enough, but soon tumbles into an awkward, chaotic muddle. French police are stumped by clues left by a murdered museum curator and enlist the help of the victim’s associate, Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, whose perpetually wrinkled brow, pasty complexion, and scruffy, new-age hairdo make him perfect as the innocent Harvard “symbology” professor who finds himself the main suspect in the serial murder case a millennium in the making. French government agent and granddaughter of the murdered man Sophie Neveu, played by Audrey Tautou, rescues Langdon from near arrest and recruits him to help her puzzle out her grandfather’s message, which turns out to be a treasure hunt for the holy grail and an expose into a 2,000-year-old boys-vs-girls conspiracy involving Opus Dei, an obscure sect within the Catholic church.
Our first clues that the film’s plot goes beyond the quotidian murder mystery are the gory crime-scene photos. The Louvre’s curator has been shot, but instead of dying with a whimper, he strips naked, draws pagan symbols in blood on his nude body and leaves cryptic messages about Leonardo da Vinci’s famous works written in invisible ink all over the grand art museum before he dies. Though the mysterious message contains baffling number sequences and anagrams that could give your average sudoku or crossword puzzle fanatic a thrill, hasty pacing and un-illuminating computer graphics give viewers little chance to follow in the main characters’ unraveling of the titular brainteaser.
Few of the acting performances are stellar. Hanks adequately conveys tired, agnostic, and claustrophobic, but gives us little clue as to how Langdon feels about his jolting new role as adventurer nor about his attractive partner in code-cracking. Tautou as Neveu strikes neither an intelligent nor glamorous profile, always staring with wide-eyed wonder that her enigmatic grandfather could have entangled her and his colleague in such a jostling escapade, whose violent twists serve only to further confuse her and rumple her dull Parisian suit. Paul Bettany grosses us out as Silas, a scary, murderous monk with albinism and a penchant for self torture—he regularly beats himself bloody with a whip and always wears around his thigh a flesh-ripping salice, a device that looks like a doggy choke chain collar. As if his pale, scabby skin and grimy robes aren’t enough of a stereotype, he keeps showing up in classic horror movie style—suddenly, violently, and out of nowhere, right after a potential victim has completed his or her last line. Only Langdon’s colleague, grail expert Leigh Teabing, played by Ian McKellen, displays any depth of character, with simultaneous affection and envy of his old friend, as a well as an all-consuming passion for his life’s work—brilliantly illustrated in a delightful moment in which he meticulously examines a precious gewgaw through reading glasses and magnifying lenses all the while muttering sighs of ecstasy over this new clue to the whereabouts of the holy grail.
Brown’s book, though full of gory and symbolic imagery, spooky architecture, historical references, and cryptic intrigue failed to inspire even a moderate air of grandiose mystery on the big screen. Though all of the scenes take place in famous cathedrals, ancient castles, and art museums, Howard squanders all opportunities for great cinematography and uses tight shots, dark shadows, and hectic editing to create a feeling of immanent danger. Bright, washed out, grainy flashbacks describing the plot’s historical background are the brightest moments in movie, but only in the sense that they are well lit and give the audience a clue that the film’s dimness is intentional rather than the fault of the theater’s projectionist.
As if such murkiness and close quarters aren’t enough to strip even a holy-grail quest of its due grand scale, the characters’ use of fantastical and unnecessary technologies further dilutes the movie’s historical heft. In at least two scenes, professors explain their craft using unrealistic, ultra-fancy power-point presentations in which computers magically project illustrations of their spoken explications. Even Langdon’s terrific academic-turned-superhero line, “I have to get to a library fast,” takes a turn for the cheap and easy when instead of hunting down a dusty, velum tome, he uses a stranger’s cell-phone internet service to access the information he needs. (A generous pause on the phone’s screen perhaps accommodates a lucrative product placement?)
The Da Vinci Code’s overall effect is a cross between National Treasure and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, only you’ll get more laughs out of those light-hearted movies than from this dim, brutal failure of a summer action-adventure flick.
[Image from: http://www.theage.com.au/news/film/murderous-monk-business/2006/05/18/1147545446120.html]
No comments:
Post a Comment