WHO OWNS THE DA VINCI CODE FILM FLOP?

Clearly the film isn’t the book. It’s hard to say just what’s wrong with it but the critics are basically right that’s it’s not all right. Something about The Da Vinci Code film doesn’t gel; Hanks seems lost, the music doesn’t quite fit, the scenes are good but the pace of the drama falters, the script leaves something to be desired, the conclusion is silly – how could one have a tribeload of people (as though to half duplicate the end of the Titanic movie), ready waiting for Sophie when she turns up on her surprise visit to Rosslyn Abbey?

So it’s a poorly paced melodramatic mess, but what about the treatment of and effect for religion?

Let’s be clear we’re dealing with ideologies here, not just entertainment. In what’s a rather serious charge, the chairman of The Christian Film and Television Commission has stated at a Washington news conference that the essentially anti-Christian and anti Semitic film that DVC is was financed by British Muslim, Mohammed Yusef’s Invicta Capital to the tune of 200 million dollars - the greater part of the film’s cost. As Baehr commented “it's a very serious problem when people start funding movies and books to attack somebody else's religious faith." And a double standard is involved because we have Muslims erupting in violent protests when they believe their own faith is attacked.

How Anti Christian is The Da Vinci Code film?

In some respects the film is fairer than the book. Brown’s total distortion of the facts about Constantine and Nicene and their supposed late invention of Christ’s divinity, is questioned, and the film’s position is likewise agnostic on numbers of Brown’s “facts”. However the tone is still either polemical or agnostic to the point of being spiritually undermining. Actor Ian McKellan (who had quipped at the premiere that if Brown had written "fiction" the Bible should carry the disclaimer it was "fiction") as Sir Leigh Teibing has a ranting speech which virtually says the world would be a kinder, juster, saner, safer place if it could be freed from belief in Christ’s divinity. And towards the film’s end Hank’s badly acted Robert Langdon is given a fairly lengthy exposition to Sophie (who has discovered she’s a descendant of Christ) to the effect that it doesn’t matter what Sophie thinks of the discovery or whether Jesus was divine or not because our beliefs are what make us and the world. We are in effect sold a New Age line in personal development and religious indifference or perhaps indifference to the nature of Truth in itself.

Tales of Beelzebub

Although there are ultra democratic people objecting that Christians are objecting to the distortions and critiques offered to their faith by The Da Vinci Code film, it’s a fact that no other religion would tolerate the treatment. Obviously I don’t mean the imprisonment or even execution others might impose would be right, but I do think Brown has crossed for profit boundaries he has no right to cross. Religious freedom in a society must include beyond critical freedom the idea of a basic respect for whatever faith is involved and perhaps too insure the cultural air is kept sufficiently clear for the delicate quality of the spiritual to be breathed, not polluted in the way that Dan Brown, however entertaining as a thriller writer, is polluting the atmosphere by exploiting high themes often through recourse to what historians of all persuasions know is lies and disinformation. Despite introducing his fiction with a declaration of its truth to fact, the list of his errors in terms of history, art, theology etc is truly astonishing. I have mentioned a few in my article
“Dan Brown and the Magdalene in Astrology”
Horoscope Magazine’s bi-annual almanac edition, for June but issued this week (Australia and New Zealand only).
It’s interesting that Brown’s writer’s Mercury is in exact aspect to asteroid Lucifer as though he were supplying us Beelzebub’s tales - which maybe he is.

Two points I didn’t make in the article. First that Brown's heroine, Sophie, is called this because she represents Sophia, Wisdom, the Gnostic being whose fall from the heaven prompted accidental creation of the material realm. In many respects the cult of DVC is promoting the old Gnostic heresy. Second, the film was bound to be less than wonderful and perhaps a less than successful flop. The premiere days were variously 18th and 19th May with the Cannes Festival run on the 17th. Whatever the date both Sun and Mercury were in the last degrees of Taurus, these being considered difficult, unfortunate degrees. Together they would tend to make or at least reflect that things were about as ponderous as they were though the film's tone is somewhat Taurean arty/classic.

Whether or not Dan Brown is giving us Beelzebub’s tales , my next dish will be on 6-06 6-and will unveil the Achristou factor and consider the Antichrist phenomenon and venture a prophecy.

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Rollan McCleary