Wed, 07 Jun 2006

Film review: The Da Vinci Code

By Sevak Gulbekian

London (NNA) – What more can be said about The Da Vinci Code phenomenon that isn’t a cliché? It’s a publishing sensation, with many millions of books sold, dozens of translated editions available – and now a major Hollywood film that, despite being panned by the serious critics, had the second best opening weekend of all time and is currently packing the multiplexes around the world.

Brown is clearly touching something in the modern psyche. Tired of the hum-drum stresses and strains of modern consumer society and the mechanizing precision of technology, people are evidently searching for mystery, for something that reaches beyond the everyday. The Da Vinci Code is full of every kind of mysterious spiritual location: from Paris’s St Sulpice to London’s Temple church to Edinburgh’s Roslyn Chapel. What’s more, it promises insight into deep mysteries protected by secret societies over the centuries – even the revelation of the Holy Grail! It hints at truths that people yearn for – the archetypal feminine, long-forgotten ‘left-brain’, intuitive, imaginative human qualities. But can it deliver on any of these?

Firstly, though, what of the film itself? It is no cinematic masterpiece, although – despite what many critics have said – it is a passable entertainment; a mid-paced thriller that bowls along nicely and largely holds the attention (more so than the badly-written prose of the book, which this writer found to be tedious in the extreme). The film remains largely true to the book, apart from some rather dumb Hollywood additions (e.g. when the two heroes casually peep under a rug in Roslyn Chapel to discover a vault that contains ancient scrolls leading back to the dawn of Christianity). But The Da Vinci Code is more than a popcorn epic from a pulp-fiction novel; it is a sharp polemic – film as propaganda even. And its target is Christianity, at whose heart fearlessly it strikes. Its goal, it would appear, is to discredit the entire basis of the Christian religion.

Such an attack on the other two ‘Abrahamic religions’ would be inconceivable in the present day. A comparable onslaught on Islam would lead to worldwide riots – if not revolutions – and an assault on Judaism would likely never get produced, or if it did it would certainly not get distributed. So why pick on Christianity? Some would say, simply, because they can. Without doubt, it is open season on Christianity, and has been for some time. On the other hand, our mainstream cultural commentators would explain, with seeming logic, that in comparison to Christianity, Islam is still in its mediæval period, and hence more sensitive to criticism. Christianity is in its liberal phase whereby it can take such aggressive critiques. But by that argument, Judaism – the oldest of the three – would be less sensitive… Perhaps it is in Christianity’s nature to withstand and ultimately absorb such antagonism – even though one imagines it might be something of a second crucifixion to its founder.

Beneath the twists and turns of The Da Vinci Code’s rather convoluted plot is a clear message: Jesus of Nazareth survived the crucifixion. As Mary Magdalene’s lover, he fathered a child – a child that is at the head of a bloodline that stretches to the present day. This ‘truth’ comprises the secret that is the Holy Grail, a mystery protected by groups such as the Priory of Sion, the Knights Templar, the Cathars and many others who have been persecuted by the Church over the centuries. The Church is seeking to suppress this ‘truth’ because if it were revealed it would lose its power, and furthermore interfere with its war against women.

If this had all been dreamt up by Dan Brown as a fictional – though farfetched – narrative, one would admire his imagination. The problem, however, is that Brown has greater historical pretensions than the average novelist. At the beginning of his book he makes a statement to the effect that the central premises of his novel are based on fact. Throughout both book and film various ‘experts’ are given voice in an attempt to convince the reader and viewer that the Holy Grail really is the secret of Jesus’s bloodline, that this is the mystery protected by esoteric and secret groups, and this is the reason why the Church has opposed such organisations over the past two thousand years.

And the source for these ‘facts’? In 1982 Michæl Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln co-authored The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that contained the above ideas as its central thesis. Their work inspired a steady stream of similar – non-fiction – books which have sought to convey variations on this basic theme ever since. (For the record we should note that in the recent High Court trial in London – in which two of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail tried to claim that Brown had transgressed their copyrights – Brown stated that he had not read their book until he had composed his novel. This is theoretically possible as their ‘findings’ have been widely copied and repeated.) Despite the huge sales of many of these pseudo-historical books, The Da Vinci Code has dwarfed them all, successfully disseminating the same ideas to previously unimagined numbers of people.

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a strange book that presents reams of fascinating research on the Knights Templar, the Cathars et al, but then tacks on the conclusion – seemingly from nowhere – that the ‘secret’ of the Grail is Jesus’s bloodline. To a superficial reading, the evidence in the main part of the book would seem to lead to that conclusion – but in reality there is little connection, and the authors offer no tangible evidence for their incendiary grand finale. What’s more, it has since been proved conclusively that the source for many of their key ideas was fraudulent (see, for example, Bill Putnam & John Edwin Wood’s forensic analysis in The Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, A Mystery Solved (Sutton Publishing, 2003)). The so-called Priory of Sion was the modern invention of one Pierre Plantard (and friends), and the organisation – founded in twentieth century France – played no part in exoteric or esoteric history. Key documents used by the authors were forged by Plantard and friends, who had their own agenda involving the restoration of a modern monarchy supposedly based on the Merovingian bloodline. Frankly, Baigent and his colleagues were led a merry dance. Surprising, then, that Brown should take the Priory of Sion at face value – as a historical reality – as the supposed ‘guardians of the Grail’.

So, what will be the effect of all this? Superficially, The Da Vinci Code’s main targets are the Catholic Church and controversial sect Opus Dei – both of which suffer withering depictions at the hand of Dan Brown. But the true target of the book and film is Christianity per se – and that includes pretty much any type of Christianity one could think of. As any elementary theology student will know, at the core of the Christian message is the sacrifice of a God – Christ – who takes the form of a human being, voluntarily dies on the cross and is resurrected. The Da Vinci Code has Jesus as a fraud who, using cunning means, survives the crucifixion. Not only is he deceitful, but he is also a fornicator who shacks up with a prostitute who gives birth to his child.

At the end of the film, the hero asks the heroine what would it matter if Jesus had survived the crucifixion and fathered a child. He was, after all – or so it is implied – a great guy who said a lot of good things. Is that not enough? Here we meet the (now familiar) humanised image of Jesus of Nazareth, the wise teacher who – like others before him – brought a teaching of love and goodness to the world. Absent from this picture is the cosmic aspect, the Christ, God become man – a man who is able to transcend matter, to overcome and transform our lower human nature.

Despite its promises, then, The Da Vinci Code is ultimately devoid of real mystery, of spiritual insight or meaningful revelation. It is, instead, something of a decoy, urging us to seek for meaning in places where it cannot be found. But its winding narrative also depicts a modern-day battleground, and one senses that there are many conflicts going on here: between materialism and spirituality, between Christianity and other spiritual/occult movements - even between Hollywood and Christianity. The mainstream studios were shocked by the overwhelming success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, and The Da Vinci Code feels like Hollywood’s riposte. Christianity, of course, will survive Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code and pretty much anything else that can be thrown at it. But the battle for influence is raging, and the battleground has just expanded. The prize is no longer academia, the intelligentsia, or even the middle classes, but the broad masses of the general public.

END/nna/cva

Sevak Gulbekian is author of In the Belly of the Beast, Holding your own in Mass Culture (Hampton Roads, 2004), and Chief Editor of Clairview Books, Rudolf Steiner Press and Temple Lodge Publishing. He can be contacted at sevak@clairviewbooks.com.

Item: 060607-01EN Date: 7 June 2006

Copyright 2006 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See http://www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: http://www.nna-news.org/