DaVinciCode

I saw the movie last Sunday. I read the book a couple of years ago.

I had thought that except for the controversial part about Jesus and Mary Magdelene, big exception, that it was a B novel at best. Parts very good. Where the encryption gadget and you had to come up with the password. A few things like that, good on their own merits. But it depended a great deal on history, an intriguing distortion of a lot of it, but very interesting for what was true, or close, or sort of close. It got you to thinking, then defending or with a gotcha. Fun in that regard and it made the book.

The critics are tearing it up. I felt bad for Ron Howard. I like him and his work, what I've seen. I thought the critics too critical. It did get pretty heavy and long. It did need some romantic or comic relief to spice it up some where now and then. Just a bit, I thought, not that much. Brown in his book did put a bit of romance in it. Howard left that out, I guess, he wanted to concentrate on the parts that made it such a smash as a book.

I loved the way he did his historical flashbacks. I'm so into history that maybe that was why I was more forgiving than the critics seem to be. But a bit of relief, a break now and then, would have been nice, but it did have a lot of material to cover and I guess Howard wanted to get it in there. The material was great.

Even then, parts that were distorted or lying with the facts in parts, did make me cringe a bit. A couple of places the Tom Hanks character changed his part from the book, to defuse some of the controversy. One was saying it's what you believe that's important. The other one, I loved.

Teebing, the rich guy, said like in the book, how Constantine forced all the priests and scholars to accept his view, etc. How Constantine distorted the Christian religion, etc. I've heard that before by people that want to suck you into their point of view, like in the book. Tom Hanks came out immediately in the movie and said, that isn't true, and explained that the Christian church was in a lot of turmoil then and at each other's throat, etc. over doctrine. Hanks explained it very nicely actually. He didn't name the Arians by name, but it was them he was talking about. They didn't believe in Christ's divinity, he was a great prophet, the stance Mohammed took three hundred years later as he converted many of these Christians into Moslems. I loved that Howard corrected that. He let Teebing have his say and come up with the Gnostics, also a heretical group, but one with a lot of insight, and a group I like certain things about. But they distorted many historically correct Christians and traditional doctrine too. Constantine simply wanted all the factions to come up with something he could adopt as a state sponsored religion. For political reasons, stability being one of them.

But even where he got some facts straight, it suited him to distort the truth. It mentioned how Constantine was a pagan and remained so until his deathbed baptism. Factually, that is correct, but it paints a totally false picture. Conveniently again, like a lot of people need to do, especially with Constantine. Constantine did what many, maybe even most, Christians did in those days. They waited until the last second to get baptized. They believed for whatever reason, that if they got baptized upon conversion, or beliefs into Christianity, and then sinned or backslid, that they were doomed to hell. No redemption. So, they waited until it was basically too late to backslide, at their death.

And again, either in ignorance, or because people need to believe it, they take the Gnostic Gospels so literally. Dan Brown and the movie did too. The Gnostics didn't even do this. They wrote gospels and stories and created images for symbolism, for effect. They did believe it in a vague sense, like a dream has meaning.

It was an incredibly interesting part of history. A lot was. I loved the movie for this and many other things. The fact that it crammed so much of this serious stuff in, I can appreciate that in the entertainment world you can only take so much of. And Hanks' character and the girl's, they were so stiff a lot. Some criticism is warranted, but nothing like the moans and groans I hear.

I was shocked actually. The way they tore into Mel Gibson's movie on Christ, when it was overall very well done. Anything to knock the established version, tradition, etc., that's the norm these days and like the TV series Commander-in-Chief, it bombed bad, but the critics adored it. They even had to lie about Gibson's, to make you think worse of it.

But they hated the DaVinci Code enough in spite of it tearing the traditional church apart. Shocked me. And all because it was too seriously done, in temperment. That was a problem, but only a bit. The intrigue was still very much there and again, the flashbacks were hypnotic, they were so well done.