Sunday 28 May 2006

The Da Vinci Code

Slow. I cerebrate, this is the most apt word to ascribe with the movie. Novel was seemingly fast paced. Nevertheless, the ambience was good. Mr. Howard did do a justice to the novel by executing it exactly as it is. Not much of digression. Ofcourse, the movie was labelled as adaptation, which allowed him to change the plot. Luckily, he managed to successfully avoid it. (I reckon, he didn't had the previledge to see the Indian adaptations of novels beau ideal being, The Guide and silver screen potrayals of legends like Mangal Pandey, Ashoka, et al).

The novel is fundamentally about a quest. A quest for searching the Truth. Being a fiction novel, the Truth is undoubtably defined at the prerogative of the author. The good thing is, Mr. Brown could provide palatable justifications to all of the premises he has made. Might be, he took them (or the idea of it, as he has won the legal litigation) from the Holy Grail.

Central Idea of the moive: Jesus Christ was mortal. He led a normal human life, affecting millions of contemporary people. He was, undoubtably, more than just an human. However, not on the account of his birth or pedigree, but his deeds. Pagan ruler Constatine; looking at the growing number of Christ followers three centuries after his death as threat to his empire; converted the Sun-Worshippings pagans follwers to members of a cult christened as Christianity, after Christ. Jesus Christ became God, from the Son of God. Conscequently, all the stints of his life that potrayed him as human needed an eraser, for the Church, to both survive, and retain power on the populace. Thus began the process of systematically erasing such information.

A pertinent question, what is so great, that it needs to be erased from the records and memory of the people to uplift the reputation of an already famous man. As said earlier, Jesus lived a normal human life. He had a family, Mary Magdalene and ... a daughter from her.

Church defamed Her so that she can't be associated with Him. However, a group of people who coined their group as Proiry of Sion, took a pledge to save the sacred feminine. Pregnant Mary was moved to a safe place, while Christ was being crusified. The daughter too survived and thus, the bloodline of the sacred couple. It's the womb of the sacred faminine that's the Holy Grail: a cup (or more apt a container) which held the seed of Christ to spawn his pedigree.

Church wants to destroy this truth. The Priory has the responsibility to save it. The Priory has been led by great people in history viz. Sir Issac Newton, Picasso and Leonardo Da Vinci. Sophie's Grand peire - the curator - is a member of Priory.

The curator has sensed that his secret identity of Grand Master of the Priory has been somehow exposed. However he fails to survive the murder. Before dying, he casts a web of codes and puzzles for his granddaughter, in and around the well known paintings of Da Vinci, to guide her to his murderer and more importantly, the cause behind it. To assist her, he ascribes Langdon's.

The quests begins.

Mind you, it is really fascinating to see the striking things in the frescos. (See the adjoing image) Lots of artifacts, lots of cerebremation on it, lots of puzzles, lots of codes. It's all so interesting. Da Vinci was cognoscenti of frescos. Dan Brown has nevertheless, done a lot of homework on the paintings to bring out the striking features.

The chase goes on. How they decode all the codes, is the film. See it. You will like it. Now you have the key for the code.

Image

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