Here's a critique' of the film:

�Da Vinci Code� bombs with Cannes critics

Cannes, May. 18, 2006 (CNA) - Film critics panned The Da Vinci Code after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France yesterday.

According to the Associated Press, �reaction ranged from halfhearted admiration to boredom to derision.� The film is to open on screens worldwide Friday.

The AP reported that �laughter rippled through the theater� near the end of the film at the Cannes press screening at what was supposed to be a serious moment in the film � when Tom Hanks' character, symbologist Robert Langdon, reveals a key secret to co-star Audrey Tautou with great melodrama.

"It's not a good sign when your film's big revelatory moment is greeted with laughter," wrote the Boston Herald�s film writer, Stephen Schaefer.

The laughter was clearly something director Ron Howard �would not have anticipated,� reported the Press Association Newsfile.

CNN reported that after the audience broke out into laughter, the critics spoke through the final scenes. �There was no applause when the credits rolled; instead, a few catcalls and hisses broke the silence,� CNN reported.

The AP reported that some even walked out during the movie�s closing minutes and �there was none of the scattered applause even bad movies sometimes receive at Cannes.�

Some critics found the weight of the script too heavy to bear.

"Sitting through all the verbose explanations and speculations about symbols, codes, secret cults, religious history and covert messages in art, it is impossible to believe that, had the novel never existed, such a script would ever have been considered by a Hollywood studio," wrote Daily Variety critic Todd McCarthy.

The Hollywood Reporter had a similar opinion: �The movie is so drenched in dialogue musing over arcane mythological and historical lore and scenes grow so static that even camera movement can�t disguise the dramatic inertia.�

Some critics grew restless during the two-and-a-half-hour screening. James Rocchi, a film critic for CBS 5 television in San Francisco, was among those who said the movie dragged on �and not in a good way."

�As sturdy and versatile an actor as Hanks can be, he can't work miracles when he's got nothing to work with,� wrote AP film critic Christy Lemire.

Despite the less-than-favorable reviews, the film is still expected to be a hit at the box office.

Oh yeah.........I love this.  God is great, and people are a little smarter than we sometimes give them credit!

 

 

Angela wrote: Patty wrote: "If there was a holy bloodline" There isn't, but IF there were, Jesus Christ Himself would have said so while He was still on earth with us.  It would have been far too an important issue to not mention. Really, look at how many of the Martyr's died in the decades after the Resurrection.  Would you want your Children at the forefront of that???  I'm not saying he did have children.  I'm just saying that (if) he had, the authors of the Gospels would have had many reasons to protect that fact and keep it safe. Dan Brown is a provacator and a plagarist.  Holy Blood, Holy Grail came out with these wild theories in 1982.....he just spruced it up for Hollywood.

Another thing, Angela.  If Jesus had had children they would not have been divine as Christians believe Jesus was.  The Word of God became flesh in Jesus and Jesus only.  Divinity would not have run in the genes.  Although that is the implication in the movie at least, which is totally absurd.  His "daughter" tries to walk on water and fails, "maybe I'll have better luck with wine, she says." 

Jesus did not have children.  Period.  There I have repeated myself.

However, the book and the movie could not have been written without the fabrication of Jesus "marriage" to Mary Magdalene.

Pure fiction.

Annie

To Everyone Interested or Confused:

The following article is a very good example of why we (Catholics) do not believe in the lies contained in the Da Vinci Code concerning the Holy Bloodline....i.e., marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene and a child born of that union.

Faith vs. Nonsense

- by John Mallon, Contributing Editor, Inside the Vatican

Recently I was asked to write an article on the novel The Da Vinci Code. I hadn�t read it and had never really paid much attention to the controversy surrounding it, so I scanned the book as well as some Catholic books written in response to it. I interviewed the authors of The Da Vinci Hoax, Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel (Ignatius Press), asking them the questions I had about it. (I strongly recommend their book to anyone with questions about The Da Vinci Code phenomenon.)

The reason the editor asked me to write on The Da Vinci Code was that the film made from the book was about to be released and he wanted me to provide a warning to those who might be �weak in faith.�

And in fact, there are dangers for those weak in faith. Miesel and Olson contend, among other things, that one of the main dangers of the novel is that so many Catholics are not well instructed in the Catholic faith or history, and that many people get their knowledge of these things from entertainment, and will uncritically swallow whole some of the absurd claims of the novel.

This is tragic. As they note, there are people who will never crack open a Bible, let alone the Catechism, who will read and believe the claptrap in this book.

I found the book to be a real page-turner and entertaining �provided you keep in mind that it is total fiction and anything it says about Catholicism and history is utter nonsense. (Space does not permit an analysis of that here, for which I refer everyone to Miesel and Olson�s book.)

But what really got me thinking was the nice old-fashioned expression the editor used about �those weak in faith.� It got me thinking about the nature of faith. I could imagine readers of this book, including Catholics, falling into an infinite loop of doubt, asking, �But how do you know?� when someone tries to explain that the book is false regarding Catholicism. For example, the novel asserts that Jesus was not God, but fell in love and married Mary Magdalene and had a child with her, and from the very beginning the Church has sought to cover this up. Why? Critics of the Church would argue because it is a threat to the �male hierarchy�s� �power base� and that the Church has a �negative� view of women and sexuality.

Dissident Father Richard McBrien, interviewed for a secular TV documentary on The Da Vinci Code, actually asserted this old canard that the Church had a negative view of women and sexuality. Incredulously, I thought, �Hasn�t he ever heard of John Paul II? Theology of the body?� But this is beside the point. Those who wish to hold such views, be they dissident theologians or radical feminists, will not be moved by facts once their minds are made up. There is no shortage of people today who are living in ways inimical to the Gospel, especially in terms of sexuality, who are nevertheless spiritually starved. They are seeking some kind of �spirituality� that will not make moral demands on them, and they will relish anything, like The Da Vinci Code, that supports or gives credibility to this doomed quest.

Da Vinci Code author, Dan Brown, seems to hold the view that the �male hierarchy� has sought for centuries to suppress this notion of a Jesus married to Mary Magdalene in order to eliminate what he calls �the sacred feminine.�

There is one reason and one reason only the Church rejects the idea that Jesus was married and had a child, and it is not because the Church �doesn�t like women� or thinks �sex is dirty.� That reason is because it is not true. �But how do you know? How do you know?�

We know by faith. Faith is not a mere opinion among many, though it may appear so to those who lack it. Faith is something solid. You can stand on it, and when you do you can see farther. The Book of Hebrews states, �Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.� (Heb 11:1, emphasis added)

Faith is a substance, a thing, and, like love, a mode of knowing. Christians are people who know and love Jesus Christ personally and know that He can be trusted, especially when He promised the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth (John 16:13) and for Catholics this promise is uniquely fulfilled in the gift of the Magisterium. We believe Jesus when He says this, that the Magisterium (the Pope and the bishops in union with him), is protected by the Holy Spirit from all error in faith and morals.

Faith is also a gift. If we lack it we can�and should�ask for it. If we have it we can�and should�ask for more. Faith is how, as Catholics, we know.

In keeping with this, another item The Da Vinci Code brings to mind is the problem of conspiracy theories. C.S. Lewis described involvement in the occult as a kind of spiritual lust, creating an extremely unhealthy�indeed diabolical�addiction. I think the same can be said of conspiracy theories, wasting time with mildly entertaining speculation about goings-on �behind the scenes.� This, too, represents a kind of morose delectation like pornography or gossip which takes us nowhere good and leaves us worse off than when we started. I wish there were a way I could convince all Catholics to simply dismiss all conspiracy theories out of hand like so many impure or uncharitable thoughts as part of a spiritual discipline. We Catholics have better, more important things to do.

Conspiracy theories may be titillating but they are just too pat, too neat, and life is too haphazard and messy to support them in reality�thank God. We have enough real problems to deal with from which conspiracy theories distract us. The Da Vinci Code is bound to inspire many of them.

Faith has the power to deliver us from nonsense. Here again, we recall then-Cardinal Ratzinger�s homily of April 18, 2005 at the Mass for the Election of a Roman Pontiff where he cited the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians: �Let us, then, be children no longer, tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine that originates in human trickery and skill in proposing error. Rather, let us profess the truth in love and grow to the full maturity of Christ the head.� (Eph 14:14-15)

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God's Peace and Blessings.