interesting story well presented

Rating: 9/10 (19 May 2006)

I saw the movie today and I liked it very much. I had read the novel before. So I concentrated on the question how the director of the movie presented this quite difficult and complex story. The journalists who saw the movie at the festival in Cannes severely critized it, but I think Howard did a very good job. I cannot understand why so many critics said that the protagonists spend too much time with talking which would make the movie boring. If you compare the plot of the movie with the book, you will see that the long explanations (e.g. about the conflict between paganism and Christianity or the hidden codes in da Vincis "Last Supper") have been shortened to the most important facts which you need to understand the story. The cracking of the mysterious "cryptex" is much easier in the movie than in the novel. Some dialogues and explanations appear at different positions. So the movie constantly switched between talk and action and so becomes lively and interesting. The director changes or even adds some scenes. Langdon and Neveu don't go the library in London, but use a mobile phone with internet access. At Rosslyn Chapel Sophie learns the truth about her family from Langdon, not from her grandmother. The scene with the blood dripping into the basin pointing Robert to the "rose line" in Paris isn't in the novel. Howard also added the fact that Bezu Fache is a member of Opus Dei. But all these changes and additions don't reduce the quality of the story. The only minor point of critic I would like to mention is the scene in Westminster Abbey. The producers were not allowed to stage the movie in the original church and so they had to build a copy of Newton's tomb. This work was not done very well. You can easily recognize that the big orb on the tomb is made of styrofoam.
So you should not discuss whether the catholic church or Dan Brown has the correct theory about Jesus, but enjoy the novel and the movie. Both are excellent!