the Da Vinci Code

We had to see the movie, having read the book. The details were still fresh in our minds. Good thing, because anybody seeing the movie first is bound to get lost by the end of the first reel.

I liked it but wasn't overly impressed by it. She's lukewarm. She didn't think there was much suspense. This may have been a function of knowing how it was going to turn out, but I don't think so. My theory is that the movie and the story line didn't procure the "willing suspension of disbelief" (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817) which is necessary to enjoy fiction, especially science fiction. Coleridge called it "poetic faith."

In "Mission Impossible" and the James Bond series, you enter the theater thinking, OK, this really is impossible. You accept that, and then you can relax and enjoy the show.

In "The Da Vinci Code," I didn't have as much trouble with the theological underpinnings as I did with the basic story. We are to believe that in 2,000 years, a genealogical line that began with one couple and one child came down through 80 or more generations (four to a century, or more) to the point where we now have - at the risk of tipping you off - only one child. Yeah, right. We are asked to accept that the Catholic Church was able to locate and murder the line, or most of it, despite being scattered all over France, England, and Scotland. This was before the Internet, which I can use to find your birthday, phone number, and last three addresses. They could not have been that omniscient or that efficient.

The movie, and the book, were puzzle stories, starting with the puzzle of why a mortally wounded man would spend maybe an hour setting the stage (the floor of the Louvre) with puzzles rather than go for help. The movie left the viewer with no time to solve the puzzles. The solutions popped right up from one actor or the other as fast as the puzzles were explained to you. In effect, the audience is deemed too slow or stupid to "get it." The audience has no time to buy into the story. Our audience of two didn't buy into it.

On the theological side, could Jesus have sired an infant? Joseph was a carpenter and we can assume the boy Jesus learned the trade. When he hit his thumb or cut his hand, he got bruised and bloody as we all do. During his short ministry he expressed no antagonism towards women. Of course it is possible that he could have become a father himself. The only "shocking" part of this work of fiction are the crimes attributed to the Catholic Church. As a student of history, I am not shocked. I am, however, not suspending my disbelief in this story. It is just too far-fetched for me.