While these books have about as much credibility as the likes of Did Six Million Really Die? or The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, which is to say zero, many people who would find the raving antisemitism of the latter an insuperable obstacle in a thriller seem willing to overlook the raving anti-Catholicism of the former in The Da Vinci Code. Yet the meme that “it’s only a movie” or “it’s just fiction” has largely obscured the fact that the conspiracy-theory conceits of The Da Vinci Code are by and large not novelist Dan Brown’s own flights of fancy, but are based on a lunatic-fringe view of history set forth in “non-fiction” books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation. In terms of early Christian history, this is not incomparable to Holocaust denial, to claiming that it was really the Jews who were oppressing the Nazis (or, at least, “we can’t be sure” who was persecuting whom). Nero, Diocletian, Galerius, all those early martyrs - it’s all such a muddle, who’s to say who was really persecuting whom? Now, that’s fair and balanced: We can’t be sure who started it. “We can’t be sure who began the atrocities,” he cautions. Luckily, renowned Harvard “symbologist” Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is on hand to offer an opposing viewpoint. (Ironically, McKellen starred in X‑Men had he watched the deleted scenes from that film, he might have learned from Storm’s lecture that it was the early Christians being persecuted by the pagan Romans until Constantine converted and legalized Christianity.) 7/10 Bethany Cox.That’s right: Constantine’s 313 edict of toleration was intended to defuse intolerance by Christians against pagan Romans - not to end three centuries of pagan persecution of Christians. It was cleverly constructed though confusing, and it is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. All in all, a good film, though it could have been better. Jean Reno and Paul Bettany are pretty solid, but it is Ian McKellan, who is a great actor and rarely disappoints in anything he's in, who gives the best performance of the film. The acting was pretty decent, though all have given better performances, and this includes Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou in the leads. But this is compensated by the splendid locations, especially Paris itself, and the music by Hans Zimmer was very nice, if not his best work. The dialogue is a little clunky, the violence like the whipping quite disturbing, and the direction perhaps too leisurely. Though with all the different views on Christianity and the complicated plot, it is confusing and convoluted. My dad loved the book, and he thinks the film did it justice, and at 17 I liked it. This was much better than I expected, and it is far from the worst film ever made.
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