The adaptation of
The Da Vinci Code is an important issue that deserves close attention. The film is the most high profile adapation since the Harry Potter movies, but let's face it: those pictures are largely for children. Critics and audiences are responding negatively to what was supposed to be a huge summer blockbuster (Stephen King claimed it was a can't miss), and such a phenomenon needs to be explained.
I read the novel two summers ago and enjoyed it. Despite being manipulative (a cliff-hanger at the end of every chapter? a jumpy plot to keep you reading until the cliff-hanger chapters met up with their respective characters?), it was an interesting story and a very cinematic read. Perhaps adapting the book this soon was a mistake. An incredibly large number of people know the story and need to be surprised by the film to avoid a "visual re-reading" of the novel. Here inlies the reason why the film is largely a failure, but the screenwriter is not to blame. Akiva Goldsman's script is an excellent adaptation. All of the major plot points and interesting moments are preserved and the book's integrity is honored in the screenplay. Passages like Ian McKellen's Holy Grail analysis of "The Last Supper" (the most intriguing section of the novel and film), which are being attacked as overly didactic or long-winded, are necessary to translate the book's intentions. Without them, the title is irrelevant.
The problem is Ron Howard's direction. He takes a faithful adaptation and does nothing to excite the audience. The excitement is there in the script, but Howard refuses to play with interesting camera angles, editing, or suspenseful music. Instead, he films "The Cinderella Man Code": a good story, but too smooth and safe to be anything close to a thriller. What's interesting is that Howard knows how to do suspense:
Ransom, much of
A Beautiful Mind, and even
Apollo 13. In the latter, the audience can read an encyclopedia entry before seeing the film, know how it ends, yet still feel tense watching. With such an exciting story before him, why did Howard not take advantage of countless cinematic possibilities to make an engrossing thriller?
Being familiar with the action, I needed a different experience. Instead, I was left with 2.5 hours with no sense of immediacy or much danger. The viewers who will benefit most from watching Howard's film are those who have neither read the book nor listened to the overwhelming national negative criticism. The story will be fresh to them, and maybe there will be a hint of suspense to keep them intrigued. However, the viewers who have read Dan Brown's work are out of luck.
I propose a plan to create a proper adaptation of
The Da Vinci Code similar to the podcast FilmSpotting's recasting of
Elizabethtown. When Jay-Z released his "Black Album" in 2003, many critics and underground hip-hop artists felt that his lyrics were excellent but that the music (beats) were lacking. Jay-Z soon released an acapella version of that album and allowed anyone from hip-hop producers to high schoolers with an editing program to add their own backing music to his lyrics. The results were impressive and some were applauded more than the original, including Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" (combining the Beatles' "White Album").
What if Goldsman allowed for his script to be filmed by any director who wished to do so? The resulting films would definitely have the ability to pack more of the needed punch than Howard delivered. What would David Fincher, Paul Greengrass, or Quentin Tarantino do with this material? I'd like to find out.