entertaining but rather silly

Rating: Null/10 (16 March 2007)

This film should have degraded into a Monty Python sort of self parody. The filming was good, the acting was good, it was exciting it parts, but the story is so silly that I just couldn't believe the actors could keep a straight face during the show. It comes close to being a parody of conspiracy theories. If it wasn't for the complete lack of humour, I think I would have found this film to be very funny.
What more amazing is that people are apparently now taking Dan Brown misinterpretation of the Grail seriously as an alternative history and the conspiracy for real.
OK so lets get this straight. Jesus was married -- big deal. He had a daughter -- big deal. His bloodline still exists -- big deal. And one branch of the church is protecting this blood line while another wants to end it.... why exactly should we care if he (1) had a daughter, and (2) that her descendants are still amongst us, is not clear. Oh, but if the truth had been told the would be a much better place today free of racism, sexism and so on! This last idea makes about as much sense as idea that the meaning of life is 42 -- it just does not compute.
Apparently the body of Mary Magdalene is important because it is proof of this silly story. First there would be hardly any genetic relationship between Jesus and the current descendant. Assuming that there would be a generation every 20 years (in the past women married before they were 20 -- so 20 is a reasonable estimate), there would be about 99 generations. That means that the relationship between Jesus and the current descendant would be .5 to the power to 99 -- which according to excel is 1.57772 E-30 -- that is essentially zero genetically speaking. The descendant might as well be randomly selected. Not even the guys at CSI would be able to make that case stick. Unless the descendants have been meticulously interbred for the past 2000 years, the current Grail would have no more relationship with Jesus than you or I. Perhaps thats the real shockers of the story, the incest necessary to keep the blood line pure! Aw, perhaps they mean mitochondrial DND!!! That would be possible if and only if the current woman was from an unbroken line of females dating back to Mary Magdalene. However that would only prove that the person in question was from the same general population as Mary Magdalene -- not that she was a descendant at all because mitochondrial DND is not person specific. For example apparently amongst all the native Americans that have been tested there are only 5 strands of Mitochrondial DND which are also shared with some other peoples in Eurasia. So the current generation might have the same pattern of mitochondrial DND as the corpse of Mary Magdalene, but so too might millions of other very distantly related people. And even if the current grail was related to Mary Magdalene, it would not prove descent from Jesus.
In addition, getting genetic material from a 2000 year old body is not an easy thing to do -- they might not actually find any usable genetic material left.
Finally, even if they were by some miracle able to prove the descent from Jesus.... what difference would it make!!! In setting up this genetic link as being so all important is Dan Brown actually telling us that Jesus's divinity rested in his genes -- a sort of Mutant X -- god power? That could be passed on to his descendants? Gods spirit (if you believe in such a thing) presumably was in Jesus's soul, not the body, and therefore if you believe that he was the son of God spiritually, the genetic link would be irrelevant -- the Godness of Jesus would not be transmitted to his descendants and therefore his progeny would just be ordinary people -- not demi gods. The idea that the children of Jesus would be divine as well would be more like the Roman religion (Where the children of Gods are demi-gods). One critic suggested that the book challenges the divinity of Jesus -- but his bodies ability to have children really says nothing about his divinity. Are we to think that Jesus wasn't divine because he could have children? If so, then why is the san grail special? If Jesus was just a man like any other then his bloodline would be irrelevant so why do we care about protecting the identity of his descendants? Another oddity is that to protect his descendants they kept records of them. Why keep records? Wouldn't it be safer not to keep records? And why have they set the little room up like a museum with dates for the various members of the secret society? On the other hand I didn't dislike the film. It was entertaining and the actors were pretty good. Some of the story was far fetched -- hiding in the back seat of a car to escape the police. But not a big problem.
I don't personally believe in any gods so I was not offended by the characterization of church in the film. I must say that the fact that Dan Brown can create such sacrilege and get away with it, is a really testimonial to how far the catholic church and Christianity in general has grown and matured over the past few hundred years. There have been a flurry of shows debunking the Da Vinci code (several a lot more interesting that the movie itself) but no sensational anti-Da Vinci code campaign or death threats that I know of. The relative lack of a (over) reaction by the Christian community must be applauded. Their lack of a (over) reaction and really renewed my respect for Christianity.