So dark the con of man

I think the movie will be better

I finally relented. After years of avoiding The Da Vinci Code I succumbed to peer pressure and read it this past week. The movie is coming up and I don’t want to be the only person in the theater who doesn’t know what’s going on. Not seeing the movie is simply not an option, as anyone who knows my friends in real life can verify.

The novel’s strength is its mythological and societal intrigue. Author Dan Brown doesn’t bring up anything a well-educated Catholic hasn’t probably already thought about – I have certainly wondered about Mary Magdalen’s relationship with Jesus, for example, and Christianity’s “borrowing” of earlier myths from other religions has been well-documented for centuries. That vague similarity with the source material is exactly what makes The Code work as well as it does. Brown expertly weaves together a tapestry of oddities and facts that, together with a lot of literary license, makes a clear case for conspiracy that reads as plausible precisely because we’ve wondered about these things before. Though of course ultimately fiction, Brown has found a way to connect the dots, and looking at the resulting picture is a lot of fun.

What Brown is not so good at, however, is the writing bit. His inclusion of religion, art and architecture is impressive, but his characters are either clichéd archetypes or zero-dimensional plot concoctions, including the protagonist. His dialogue is dry and unrealistic. His action sequences trite and consequently boring. Many of his supposedly near-impossible riddles are in fact ridiculously easy to decipher, and predictability is a problem at times – I had the villain spotted almost immediately. Brown is simply not the mystery writer equal of say, JK Rowling, whose Harry Potter books are never easy to figure out.

One device Brown does use skillfully is a sort of reverse-omniscient, where characters know or solve pieces of the puzzle but don’t reveal them to the reader for many chapters. This, more than anything else, keeps the reader’s attention, since that next answer is always right around the corner. Indeed, the most enjoyable parts of the book are those where clues secret only to the reader are finally revealed.

Ultimately, though it ranks far from the top of my favorite book list, I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. It reads much like the science fiction of Greg Bear - fascinating plot, less than lifelike characters. Hopefully the movie will be even better, since most of the novel’s problems could be solved with the right screenplay.

Thumbs up.


(Sexed-up Mona Lisa courtesy TheSpoof.com.)

Tags: entertainment