Da Vinci Code revisited

As the release of The Da Vinci Code was fast approaching, I kept wondering at the amount of negative publicity surrounding the film. Preachers decried its viles and lies from pulpits; in some places, there were mass protests and the viewing opportunities were restricted altogether. In the media, the tone of discussion changed overnight from exalted anticipation to total contempt. AS soon as the critics saw the previous, articles appeared in papers that the movie is terrible, even before the reviews came out.

Well, I thought, the movie may indeed not be very good, but the amount of negativity thrown at it far exceeds the reasonable and customary ... why, I wondered?

It is clear that the religious right sees The Da Vinci Code, with its alternative version of early Christianity, as a threat to the establishment. They also realize the potential of using this movie as a platform for evangelizing. Thus their ire and the multitide of debunking books, which enjoy brisk sales on the wake of Dan Brown's oeuvre.

Yet this doesn't explain why many non-religious people also have a strong negative reaction to the movie.

Perhaps people are so invested in the consensus reality that they in general strongly react to any concept that has a potential to disturb the status quo. This is the reason why most people reject conspiracy theories. This rejection is even more apparent with The Da Vinci Code, since it touches on what is such an integral part of common culture.

Keeping all this in mind, I went and watched The Da Vinci Code the other day. Well, what can I say ... make a guess ...

IT SUCKS! BIG TIME!

Forget the trail-blazing ideas and the iconoclastic plot -- everything is dreadfully superficial and looks dead from the start. The movie struck me as plain BORING. In the book, the clues are revealed gradually, with a lot of background. The move skims over it in a mad race from clue to clue, which gets annoying pretty fast. Both those who read the book and those who didn't soon get lost -- the first know this stuff already, the second can't follow it. Terrible acting from lead stars doesn't help either.

But the best part was when at the end Langdon says to Sophie smth along the lines of "Jesus, Mary Magdalene -- does it really matter what really happened? It is what you BELIEVE that matters ... Imagine what would MM do in this situation ... would she seek to destroy the faith -- or to revitalize it?"

And this is why I suffered 2.5 hours of jaw-stiffling boredom, to hear THIS @#$%?

I think we may soon start seeing car stickers and bracelets with "It is what you BELIEVE that matters" or
"What would Mary Magdalene do?" :):)

This gives a hint of something more incidious than a simple film-making flop. The Da Vinci Code appears to be a successful management program, attempting to accomodate maximum number of people from traditional religious and new-age paths.

IMO the Da Vinci Code may actually have serve the religious right. It may have led the masses to stifle their vague questioning of the official story of Christianity, and into accepting any alternative concept as either a version of the same basic truth, or a work of fiction -- or both.

Yet, this "It is what you BELIEVE that matters" reels of a typically liberal "You're OK, I'm OK, WE are both OK". This kind of talk makes the conservatives' blood boil, since it goes against their proclamed absolute values. Thus we have yet another false dichotomies, when a solution to a problem is reduced to two alternatives, neither of which accurately reflects reality. And a choice between these alternatives inevitably results in a dog fight.

It does cover all bases indeed.