Ok, it was over two hours, and not an hour and half! I went with Monika on a Sunday morning and she did not know the story. I did know the story due to the fact that I had heard the Audio book. The cinema was not full and the movie began with a great seen of Tom Hanks as symbologist Landgorn showing symbolic imagery, and students were asked what they thought these images communicated. Realizing this place was Paris, the students answered "cliché" answers, to many past symbols that in modern times relate to major partly tragic and horrendous events of our modern time. The question that rises is in this scene is: are you seeking truth? .. funny the movie takes you through car chases, shootings and many other interesting events … in search of the truth. The questions for me remained does the movie present the ideology of one truth or many truths as our postmodern generation so upholds.
There are multiple factions represented in a certain way that make the viewer become polarized in what they think about certain characters of the movie. Whether religious groups, secret societies, historians … the music, the action and lighting and make up, are well casted and set in scene to carry the story and so suggest to the viewer a certain favoritism. What is well done visually is the way certain scenes of History were included as Langdorn would talk about the past. Often you were seeing yourself in the midst of History taking place before your eyes in ghost form. Thanks to Digital FX, Director Ron Howard did a good job of that. Yet again and again the story was too complicated, too much had to be put in a scene of a few minutes and was not well carried through, to give the viewer the same context as the book could. Even though the movie was two and half hours, it goes by fast, as you see the main characters being chased and every step reveals more of who is who and why they do what they do, the hoped crescendo at the end does not come … in the closing scene after all was found, the movie finishes by making you make the choice in what you believe, you either can destroy faith of rebuild it. hmm … Faith? Truth?
My Question to us is and to all the viewers, Faith in What? What Truth? we all believe in something or nothing, but do we know what we believe? or should we ask Who do we believe? ourselves? religion? Dan Brown? a Movie? or is finding truth not a personal journey we all need to take?
In this case was it worth all the believers popularizing the movie more by going on marches and anti-DaVinciCode demonstrations? The producers as well as the writers are happy, as globally 150+ million dollars was the gross income from its first weekend. I sometimes think we ought to stop complaining and begin writing. Where are the stories worth filming? The search for Truth remains transnational, cultural, generational and racial.
As individual made in the image of God we are bound to seek truth. we want to find truth, but then without the person that created truth. I do not think this movie has any secret code for us to worry about. My worry and my prayers will remain that the code given to us is clear and adequate and it goes something like this. we are weak, confused and Lost. our own codes do not work, our societies are in decay. what will we do about changing that? This is not done by raising question about the code of some ideology.
Finally if you are a seeker of truth, this movie's code will not bring you further, I would suggest you go look at a nice sunrise/sunset spend a night looking at the stars or even look in the mirror and wonder who wrote the code that lies underneath all that you see. joz