Picturenose

Code cracker

Given all the recent talk on Picturenose about alleged bad films (and Colin taking the mickey because I did in fact happen to enjoy The Bodyguard (1992)), the time seems right to present my take on a very successful film (that was adapted from a hugely successful book) that, er, didn’t go down too well with the critics on its initial release. Well, I liked it, and here’s why…

I had some catching up to do - there was no way I was watching the film version of Dan Brown’s phenomenally popular novel without joining the rest of the planet and reading it.

Simplistic narrative, dialogue that didn’t quite ring true but, still, a cracking yarn that held me for the two nights it took to finish. Like The Bible’s authors, Brown (and his cinematic translator, Ron Howard) understands the importance of story - if the plot grabs you, much can be forgiven.

Which, of course, would be among the points that The Da Vinci Code is trying to make - finding ‘The Truth’ is about reading between the lines.

And that’s exactly what Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) does for a living. While giving a lecture in Paris on the significance of historical symbols, Langdon’s flow is interrupted by a visit from the gendarmes; Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle), the elderly curator of The Louvre whom Langdon was supposed to meet for drinks, lies murdered inside the museum. Near the body, a baffling code is found that appears to implicate Langdon in the crime.

Chief of Police Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) is certain that he has his man; luckily for Langdon, gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), whose connection to the dead curator is more than professional, is on hand to get the hapless professor out of a fix.

But, as the pair begin to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - pointers visible for all to see, yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. Discovering that the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion - a secret society whose members have included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo and, of course, our man Da Vinci - Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who appears to work for Opus Dei - a clandestine, Vatican-sanctioned Catholic organization believed to have long plotted to seize the Priory’s secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, a stunning historical truth will be lost forever.

There, I don’t think Picturenose could be sued for that plot synopsis, but it’s tricky writing a review of a film with so many twists and turns without giving at least part of the game away to the half-dozen or so people left who haven’t read the novel.

Screenwriter Avika Goldsman’s sincere adaptation, thankfully, is so faithful to the original that the two are virtually interchangeable - you’d have to go back as far as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) for similar fidelity to original text. A wonderful touch of realism is also provided by all the French characters actually speaking in their mother tongue, as opposed to English ‘wiz an outrrrrageouz acsont’. Nice research there.

And what director Howard also brings to proceedings, helped enormously by the Hanks/Tautou chemistry and sterling work from the rest of his top-drawer cast, is a ravishing visual style, genuine tension and a refusal to preach to his audience. You sense, quickly, that all involved (particularly Reno as Fache, Paul Bettany as the psycho-monk Silas and Sir Ian McKellen as Grail expert Sir Leigh Teabing) are having a whale of a time and it is difficult not to be carried along.

Only in the emotional highspots (such as the double denouement, which, of course, can’t be revealed here) does Howard appear to lose his grip - the book’s ending is far more moving than the film’s. Still, it’s good to see an intelligent popcorn flick that’s as entertaining as it is (quasi) instructive. Recommended, and I eagerly await the backlash…

149 mins.