Da Vinci, Sedaris, Middlesex, Deleuze: The Da Vinci Code

I haven’t read The Da Vinci Code, but I have read a lot of Match.com profiles of women

who have. Apparently they liked it. It’s curious how consistently the curve of reading material

ascends among the Last Great Book You Read on these profiles. In rising sophistication, the women of

Match are down with Da Vinci, David Sedaris, Middlesex… Deleuze (!) While I can’t draw any

meaningful cultural conclusions from the quantum leap indicated herein, I have managed to figure out

The Da Vinci Code.

As I understand it, The Da Vinci Code addresses issues of history, theology, philosophy and religion

on approximately the same level of profundity and complexity as the question: Would America have

beaten Hitler faster if we had Superman?

This is, as the years have taught us, the routine level of inquiry for summer blockbusters.

The plotline is pretty straightforward. Since around the time the organizing

Catholic Church suppressed the Coptics, the Church asserted that Jesus, in all his manifestations,

was a Ford man. He drove, as every good Catholic knows, F-350 pickups and a ’65 Mustang. Jesus,

the Church maintained for over two millennia, had an affinity for the small-block 323 and always

wanted a Shelby Cobra, but His dad wouldn’t let Him have one.

Imagine the Church’s surprise and horror then, when The Code unearthed evidence that in fact, Jesus drove

Chevvies! And not only that Jesus preferred the ’66 Chevelle SS 396, but that He also utilized after-market

high-performance add-ons from third-party manufacturers, Holly cams and Webber carbs foremost.

Heretofore suppressed transcripts of the Sermon on the Mount have been discovered, in which Jesus

apparently said:

“Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Especially those Meek motherfuckers who run

Mopar, because on Sunday (Sunday, SUNDAY–AY-AY) at Bethlehem Raceway, they’re all going to

inherit My dust!”

Naturally, the Church supports a secret society determined to prevent the news of Jesus’ preference for GM

from reaching the faithful. As Tom Hanks says in a variety of deeply concerned tones, such a discovery

would rock the Church to its very foundations. Since my understanding of Catholic doctrine is limited

to what I picked up from Keanu Reeves in Constantine, it’s not clear to me why this would be such a

shocker, but I sure would like to know where Tom Hanks got that bitchin’ haircut. It’s a European

sophisto/intellectual’s semi-mullet and is really distracting. It’s the best movie-star haircut I’ve seen in

years. It’s the first movie-star haircut I’ve noticed in years. I fear an epidemic of mall-guys in

Hanks’ demo down at the local Supercuts clamoring for it. I spent the first half of the film trying to

determine if it was a weave, and then gave up. If studios had the technology to hair over Bruce Willis’

bald spot as far back as Hudson Hawk, then the origins of Hanks’ flowing locks are beyond the

ken of mortal man.

And speaking of Hudson Hawk, didn’t that underrated anarchy cover this same plotline with a good

deal more verve and a lot less Jesus? As soon as Hanks started declaiming about Leonardo and some

plummy-voice foreigner launched a deconstruction of The Last Supper, I expected Sandra Bernhard.

The long, detailed, and in fairness, entertaining lecture made me think that any minute the foreigner

was going to hold up a copy of Robert Graves’ The White Goddess.

It’s a true public service to remind the summer blockbuster audience that there is such a thing as a feminine

principle. Hanks – long hair ‘n all – plays so neutered that issues of gender don’t crop up much in his

pictures. The time spent on the lecture makes it clear the screenplay is more concerned with including

touchstone clue-sequences to satisfy the readers of the book than with adding up those sequences to

anything that remotely makes sense.

But who cares? Ronin, another quest/clue movie filled with French character actors and a

nice castle or two, didn’t make any sense and it’s one of my favorites. And, like Da Vinci, it costars

ol’ reliable Jean Reno, who did as fine a job of losing his tough-guy-credibility-reducing paunch

as Hanks did losing his. And I guess he had reason to lose it — was there any other choice for the role?

If your movie has a lot of French stuff in it, you need to find French actors that American audiences

recognize, however vaguely. Thus explaining this film’s Sandra Bernhard, Audrey Tautou.

Tautou's clearly matured as an actress. After several star turns spent channeling Minnie Mouse, she’s

worked her way up to channeling Juliette Binoche. That is, she spends the entirety of Da Vinci Code

with her lips tightly compressed looking totally pissed off – in a suppressed but knowing French sort of

way – and resentful about something. I’m not sure Tautou smiles once in two and a half hours,

but that might be because Hanks gets all the close-ups and her role consists of opening her Minnie Mouse

eyes really, really wide and yelling: ‘Look out!’ The story is dishearteningly lacking in lust, so

all we see of Tautou is her lovely shins peeking out of her chaste, nun's-length skirts.

Maybe she’ll start taking off her clothes when she matures further as a thespian, and channels Isabelle

Huppert.

As for the let’s-bring-a-bit-of-English-eccentricity to liven up the endless conversations punctuated by

car chases, Ian McKellen appears, once more, in the sort of role usually reserved for John Hurt. Because Hurt

actually possesses gravitas, he lends some to his performances. McKellen, who alternates between hero and

villain, comes off only as playful and, of course, smarter than you or me. I’m sure most of the audience were

wondering when McKellen was going to bring in Frodo to save the day.

However smart McKellen appears to be, he’s still dumber than Hanks, who’s identified repeatedly as a

‘Professor of Symbology.’ If memory serves, Bullwinkle played one of those in that episode about 

the exploding cheese. Hanks has a bit of Bullwinkle’s gravitas himself, never for a moment betraying

that he has no idea what he’s talking about. This is a movie where the smart guy beats all the other

guys by being smart. Not something you see often, and certainly not in summer blockbusters. It’s

a welcome concept. And it’s nice to take a little trip to Paris, though last week’s episode of The

Sopranos shot the place more lyrically.

No matter what you’ve heard, by summer blockbuster standards, Da Vinci doesn’t suck all that

hard. At least not 'til the last half hour when, as required by statute, all summer blockbusters turn into

incomprehensible nonsense. Here the nonsense takes the form of a five-minute film-closing ass-kissing

apology to JAY-zuss! and all those who might have been offended by the previous two hours

of unrelenting blasphemy. Faux-devout, predictable and creepy as that apology may be, it’s nice

that the final sequence suggests that Hanks and McKellen may be smart, but I. M. Pei was smarter

still.