Dan Brown's best-selling treasure-hunting mystery thriller was a genuine sensation. The book was nearly impossible to avoid, selling over 80 million copies and being translated into dozens of languages. All praises and great comments must be trending if Gen Zs would rate it. Besides the large number that’s over a million Demand for a movie adaptation is unstoppable.
First and foremost, it is an authentic page-turner that keeps us alert and engaged with its surprises. Second, it is about the quest for the Holy Grail, which has captivated historians, artists, and writers for centuries. Third, it is about constantly trying to decipher an enigmatic message containing a great secret. Fourth, it alludes to a Catholic Church conspiracy to keep women down and to undermine Mary Magdalene's role in early church history. Fifth, it permits many spiritual seekers to reconsider Jesus, sexuality, the Divine Feminine, and the great mysteries that cannot be contained in dogmas.
Ron Howard's film embraces all these themes; it's a quest film that holds our attention. Harvard professor of religious “symbologist” Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is in Paris for a lecture. He is summoned to the Louvre, where the curator's (Jean-Pierre Marielle) body has been discovered. The dead man, who was supposed to meet Langdon the following day, has a pentagram painted on his naked torso. A mysterious message and a number are also written in blood on the floor. This is how the story goes and it is really interesting.
Along with an all-star cast including Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Sir Ian McKellen, Paul Bettany, and Alfred Molina. Millions and millions of copies of DVDs were sold that alone attests to its multifaceted pleasures. The project seemed like a recipe for a guaranteed hit considering that it was directed by Oscar-winning director Ron Howard. It is from a screenplay by veteran blockbuster writer Akiva Goldsman but from here, it all went wrong inducing a massive negative criticism.
Mysteries and thrillers thrive on the unexpected. Things that go wobble in the night, obscure perpetrators, and a shocking discovery that changes everything are all hallmarks of the genre for a reason. Even the bizarre treasure-hunting movies and schlockiest thrillers keep audiences interested with elements of surprise and ambiguity. Goldsman's script slavishly follows Brown's original work to the point that it crafts a mystery-thriller that is crammed with a pseudo-historical narrative that would be thrilling to read in a beach novel but would make for an immensely mediocre movie.
All whilst, The Da Vinci Code is too obsessed with having characters unveil every secret of its universe to ever truly understand that. This is a film that is unable to pause for a minute, let alone exude an actual feeling of dread. The central treasure hunt in the film is utterly bereft of suspense because every mystery is instantly laid out and sorted by tin-eared expository dialogue.
In the meanwhile, it spends the entirety of its running time suffocating the audience with explanations. No strange sight or significant historical discovery can happen without characters rambling on for minutes about the bigger meaning of these events. Except for Bettany's zealous villain, almost all of this material is delivered through a cast of bland, and somehow forgettable characters. Robert Langdon is the main character, while occasionally amusingly over the top, and appears to lack character individuality. In order to avoid getting in the way of the backstory, all feeling of distinctive character has been drained. Instead of being entertaining, it became monotonous.
This movie has strange rhythms for a thriller. Music and cinematography make up for the boring parts of the movie. Bursts of action are interrupted by lengthy periods of exposition. The talky parts are more interesting than the kinetic ones. That's because The Da Vinci Code does an admirable job of blending fact, speculation, and pure fiction into an intriguing mix when it comes to explaining the conspiracy. However, the action scenes are too simple and uninteresting to be anything but a distraction.
Perhaps amassing a star-studded cast is enough to elevate a film. Unfortunately, The Da Vinci Code can't survive without the help of amazing actors like Howard and Hanks. Notwithstanding, it's unlikely that anyone could have saved a film that so fundamentally misinterprets the appeal of treasure hunts to moviegoers in the first place.
For anyone in the JPIA Community, sometimes being extra doesn’t bring us to what we actually imagined.
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