Sunday, November 11, 2007

Tardy Da Vinci


I watched The Da Vinci Code last night. In my efforts to do more than mindlessly take in mass amounts of movies, I thought I would share a few thoughts even if I may be a few years late on this one.

First off, I have not read the book. I can't make any comparisons.

Going into the movie (on a bored Saturday afternoon), I realized a lot of the controversy the book/movie has had with the evangelical church party peeps (mainly, Family Christian Bookstores...). My typical reaction to church reactions like this is simply that it's not that big of a deal. True, it may be errant theology and such but is raising such a stink over it that important? Perhaps I'm too passive but I'd rather be known for encouraging good things as opposed to condemning faulty things.

OK, enough intro. I watched the movie.

While watching, I simply thought of the crappiness of it. Honestly, I felt like the writing/acting was pretty weak. Tom Hanks played this dumb smarty who always knew how to reach the next step. Annoyed me. He would falter for a couple seconds... "wait, maybe its a crypto blah blah blah or no, it's not a cup, it's a person!..." and then he would always figure out what to do next. And that's with me entering the movie liking Tom Hanks.

Next, I felt like it was a slightly blasphemous, less entertaining National Treasure (which I'm not really even a fan of b/c it put a pretty big damper on my senior prom night...). Wasn't really on the edge of my seat and I can't remember ever laughing.

What I do sort of like about the movie (and book, I assume) is that it should get one thinking. It pretty much comes right out and says things that are completely opposite than what historic Christianity has thought/believed since... ever. For me, I hope it would make me think if there actually were differences than what is traditionally thought, does that change my faith? In what ways? (Rob Bell goes into this a little bit in Velvet Elvis... which I need to re-read.) Granted, Da Vinci almost seems to get a little preachy about it (if it were a Christian movie with the opposite message, I may have puked a little) but that's probably why it created such a stir (and so much revenue) in the first place.

I'm pretty sure it didn't change any of my beliefs... for those of which it did alter some beliefs, I'm kind of assuming they haven't really thought about Christianity that much before hand anyways.

Yeah that's pretty much it for now. I want to do other things even though this blog isn't really totally thought out. Oh, I like Jean Reno (the French police officer).

1 comment:

disoriented said...

Jo, we all have puked at those dumb christian things. I love when you puke with other people who are puking. Thats why I liked this blog.