TDVC - The Movie

Braving the torrential thunderous rain and hailstones, we drifted down to the local cinema to go view TDVC. At half ten in the morning on a Saturday.

The highlight was the trailer for Pirates of the Carib - hmmmm, Johnny Depp - sorry, that wasn't the movie, was it?

If you have not read the badly written book, the hyped book, the fictional book, you will still enjoy the movie. You might not "get" it all, but they have dummed it down tremendously for public fare. And it is a loooooong movie - 149 minutes. Most of which you don't really feel. Personally, I think this should have been directed by an English director, or a foreign director, not Ron Howard. It never made me gasp, wonder, or amaze. Or worry. There was no edge to it and it was all very "fluffy." It did however make me jiggle around my seat though as I recognised the places they were shooting the movie in. The sets were lavish - Lee Teabing's villa and study is sumptious. See pic below:

Old man Sir Ian was a tour de force, as usual. He genuinely sparkled and was a much more interesting character than Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) who seemed to stand to the side a lot and watch worriedly and bemusedly as things went rocketing off the rails, dragging him along. Sophie Neveu was beautifully played by Audrey T. And of course, Silas, the albino monk played by Paul Bettany was out of this world - his portrayal as this pawn of bishops and rich men, was outstanding. I genuinely don't think the Opus Dei has anything to worry about in this movie. They make it very clear that there are radical factions within the OD who tend to take things over the top, whereas most of their members are married, with families etc. A cleverly set-up scene on an airplane with the bishop and his aide acting the part of a journalist...cleverly done.

There were a few clever scenes - instead of Robert Langdon going off to a library to find a clue, they accost a young chap on one of the busses and use his mobile phone to access the internet and do a search. As a saddo, I recognised an in-joke in this scene. The authors Lynn Picknet and her co-author Timothy Freke were on the bus, behind Tom and Audrey. They were the ones who did a lot of research way back in the day into the Magdalene story, Da Vinci and the Jesus Mysteries. Dan Brown refers to Lynn's books in TDVC and cites it as one of the books in his bibliography. Yes, I know. I am sad. In Lee Teabing's house, as he explains to Audrey about the sacred feminine, he is holding one of Lynn's books in his hand. This made me giggle and I sniggered to hubby: "We have those books."

Ahem. There are a lot fo shortcuts in the movie - there has to be. Like in LOTR you just could not put it all in. I think though that they managed to stay true to the book - you get the gist of it. All, except for the ending....where they discover a hidden room underneath Roslyn Chapel (what about all the excavations which the St Clair family have allowed in the church a couple of years ago...the excavations where they had found nothing...do the Americans think NO ONE has ever paid any attention to Roslyn before Dan Brown came along?) and Sophie manages to locate a whole bunch and scrolls and pipes up "Oh look, scrolls from the Library at Alexandria". At that point I burst out laughing. Even if they were scrolls from the great library, they would be in temperature controlled cabinets, behind lock and key and not jumbled together on an open shelf for insects, dust, bacteria and marauders to eat or destroy. Americans! Throw reality to the wind to make it look like the library at Minas Tirith, just because it looks authentic like that and it makes you want to go dig around ancient temples and churches.

I'll pack cynical-Liz away now and say that for all the obvious ploys used in the movie, it worked. Like the book it will bring in millions to the publishers, the author and the movie makers. I just pity old Dan Brown now that he has sold the rights to his character - it is going to be very difficult to set him up to do controversial things now. The movie world owns him now!