The Da Vinci Code Cracked

Why did Dan Brown's famous/infamous bestseller flop on the screen? The most logical explination.

The Da Vinci Code is a bad film. Fortunately for me, most people agree with me about this. I tend to get irritable when people around me insist that a film is good when it’s simply horrid (King Kong is a perfect example). But, what I think is unique is why it’s a bad film. It’s not because it’s stilted and choppy; well, it is, but it’s not that simple. It’s not that the actors within are uncharacteristically dull; well, they are, but it’s not that simple. And it’s NOT that the film doesn’t follow closely enough to the book counterpart, the bestseller by Dan Brown. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The film follows Brown’s book methodically well. Akira Goldsmith’s screenplay is one that I’m quite sure the author would have given the official stamp of approval (and probably did). Therefore, in order to properly understand the innards of the film, we must understand the source material. There, I think, we will find our mislabeled “masterpiece“.

So why is this novel a bestseller? Just what makes it special enough to be made into a Ron Howard film starring Tom Hanks? Is it the creative prose? Certainly not. The descriptive passages are profoundly unoriginal; what we find interesting is what he’s writing about. His settings and central ideas are Xeroxed from history, religion, and tourist handbooks. Is it the deeply drawn characters? Hardly. Brown’s hackneyed characters plod along with as little development as possible. Any details pertaining to their personalities or pasts are tossed in as side notes, with direct references to events currently unfolding. We don’t care about these characters, and we’re not supposed to. They, like everything in Brown’s novels, are simply slaves, serving no purpose but to move the story along. But move it where? His buildup, while admittedly very effective, doesn’t seem to amount to anything.

The key is that Brown’s intent isn’t to move us to anywhere; it’s what he’s moving us through that is intended to interest us. Using Da Vinci as an example, does it really matter if Robert and Sophie live happy lives in the end, if Opus Dei is exposed or isn’t, if the Holy Grail is found or lost forever, or if any of the action in the story is resolved? No. Because that’s not the point. The point of the book is the information being given. In a regular book, if a character is walking through an ancient church, the church’s beginnings and the rituals that take place there may be mentioned, but they are unimportant to the story. In The Da Vinci Code, they are the story. They are all that was really intended to be important about the scene in the first place. I’m not saying that this style of writing is bad, nor am I saying that Dan Brown is a bad author. But he’s certainly nothing grand. If he was, he would have drawn Da Vinci-level attention on his first or second book, since they have all been of relatively equal quality. His fourth drew national attention because of the controversy surrounding the information it contained, information that was borrowed from elsewhere. While the subject matter is fascinating, the actual book is terribly ordinary.

Taking this Dan Brown formula and plugging it into the context of an American feature film just doesn’t work. The action (well-choreographed, but often awkward) comes in small outbursts and is painfully scattered. In book form, this combination of action with lengthy stints of dialogue is acceptable; in a film, it seems uneven and badly planned. Characters go from being panicked and rushed one moment, to looking the next as if they have just stumbled into a Senate hearing on Tax law. The rule of rough translation from book gto movie also applies to the characters themselves. Just as Robert Langdon and Bezu Fache are empty in the novels, so they are in the movie. Taking an underdeveloped, neglected character like Robert Langdon and handing him to Tom Hanks is like asking Ernest Hemingway to scrutinize the finer aspects of Dr. Suess’ Horton Hears a Who. Hanks is asked to pour his gallons of acting talent and subtlety into a character with shot glass-sized complexity. Of course we are unimpressed; there was never anything to be impressed about, even before Hanks was chosen for the role.

As it was in the novel, the concept of the Holy Grail, and the theory of Christ’s marriage to Mary Magdalene, are still intriguing enough to make the film worthy of a glance. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino’s free-wheeling camera makes some of the visuals enticing enough. But the film suffers from an absence of core structure that is not its fault. The story was the way it was long before a single actor was cast or scene shot: mediocre.

Despite my apparent distaste for his work, I am an avid fan of Dan Brown’s novels, and am eagerly anticipating his next release. I can’t say the same about the next (if any) film adaptation, however. I doubt, though, that we will see his third release Angels and Demons made into a motion picture. Actually, considering that it takes place almost entirely in Vatican City, the mother land of a religion that has openly denounced Dan Brown as a blasphemer, I’d say it would take a miracle.