History - - written by the "winners"

Rating: 9/10 (19 May 2006)

I found the Ron Howard - Akiva Goldman collaboration to be on quite a set of parallel developments as the earlier A_BEAUTIFUL_MIND. The hero is quite a commendable figure and his feminine co-seeker is beautiful while never looking mussed-up or tired from the ordeals he puts her under. Like the Nobel Prize winner who observed a startling "theory of equilibrium", the hero-professor has a mind that solves millennium-old problems of a highly theoretical and conceptual level - - even resolving the difference in a riddle between "the" Pope and "A" Pope (i.e. Alexander Pope). Unlike a lot of the people who are wanting the film to be a clear extreme "battle" in the ongoing Culture War between believers and non-believers, I place the background material (2003 novel THE_da_Vinci_CODE) in the category of fiction, strictly tongue-in-cheek. I wish it had spent more time on Leonardo and a lot less on Emperor Constantine; the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene will remain in the realm of the imaginative and can't be wholly decided as to the nature of their earthly relationship. While the best moments of the movie come when we're least expecting them (attacks by the deranged Silas who somehow has blue eyes while being an albino), the worst moments of the film come when the audience is presumed to already be fully initiated into what landmarks are in Paris (Louvre, Sant-Sulpice)and what's in London (Church of the Temple, Westminster burial site of Isaac Newton). As a puzzle-enthusiast I enjoyed the sequences that required us to do a certain rapid amount of anagram shuffling. What I didn't appreciate was the presumption that the blame for Crusades and Medieval Witch executions was some type of conspiracy that has had a "lid" on it until recent authors have opened and gathered all the clues. When you say that "History" is what you make it - - you have cut loose all the connections to what's reasonable and verifiable, granted that fair interpretation matters. I do believe that this film will last longer than the small-minded "crusaders" who dramatically view it as a threat to religion in general. Therefore, the Winners (Ron Howard, Akiva Goldman) have produced and directed a wacky and roller-coaster of a movie that can only be understood as fiction - - repeat after me - - only a story, only a story !