[ThisWeek] DaVinci Code at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[This Week at the Kenworthy]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...

DaVinci Code (PG-13)
Friday & Saturday, July 21 & 22
7:00 PM
Sunday, July 23
3:45 & 7:00 PM 
$5/adult, $3/child under 13
KFS pass accepted for Sunday movies
(See movie review below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy-

Sponsored by US Bank
Ice Age: The Meltdown (PG)
Wednesday, July 26
1:00 PM
Also showing-
Thursday - Saturday, July 27 ­ 29
7:00 PM
Sunday, July 30
4:45 & 7:00 PM
* * *

Coming in August: Goal!; Water; An Inconvenient Truth; A Prairie Home
Companion

Regular movie prices:  $5/adult, $3/child 12 or younger
Wednesday matinee prices: $4/adult, $1/child 12 or younger
KFS series pass prices:  $30/10 films, $75/30 films.  KFS pass good only for
Sunday movies.

For more information on movies, events, rental rates, and/or to download a
schedule, visit our website at www.kenworthy.org
* * *

This week¹s movie review-

The Da Vinci Code

Directed by Ron Howard
Written by Akiva Goldsman. Based on the novel by Dan Brown.
Rated PG-13 for disturbing images, violence, some nudity, thematic material,
brief drug references and sexual content.
Running time: 2 hours, 28 minutes


As reviewed by Philip French writing for The Observer (London)

We have had Dan Brown's novel, two dozen books expanding, exploiting or
refuting it, numerous cultural commentators on The Da Vinci Code - the
Phenomenon and The Da Vinci Code - the Trial. Now, at last, we have ³the
Movie.²

The movie begins briskly by cross-cutting between a patronisingly simplistic
lecture on iconology being given in Paris by Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks
looking like Richard E Grant on a bad-hair day) and some dirty work at the
Louvre. We've seen the antagonists of Godard's Bande à part run through the
Louvre in four minutes, a half-blind Juliette Binoche being taken there on a
secret, nocturnal visit in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, and Paul Newman standing
riveted in front of Géricault's Raft of the Medusa. But nothing has prepared
us for the museum's ageing curator, Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle),
being murdered there after hours by an albino monk, Silas (Paul Bettany).

Before he dies, Sauniere provides a series of clues, mostly written in his
own blood, involving the pentagram, Leonardo's Mona Lisa and Vitruvian Man
and so on. To the crime scene, Captain Fache (Jean Reno) brings Langdon and
Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou). Langdon is there because he knew Sauniere, is
professor of religious symbology (a branch of codology) at Harvard and, it
transpires, is being framed for the killing. Sophie is a police
cryptographer, the granddaughter of Sauniere, and is also being set up for
this and subsequent crimes.

After working out the clues with the speed of a stockbroker doing the
Telegraph crossword on the 8.15 from Tunbridge Wells, they go on the run
together. Over the next two days, they brief each other on matters of
cryptology, the Holy Grail, the birth of Christianity, Opus Dei and the
Priory of Sion, while escaping from the British and French cops and various
would-be assassins with the ease and ingenuity of Harry Houdini. The
cryptographers are constantly creeping into crypts, talking crap and copping
out as clues lead to bizarre discoveries and encounters in churches in
France, Scotland and England, including Westminster Abbey.

The Da Vinci Code is essentially a familiar sort of conspiracy movie that
assumes that nothing in this world or in history is as it seems. For two
millenniums, sinister and benign forces have been at work to protect and
deceive. In this case, we are invited to believe that a patriarchal Catholic
church has been preserving the idea that Christ was wholly divine, while a
secret society of good men (Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Louvre's
Jacques Sauniere among them) have been protecting the descendants of a human
Christ and his bride, Mary Magdalene, embodiment of the eternal feminine.

The film brings in elements of two popular conspiracy series: the Indiana
Jones yarns (Langdon is another handsome, two-fisted, adventurous, questing
academic) and the Harry Potter fantasies (Sophie, like Harry, is an anointed
one and, as here, cowled assassins are on the loose around Hogwarts).

But there are also traces of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The
movie's chief killer, Silas, not only delivers his mobile phone reports to
his employer, the Spanish bishop, Manuel Aringarosa (Alfred Molina), in
Latin, but he also practises the corporal mortification Opus Dei insists on
by flagellating himself in a manner that would win Gibson's enthusiastic
approval and wearing a tight garter of nails, a form of self-punishment
known as a cilice. Not all Opus Dei members submit themselves to such
masochistic torture, the suave bishop explains, and one supposes that for
Ruth Kelly offering herself up to a daily flaying by the press is
mortification enough.

Hanks seems constantly perturbed, behaving as if Forrest Gump had been cast
as Sherlock Holmes, and the toothsome Tautou is more maudlin than Magdalene,
her thick accent often rendering her expository contributions difficult to
follow. However, Ian McKellen, as the camp, conspiratorial Grail expert, the
super-rich Old Etonian Sir Leigh Teabing, injects some life into the affair
through the simple glee he brings to a role that's a cross between a
megalomaniac Bond villain and a prim Anthony Blunt. He handles with some
skill the didactic scene in which he explains to Tautou and the audience the
arcane symbolism of Da Vinci's The Last Supper, which lies at the centre of
the book's drama and theology.

I don't think anyone is likely to have their faith shaken or renewed by The
Da Vinci Code, though, if you're looking for a truly distinguished thriller
that debunks the history of conspiracy theories, get hold of Umberto Eco's
Foucault's Pendulum. Anyone worried or puzzled about the theological issues
raised by Dan Brown could do worse than read Bart D Ehrman's Truth and
Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, a lucid, unaggressive book by the chairman of
the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, who
actually enjoyed the novel.

He doesn't come to the defence of Opus Dei, but it couldn't buy publicity
like the book and film have provided. It has been given unprecedented
opportunities to present its case, and very likely shops in Soho and
elsewhere specialising in correctional equipment are seeking Opus Dei's
imprimatur.

How Columbia Pictures intends to deal with the protests from the National
Organisation for Albinism and Hypo-pigmentation over the depiction of Silas,
the albino assassin, I don't know.

Some years ago, the late Art Buchwald suggested that the reason there were
so many psychopathic villains in the movies was that psychopaths have no
professional organisation to protect their interests.
 

As reviewed by Steve Davis writing for the Austin Chronicle

God help the moviegoer with attention deficit disorder: The Da Vinci Code
comes at you like the fast and the furious and seldom lets up. Its
labyrinthine narrative of religious conspiracies, Christian revisionism, and
complex puzzle-clues don't make for a leisurely experience, but it's not
taxing to the point of inducing a headache.

While Akiva Goldman's faithful adaptation of Dan Brown's runaway bestseller
and pop-culture phenomenon treats the novel as if it were a sacred text, the
blur between the film and its literary source should come as no real
surprise, given how reading The Da Vinci Code often felt like watching a
movie. 

The Da Vinci Code takes you along for the ride, but it never deigns to ask
you where you¹d like to go. Director Howard does a serviceable job of
keeping up the film's pace, and an outstanding job of visualizing the clues
that provide the key to what one fanatical character calls the "greatest
cover-up in history." The deconstruction of Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is
so particularly well-done that it's hard to argue with its logic, if you're
open-minded to that sort of thing.

Tom Hanks seems oddly subdued in the role of the symbology scholar on the
run from the French police after being wrongly accused of a curator¹s murder
in the Louvre that sets the plot in high gear. Granted, his character is
just a pawn in the swirl of intrigue that envelops him, but Hanks'
underplaying isn't very engaging and sometimes works against the movie. For
all the brouhaha, The Da Vinci Code is really nothing but the Hardy Boys
dressed up in the provocative attire of questioning centuries-old Christian
beliefs about the divinity of Jesus Christ, the role of Mary Magdalene, and
other aspects of the faith. If you take this stuff seriously, one way or
another, you're sure to be duped. You've got to hand it to Mr. Brown: So
dark the con of man, indeed.


As reviewed by Roger Ebert writing for the Chicago Sun-Times

Let us begin by agreeing that The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. And
that since everyone has read the novel, I need only give away one secret --
that the movie follows the book religiously. While the book is a potboiler
written with little grace and style, it does supply an intriguing plot.
Luckily, Ron Howard is a better filmmaker than Dan Brown is a novelist; he
follows Brown's formula (exotic location, startling revelation, desperate
chase scene, repeat as needed) and elevates it into a superior
entertainment, with Tom Hanks as a theo-intellectual Indiana Jones.

Hanks stars as Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist in Paris for a lecture
when Inspector Fache (Jean Reno) informs him of the murder of museum curator
Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle). This poor man has been shot and
will die late at night inside the Louvre; his wounds, although mortal,
fortunately leave him time enough to conceal a safe deposit key, strip
himself, cover his body with symbols written in his own blood, arrange his
body in a pose and within a design by Da Vinci, and write out, also in
blood, an encrypted message, a scrambled numerical sequence and a footnote
to Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), the pretty French policewoman whom he
raised after the death of her parents. Most people are content with a dying
word or two; Jacques leaves us with a film treatment.

Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Jean Reno do a good job of not overplaying
their roles, and Sir Ian McKellen overplays his in just the right way,
making Sir Leigh into a fanatic whose study just happens to contain all the
materials for an audio-visual presentation that briefs his visitors on the
secrets of Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" and other matters. Apparently he
keeps in close touch with other initiates. On the one hand, we have a
conspiracy that lasts 2,000 years and threatens the very foundations of
Christianity, and on the other hand a network of rich dilettantes who
resemble a theological branch of the Baker Street Irregulars.

Yes, the plot is absurd, but then most movie plots are absurd. That's what
we pay to see. What Ron Howard brings to the material is tone and style, and
an aura of mystery that is undeniable. He begins right at the top; Columbia
Pictures logo falls into shadow as Hans Zimmer's music sounds simultaneously
liturgical and ominous. The murder scene in the Louvre is creepy in a
ritualistic way, and it's clever the way Langdon is able to look at letters,
numbers and symbols and mentally rearrange them to yield their secrets. He's
like the Flora Cross character in "Bee Season," who used kabbalistic magic
to visualize spelling words floating before her in the air.

The movie works; it's involving, intriguing and constantly seems on the edge
of startling revelations. After it's over and we're back on the street, we
wonder why this crucial secret needed to be protected by the equivalent of a
brain-twister puzzle crossed with a scavenger hunt. The trail that Robert
and Sophie follow is so difficult and convoluted that it seems impossible
that anyone, including them, could ever follow it. The secret needs to be
protected up to a point; beyond that it is absolutely lost, and the whole
point of protecting it is beside the point. Here's another question:
Considering where the trail begins, isn't it sort of curious where it leads?
Still, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "In my beginning is my end." Maybe he was on to
something.


Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart
* * *

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This naming opportunity, back by popular demand, is available for a donation
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For information about the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, call Julie
Ketchum, Executive Director, at 208-882-4127.
* * *

Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
208-882-4127
Sign up for this weekly email on events and movies at the Kenworthy by
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAMELA PALMER, Volunteer
Mailto:ppalmer at moscow.com
Film and Events Committee
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

http://www.kenworthy.org
To speak with a KPAC staff member,
call (208) 882-4127
Mailto:kpac at moscow.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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