FILM REVIEW THE DA VINCI CODE by Tina Beattie published in The Tablet, 20 May 2006 (what follows is the

e original version before editing for publication)

There must be a few people out there who know nothing about Dan Browns bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code, despite the saturation coverage it has received in spin-offs, merchandising, law suits and flurries of ecclesiastical ire. However, those who see the film will probably already know the story, and director Ron Howard therefore has to rely on something more than suspense to hold the audiences attention. With its focus on the most enigmatic female character in the Christian story, its theme of the quest for the eternal feminine (whatever that is), and its potential to draw on the lush visual and musical resources of the Catholic tradition to create an atmosphere, this might have been a sumptuous cinematic feast. So, setting aside the quest for the holy grail of historical authenticity, I went along prepared to be pleasantly surprised. After all, some films are considerably better than the books that inspire them. The film closely follows the book (so if you havent read it and want to keep that element of suspense, skip this paragraph). Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is a Harvard symbologist who is called to a murder scene in the Louvre where the curators body has been found in a state of self-inflicted mutilation. The detective investigating the case, Captain Bzu Fache (Jean Reno), is a member of Opus Dei. The curators estranged grand daughter Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou), a police cryptologist, arrives on the scene, and she and Langdon are caught up in a search to follow the clues left by the murdered man. They are pursued by a murderous Opus Dei monk called Silas (Paul Bettany), who is working for the Macchiavellian Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina). Their quest takes them to the French chateau of Englishman Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), who introduces Sophie to the idea that Michelangelos Last Supper depicts Mary Magdalene sitting next to Christ. For two thousand years the Catholic Church has concealed the truth of Christs marriage to Mary Magdalene and the child that she bore, while the Priory of Sion has preserved their bloodline and kept the holy grail of Mary Magdalenes body hidden. The Da Vinci Code exploits an idea that has become widespread in recent years that Christianity is a masculine religion which destroyed the ancient goddess cults and has struggled to suppress any resurgence of the eternal feminine. This might invite a film director to explore those elusive spiritual qualities that could be associated with this lost feminine ethos. But the Da Vinci Code is just another macho Hollywood blockbuster, with the usual fare of guns, car chases and scenes of gruesome violence, and with the central female character being portrayed as a thoroughly stereotypical ingnue old-style feminine rather than new-style feminist. Filmed mainly in Paris and London, the photography occasionally lifts it out of the ordinary, particularly some of the scenes in and around the Louvre, but it also uses soft-focused flashbacks which add to an already disjointed sense of scenes jumping around without developing any real sense of narrative or characterisation. The film therefore suffers from all the same failings as the book. Its representation of Catholicism is one-dimensional, so that the self-flagellating monk and the caricaturised bishop are the only Catholic characters we encounter. Its attempt to

marry a murder mystery with a critique of religion fails because it is too superficial, so that it becomes a cheap anti-Catholic diatribe as well as a second-rate thriller. One might contrast it with Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose, which was also turned into a film and which covered similar themes with considerably more finesse. The script is banal, and Tatou is lumbered with lines which sap the quality of her acting which shone with such idiosyncratic brilliance in the film Amelie. Hanks doesnt fare much better, playing the part of Langdon with the kind of ponderous worthiness which seems to have become his trademark in recent years. Indeed, perhaps a major failing of the film is that the two central characters take themselves too seriously. Even Silas is a rather insipid villain, and only McKellan plays his part with the kind of relish which acknowledges how daft it all is, as he delivers the clunking historical explanations which provide much of the background to the plot. These are largely based on the book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood and Holy Grail. Teabing is an anagram of Baigent, so the name Leigh Teabing, like many of the names in the book, is an authorial joke. (The Bishops name, Aringarosa, means red herring). Had The Da Vinci Code been less ideologically influenced by such flakey theories about Mary Magdalene, it might have found a much more enigmatic story within the Catholic tradition. Centuries before Dan Brown, it was Catholicism itself which created the fertile myth and cult of Mary Magdalene. I read the Da Vinci Code on holiday in France and, moving between the novel and Frances medieval cathedrals, I realized how ubiquitous Mary Magdalene is in Catholic art and devotion. The stained glass windows of those ancient churches are the precursors to our modern cinemas, enticing us into worlds of desire and imagination through the play of light on the characters who make up the story of Christ. Mary Magdalene deserves a place in the modern cinema as surely as she did in those Gothic cathedrals for, where Christ goes, this persistent, elusive woman seems to go too. But what a shame that Hollywood has stripped away so much of the mystical beauty and subversive quality of the Magdalene of the Catholic tradition. Instead of fulminating against this mediocre film, perhaps the Church should look to its own resources and ask why it has been so reluctant to acknowledge the significance of Mary Magdalene. If one can learn little about the Catholic Church from the Da Vinci Code, the Church might have much to learn from its phenomenal popularity.

Tina Beattie is a Reader in Christian Studies at Roehampton University, where she teaches on Religion and Film.