Knee deep in the hoopla (Da Vinci Code spoiler included)

I’m a big fan of the book “The Da Vinci Code”. I read it not long after it came out and recommended it to all my friends. I have been waiting not-so-patiently for the movie to premier.

I’m happy to say that I got to see the movie, not once, but twice this past weekend. I went with K on Saturday night and E on Sunday night. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I know that the critics in Cannes really panned it but I’m not as much of a movie snob as they all tend to be.

I found the characters well played. I didn’t have any problems with Audrey Tautou’s accent. Ron Howard did take some creative license with the end of the film by rewriting the whole Rosslyn Chapel sequence. There were tons of things left out – he used one instead of two cryptexes and the whole library research scene was cut down to a search using a cell phone search engine. But I understand that for time constraints he was limited. Heck, the danged thing is 2.5 hours long as it is. I think he tried to tie the end up too neatly with a bow by having them find the grail documents.

Bottom line is I didn’t expect an Oscar winning film and I’ve learned to expect movie plots to veer from the original book. In the latter, I think Ron Howard stuck very close until the very end, which is more than I can say for other films I’ve seen that were based on books.

I don’t get what all the fuss being made by the Catholic Church and other Christians is all about. First off, it’s a novel and that means it’s fiction. Now there are some historical facts in there and I love how Brown wraps his story around them. There was (is) a Priory of Sion. This theory about Mary Magdalene being the Holy Grail has been around for centuries. Brown didn’t make it up. There is a Gospel of Phillip and a Gospel of Mary Magdalene. There was also a Council of Nicaea and they did pick and choose what books were going to be kept in the Bible.

I happen to think the theory is plausible. Why wouldn’t Jesus have been married? Truth is, he would have been considered quite odd if he wasn’t because Jewish men were expected to be married after they became adults. If Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, so what? Would that make Jesus any less the man we believe him to have been? Certainly not. He did appear to her first after he resurrected. And Mary Magdalene wasn’t painted as a prostitute in the Bible until the 3rd and 4th century. Kind of makes you go “hmmmmmmm…”

Anyway, believe what you want to believe. As far as the protestors, I’d be willing to bet that none of them have read the book and none of them will see the movie. How can someone protest something they know nothing about? I don’t get the concept of being a sheep letting sound bites dictate what I believe in. I did comment loudly to the lone protestor when we left the cinema on Saturday night. I said that he should read the book and see the movie because they are both fiction. I embarrassed K, I know I did. Sometimes stuff just falls out of my mouth like that. But, hey, there wasn’t anyone there protesting on Sunday when I went back.