If you love the book you'll presumably love the movie of The Da Vinci Code, which director Ron Howard promises will remain scrupulously faithful to the best-selling novel. In London recently, Hugh Linehan was required to sign away his soul and pledge his first-born before being given a look at a super-secret work in progress
IN a darkened cellar deep beneath the streets of London, a mysterious ritual is taking place. From all parts of Europe, a chosen few have been summoned by a vast yet faceless worldwide organisation whose tentacles stretch from the boulevards of Paris to the back streets of Tokyo. Revelations are promised. Canapes will be served.
Sony Pictures have devised this slightly weird opportunity for selected journalists to come along to see parts of the work-in-progress that is The Da Vinci Code and hear director Ron Howard talk about its making. It's more of a softening-up process than a proper preview, but it's all we're going to get. Howard is still working away on post-production, and there'll be little or no chance of seeing the actual movie before its premiere next Wednesday on the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival.
At the door, there's the usual folderol about security which accompanies such "top-secret" previews. Security men stand poised with metal detectors. No phones. No digital recording devices. In anticipation of this, I've brought along my clunky old-school cassette recorder. Surely they can't be afraid of their precious footage being disseminated via a C90 tape? But no, the recorder has to be relinquished as well. It's lucky I brought my quill and vellum.
Ron Howard bounds onstage to explain what we're going to see. He may be 52 now, with a hairline which has receded beyond the point of no return, but there's still something of the earnest Richie Cunningham from Happy Days about the director of A Beautiful Mind (his Oscar-winning moment), Cinderella Man and, er, Far and Away. What we're promised is a 40-minute-long rough assembly of scenes from The Da Vinci Code, without any of Hans Zimmer's score, but with a guide music track from other movies (principally, as it turns out, from Zimmer's work on films such as The Thin Red Line). The lights dim . . .
Up until this week, I had been quite happy to admit to never having read Dan Brown's gazillion-selling quasi-theological thriller. But, in preparation for this event, I've finally picked up the damned thing (as Opus Dei members probably call it). With chunks of stodgy exposition that would embarrass a court reporter, dialogue that could get a daytime soap writer fired, and the sort of characterisation that gives cardboard a bad name, it is, in many, many ways, a Very Bad Book. It came as little surprise last month when Brown revealed he had devised much of it while hanging upside down from the ceiling.
But there's a long and honourable tradition of rubbishy books being turned into pretty good, or even (in the case of The Godfather) excellent films. And The Da Vinci Code is undeniably a page-turner. Despite the turgid prose, you do get caught up in its tale of an American symbologist and a French cryptographer embroiled in the investigation of a mysterious, ritualised killing in the heart of the Louvre, and the global conspiracy which it reveals. And then there's all the religious hoo-hah about the depiction of Opus Dei-ordered assassinations, not to mention the assertion that the New Testament is a lie concocted by second-century misogynists to conceal the truth about Jesus's life and relationships.
From the footage we're shown, Howard's film seems to stick faithfully to the narrative of the novel. Tom Hanks, wearing that controversial mullet, plays symbologist Robert Langdon; Audrey Tautou is predictably gamine as cryptologist Sophie Neveu; Hollywood's grizzled Frenchman du jour, Jean Reno, is unsurprisingly cast as top flic Bezu Fache. Ian McKellen plays Sir Leigh Teabing, the art historian whose name is an anagram of Dan Brown's opponents in the recent plagiarism trial, and Paul Bettany is the albino hitman/monk (or should that be hitmonk?), Silas.
The action moves from the sombrely shot halls of the Louvre on through the streets of Paris and London to the climactic scene in Scotland's Roslyn Chapel. We are offered glimpses in historical flashback of crusaders in Jerusalem and of medieval witch-hunts. It all looks very handsome, and perhaps a little over-respectful, although you'll have to wait for next week's review for a definitive verdict.
As a solid practitioner of big, handsome, well-crafted movies, Howard clearly finds it important that nearly all the key scenes were shot on the actual locations.
"I think it had less to do with me and more to do with the fact that there is this cottage industry of The Da Vinci Code tours," he says of gaining access to the Louvre, which was finally achieved through the good offices of Jacques Chirac. "There were some real limitations as to what they could allow us to do but, frankly, there was very much a willingness, if we could find a way to prove to them that we could be responsible and not a threat to the building or the art. There was a lot that we couldn't film there, and what we couldn't - blood on the floor and touching paintings - we built those bits on the stage."
The only location in the book to which Howard was denied access was Westminster Abbey, because of the "theologically unsound" nature of the novel. However, Lincoln Cathedral doubled for the Abbey, netting a handsome, six-figure fee in the process.
"Lincoln Cathedral was built around the same time, so it was a pretty good double for it," says Howard. He pooh-poohs the suggestion that his crew were beset by protesting Christians there. "The papers were saying there were 200 people protesting our filming at Lincoln Cathedral. I thought it was hilarious; we had one nun - I didn't meet her but everyone said she was wonderful - and 199 people with Dan Brown's book, trying to get Tom Hanks to sign it."
I wonder what Howard actually thinks of the book. "I really don't want people going to the movie, feeling that they are being led," he says. "It is not theology. What Dan Brown did with the novel is he took some conspiracy theories, he took some historical facts, he blended them together in a way that creates some suppositions.
"Of the characters in the novel - and this is certainly the case in the movie - some believe more in the ideas than others. The conflicts out of the belief systems are what propel the murder mystery. And I think it is all quite original and engrossing and, yes, even thought-provoking. But I didn't use it as a platform to express personal views on spiritual ideas."
And what of the controversy that surrounds it? Some Christian groups have been pressing for an opening title assuring audiences that it's a work of fiction (well, duh), while there has been speculation about whether Opus Dei is mentioned by name in the film (it's not in the footage I saw).
"I have a lot of respect for anyone who concerns themselves, feels passionately, feels devotion to the point where they would protest or this would matter to them," says Howard. "I respect that. I understand it. Certainly the novel was already controversial when I agreed to make a film of it. So I had to decide whether I thought that I wanted to put myself behind a movie version. And obviously I decided that it would make a good film and that raising the questions that it raises, within the context of a work of fiction, is a positive thing.
"If it generates discussion and works the mind as it entertains, then I think that's one of the things that good fiction can offer us. I felt that the sort of dialogue that it might stimulate, that the novel's been stimulating, is on the whole a positive thing and not a threat."
According to Howard, there were no consultations with theologians and, contrary to some reports, no warnings from religious institutions either.
"I can say that none of that occurred. But there was somefocusing and a very slight amount of restructuring of some sequences, the order of when you find out certain things in the book. But we all took it on because we all really liked the story that Dan presented. We didn't say: here is an interesting jumping off place. It wasn't one of those kinds of adaptations. It was very much, how do we capture the spirit of this book? On a cinematic level, how do we manage to achieve what the book achieved?
"Conversations with Dan were incredibly helpful. At some point he had begun trying an adaptation of it himself, I think, and found it somewhat overwhelming. We asked him to look at drafts along the way and he not only would supply us with his opinion but also insight. Having gone around for the previous year and a half or so before we became involved in the project, talking about the book with people, hearing their responses. He was able to tell us what was most pertinent, what resonated with readers most deeply.
"So, in a couple of instances we did shore up elements of the story that we had thinned out a little bit but had discovered, not only from Dan but from other people who love the book, that this was really a big, important aspect."
Howard relishes the process of cramming up on historical information in the run-up to making a film. "There was a time when I could almost explain to you how they got to the moon," he says of his experience 10 years ago making Apollo 13. "But I wouldn't be able to now. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to take on the project, because I knew the research would be fascinating. And look, it stimulated really interesting conversations almost every day that we were filming. We did do our own research in addition to what was presented through the book - sort of just for our own edification. Dan also came up with a few things that he'd learned and discovered - I won't say what - and even corrected on, at one point, that he hadn't been able to get into the book. It was an ongoing process and a very intriguing one, a fascinating one."
He was particularly intrigued by elements in the book, such as the idea of the Sacred Feminine (the notion of a feminine deity, suppressed by the ancient church) and the witch-hunters' instruction manual, the Malleus Maleficarum.
"It blended these provable incidents with some fascinating theories, factoids that were undeniable with suppositions, in very clever, compelling ways, and I just felt there was a reason that it was working on such a broad level.
"You can come at this story from a lot of different, personal directions and find something really engrossing, involving and therefore entertaining in it, whether it is the mystery thriller or the ideas that are being presented and tossed around or the historical fiction."
The Da Vinci Code is released next Friday
