Aja on 22/5/2006 at 01:24

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I'm not getting into this historical debate (couldn't if I wanted to), and I haven't seen the movie, but I've read the book, and I think that (http://www.filmfocus.co.uk/review.asp?ReviewID=20669) this guy nails it:



If the movie is as accurate an adaptation as reviews seem to suggest, I'll save myself the price of admission.

demagogue on 22/5/2006 at 02:08

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Hours since you posted this, but just suddenly an image came into my head of a three-eyed Jesus in all earnestness telling a skeptical crowd (a la Life of Brian) to sacrifice one eye if they had to and bear with just one left ... and one guy in the back piping up: "Yeah, easy for you to say, Jesus."


Re: the book et al, I think it can be healthy to play with the space of symbols and rethink new meanings to old narratives, and it's been done as long as these sorts of narratives (I don't want to differentiate "myth" from "religion" here; since one can always be seen as the other by the other) have been told and people have found them meaningful. But you can't say this is a really serious or responsible attempt at that, neither in the healthy playful sense nor the serious rethinking sense. About the best I'll grant it is that it's gotten people just to reread the passages that they found meaningful, think about the history of their interpretation, and think in terms of symbols and meaning. But even then I don't think it will spark too many people in really digging into these issues any deeper than the book does. But maybe a few will. It's not like Last Temptation of Christ which was a much more sophisticated stab at this kind of rereading of old meanings, though (so the critics say).

Edit: By the way, where's Black Ertai when we need an independent religious studies guy (as in secular (?) but knows his stuff) to give his two cents (not to denigrate fett's and Stront's takes, whose observations are of course very relevant, too, just another perspective would be good to add to the mix). I've watched all these anti-De Vinci Code shows, but all of them coming from way different perspectives, and still am a little uncertain how to weigh them against one another for, e.g., the historical word on the subject, or how someone studying this from a secular, historical, or scientific approach would try to organize it all.

Scots Taffer on 22/5/2006 at 03:00

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I NEED TO GET TO A LIBRARY!

Scots Taffer on 22/5/2006 at 03:22

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It's the climatic, pompously-intoned line that has apparently prompted derisive laughter from nearly every audience who've sat through the movie so far.

For the record, I've read both Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code (in that order) and found the former to be an enjoyable enough page-turner that devolved into complete retardation in the third act, and found the latter to be a carbon copy of the other except vatican-illuminati plot was replaced by jesus-prioryofzion. The plot devices are indentical, even down to the nature of the murder that involves Dr <strike>Jones</strike> Langdon meeting the close relative of the victim, who in both cases is a female expert in the field relevant to the plot of the book, similarly with the creepy murderer going about who is in turn manipulated by a third party, etc etc. I actually found The Da Vinci Code to fail on even the basic mindless reading criteria since I felt like I'd already read the book since the format was identical to A&D, and to make matters worse the theories presented in TDVC are hardly fresh.

Ko0K on 22/5/2006 at 05:16

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I went to the theater to see it today, but due to a technical error the movie wasn't ready, and the audience got a refund and a free ticket. All I can say is that some people didn't take the situation too well, and I think I'll wait for the DVD. I don't think I can sit through 2.5 hours being surrounded by people who already read the book before they came to the theater.