Da Vinci Code
I was thinking of blogging on this.
A N Wilson, in his customary style, has neatly macheted the whole spin into a pile of shavings with his column in the Observer:
"I think it’s absolutely brilliant of Sony to have made this fifth-rate thriller into a great international controversy and make everybody feel as if they need to be having conversations about it. This was one of the most tedious films I’ve ever seen. It was supposed to be a thriller but it told you what the answer was to start with. There was gratuitous violence, especially involving the mad monk, but no build-up and no suspense. It simply hopped from one four- or five-minute adventure to the next.
Also, it is blatantly anti-Catholic at a time when we’re all trying to learn to be more polite to one another. It’s fairly easy to imagine what would happen if it were about the holy prophet. All the cinemas would be in little heaps of ash by now. I wasn’t in the least offended, though. I just thought that it was silly."
And as far as church reaction goes, Real Live Preacher has said all I wanted to say. The extremists in the Church have already guaranteed the success for a number of productions that is disproportionate to their artistic merit, either by denouncing them, or by attempting to use them as "evangelism" – Jerry Springer the Opera, for instance, or Mel Gibson’s Passion. I shall probably go and see the movie of the Da Vinci Code as it will save me the trouble of having to read the book. Fiction is fiction. If it isn’t that significant, it won’t change the world. If it is, wake up and listen. Way to go, Gordon.
9 Responses to “Da Vinci Code”
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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I liked Mark Lawson’s review of the book quoted in the Guardian today.
“Tosh.”
If something is bad then the best review is to say it’s either “dull” or better still “derivative”. Nothing hurts them more. Julie Burchill has been dining out on angry bad reviews for years.
This said, my missus thought the film wasn’t any worse than any other block buster. Me? I’ll wait till it appears on Channel 5 and maybe tape it to watch later.
Yes, but… what Da Vinci Code does it introduce to the lots of people the information that the Bible wasn’t somehow handed down on a platter by God… That it is a document written by human beings – divinely inspired we believe, but human nonetheless. And especially in those first few centuries after Jesus lived there was great debate about who this person was and how we were to understand it all… Unfortunately the book and the film do it in a very misleading way – Brown didn’t give a fig for the real story, he just wanted to make an interesting yearn. (See http://www.slate.com/id/2142157/ for a good account of scholarly objections.) But the popular reaction to the book reflects the surprise by many that indeed the Incarnate Christ was a very real person and there were lots of ways people did (and still can) think about him, not just the dull Sunday school Jesus found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – which, of course, are pretty amazing accounts themselves which most of the Church seems to work hard to deaden. The popularity of Brown, it seems to me, shows the failure of Christian education.
Could not agree more which is why I am now refusing to blog or preach about it – seems to more and more evidence that Sony had a deliberate marketing tactic of getting the Churches to focus on it (either to condemn it or as a so-called serious vehicle for evangelism and discussion)and we seem to have fallen for it in a big way. Within 12 months it will be apparent it was fuss about nothing. “Culture” does not consist of fiction but real experience.
I seem to have missed any attempts to use Jerry Springer the Opera as “evangelism”.
I can’t wait until this movie has had its’ 15 minutes and dies with the rest of the lies.
I’ve reviewed the film in one blog post last saturday and then followed by another on the novel concerning Leonardo’s painting, the gnostics, and the hoax of the Priory of Sion.
I really don’t see why everyone is getting their knickers in a knot about this. Even the Catholic priest I went to see during my “almost-reversion” stage mentioned it. (I reassured him that I had been aware of this stuff for donkeys years, and regarded it as hokum). Surely anyone with an ounce of intelligence will understand what is meant by the word “fiction”.
Perhaps christians should just ignore these kinds of things unless specifically asked about them. Otherwise, the effect of these controversies is always to raise public awareness of Christianity at a time when an awful lot of Christians are being extremely silly.
I have to say I actually enjoyed both the book and the film. I also think there are two sides to the controversy. Yes, it is making a lot of mileage out of having a pop at the Church. But I’m suspicious that some Christians are criticising everything about it just because they are uncomfortable with the subject-matter.
See my brief review here.
Some ideas on categories of books that don’t quite fit into either fiction or nonfiction sections of a library:
(1) historical novels
(2) propaganda written as history
(3) nonfiction material wrapped in the robes of fiction to make it more reader-friendly (Sophie’s World)
(4) textbooks with extracts of fiction.
DVCode is a would-be member of the 3rd category given that the proportion of it which is presented as factual reflects the author’s own claimed beliefs.
Those who feel that he doesn’t have the credentials to speak on the topics in question (20-30 exposes known to me) wd place those portions of DVC in 2nd category.