chalice and blade
There was a copy of The DaVinci Code in the Manhattan apartment in which I was staying last week. Predictably, once I picked it up, I could hardly put it down until I finished it. I was sort of embarrassed reading it in public, sort of trying to obscure the cover and such dumbness. No no, I am not susceptible to such a fad. Ha! I’m such a snob.
But in a coffeeshop someone could tell anyway, just from the open pages. “Hm. DaVinci Code?” she said, sitting down next to me at the window-seat bar.
“Ha. Yeah. Pretty freaking addictive,” I said.
“Have you seen the movie?”
“No. I wasn’t sure which to do first, but it seems, you know, the book has chosen me.” Actually I wasn’t quite so clever as to say that, but, um, I would have if I were.
“Yeah, you should read the book first.”
So I did. Thankfully I knew nothing about the particulars of the plot or theme beforehand. It was awfully entertaining, having it all revealed to me, trying to figure it out ahead of time. I think in spirit Dan Brown is right on target with the theme, whether the specifics of the theory are right or not. I’ll put a page break here, so I can talk without spoiling it for those who haven’t read it.
Continue only if you’ve read it or seen it …
I tend to think that people in general are too lazy and disorganized to pull off the major conspiracies for which some folks give them credit, but I also believe that it doesn’t take conscious work for systems of people to behave in coherent, apparently directed, ways. So who knows.
Conspiracy or no, I’m totally down with the idea of a maligned sacred feminine, that the patriarchal Roman church vilified the female and any honoring of her along with vulgar paganism it suppressed. As with so many other shifts of modernity, the earth-grown vernacular — paganism in its various forms — was replaced wholesale by the intellectually constructed — state-sponsored Christianity — with ultimately unsatisfactory results. Ever since I learned a little (and I do mean little) about the history of Rome and the church, I’d suspected Constantine was the crux (ha), the point where Christianity lost its spiritual purity and became more organized than religion: when it became institutionalized, its spirit died like a butterfly transfixed with pins. I am not a historian, however. It’s just a suspicion.
With my Buddhist-tinted belief in spiritual egalitarianism, I’m also down with the idea of Jesus being a man, not the virgin-born son of God. Doesn’t make him any less divine to me. It does mean the Christian church doesn’t hold the patent on the path to the divine. How shocking.
And finally, the idea of Mary Magdalene being the Holy Grail is awfully compelling to me. Symbolically if nothing else. Makes a lot more sense than the literal reading. But eh, I’m a sucker for symbolism and reading meaning and connection where, honestly, there may be none. I can’t help it.
So the book was a fun read for me. However, past the fuller explanations of the symbolism behind the Magdalene theory that you get in Brown’s book, I actually enjoyed the movie more than the book. I didn’t realize it until I saw the movie, but Brown’s book is sort of 400 pages of masturbatory look-how-smart-my-characters-are flatness. Ron Howard’s Langdon is more human than the flawless intellectual divinity of Brown’s Langdon. In the movie, Langdon doubts the Magdalene theory and plays as a foil to Teabing’s expertise (and Ian McKellen’s irresistable performance) instead of merely nodding in agreement as he does in the book. We the audience can identify more readily with him and the tension makes it play better. Most moving for me, Langdon’s discovery at the end becomes not just another intellectual pat on the back, but a moment of personal transformation. Now that’s better storytelling.
I think the romantic turn at the end of the book fell into flat predictability, too. I preferred the movie’s handling of that. In the movie, Langdon is the noble knave, the unwilling knight. In the book I feel like he’s Brown’s personal fantasy of himself, and of course he gets the girl. Fantasies have no need to evolve: they’re already someone’s ideal. Flat. Boring.
So anyway, that’s my review. The book’s fun intellectually. The movie’s better emotionally. The blade and chalice, respectively? Heh. Whatever.