DaVinci Code a Magificat

Rating: 8/10 (19 May 2006)

I found DaVinci Code to be a beautiful film, thoroughly thought provoking, with much factual material embedded in the fiction, sort of like a Richard Armour version of U.S. history. At the Clark Theater it would be paired with Dogma, another film about Jesus' family in current times and also about the Roman Catholic Church. One should also read Dostoyevsky's chapter "The Inquisitor" in his Brothers Karamazov. Then of course there are all the slanders against priests and their problems with sexual molestations. Incredible, of course.
The DaVinci Code, in a word, is provocative, wonderfully, deliciously so, much as The Last Temptation of Christ was a few years back, or as The Passion more recently provoked, except on its head. Roger Ebert says enough about the films good points as a "film" per se: good acting, good direction, great music, delightful setting, suspenseful enough plotting. It did follow the novel closely, thank you.
One theme worth noting is that of the feminist issue. There was an Emperor Constantine and a Council of Nicaea, and the place of women have had their "inferior" place in church history since and before it.
The film has exposition, yes, and complication, complication, complication, and its denouement is not altogether satisfactory, yes, but if the film has predictable elements, it is very satisfying altogether very much and deserves better than its negative clamorers.