Rewriting Layers

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2006)

Okay, let's get this straight. The most heavily promoted movie in history, and one that deals with sublime organization and submersion in art. The story that touches on many of the greatest minds we know and refers to many greater we do not. The myth that in different threads captivates hundreds of millions...
All that is contained in something less competent than your average cereal commercial? "Hudson Hawk" was leagues better. Or if you are afraid of humor in religion, "Baby of Macon."
Well, let's pass on kicking Ron Howard when he's down. (I already kicked him hard when he was up: "Beautiful Mind" drove me nuts with its similar mismatch of grace in what the subject was and how it was displayed.)
Instead, let's wonder a bit about why such a story in both book and movie form has been so popular in spite of multiple incompetences: from bad history to bad writing in several forms to brutally mundane cinema.
We live in stories, we write our own, usually borrowing one and some of the eager lenders are religions. That's because we like manifold stories. We spin our own, but we like that there are hidden forces somewhere that spin their own stories which trump ours at certain points. Noir, depends on that notion. Greek theater. So we spin a personal story that has a greater writer in it.
The full modern expression of this isn't content with just two threads, the personal and divine, we modern folk like to have a whole spectrum of forces, layered demigods in between us and the supreme machine of fate.
We often cast these as conspiracies. In movies, we see them as detective or con stories, depending on which side of the eye they place us to start. Sometimes they have demons, vampires or ghosts as the in-between manipulators. But the purest form I suppose has the simple noir hero at the bottom, God at the top and several of God's conspiratorial institutions in between, all rewriting each other at all levels.
So Dan Brown, I congratulate you for stumbling upon a pure form and knowing enough to copy it. And shuffling it among scholars, collectors, policemen, moles, and various religious clubs.
Some day, someone really will write this form the way it deserves. Until then, this will stand as comically overpromised as the French military wisdom and competence which is implicit here.
David Mamet often makes trite movies, but he has a tenet worth following. Never have a character explain things. If you do, you have left your cinematic story. Show, drive the narrative in the story rather than explain. That's what kills this here.
Ron Howard. Okay, kick.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.