The Da Vinci Code

When I read The Da Vinci Code I was immediately gripped by how fantastic it was. The book was absolutely impossible to put down and so I was naturally a bit sceptical about whether the film could live up to the success of the book. I don’t think it does, but it is a very faithful adaptation which I feel was made to capitalise on the success of the book rather than anything else.

For those of you who haven’t read the book and don’t know the story, firstly you really should. Secondly, the film is about a professor called Robert Langdon who is accused of murdering the curator of the Musee du Louvre. He becomes embroiled in a quest to find the Holy Grail with a woman called Sophie Neveu which takes a fair few twists and turns on the way. It is a thrilling story from beginning to end, but as with many films that build on the success of a novel, it doesn’t even come close to being as entertaining as Dan Brown’s book. As a film it is fairly average, but because it is building on something so successful it seems to be much better.

It stars Tom Hanks who is, as ever, wonderful to watch. He has such a fantastic on-screen presence and a tremendous ability to ‘become’ every character that he plays. For me, now that I have seen the film, I cannot picture anyone else as Langdon, and when I read The Lost Symbol relatively recently, it was Hanks who I was visualising in my mind. However, his acting performance isn’t incredible. It is not a particularly taxing role I shouldn’t imagine, and beyond reading the book a couple of times there is not much that is required beforehand with regard to dedication to the role. I really like Tom Hanks, but this isn’t one of his better roles. That doesn’t mean that it is one of his worst though.

In my opinion, the star of the show was Paul Brittany who played the monk Silas. In the book he is a very scary character and poses quite an intimidating threat throughout. It was always going to be difficult to translate this on to the screen. I have recently seen a fair few films with Paul Bettany in and so I was quite surprised to learn that it was he who played Silas in The Da Vinci Code. I just completely didn’t recognise him and he played his character very well. While he wasn’t as imposing as in the book, there are very few genuinely haunting performances. Silas is, I feel, intended as a haunting character and this is difficult enough to convey in words let alone on screen.

There are a number of other stars in supporting roles. Ian McKellen is perfect in the role of the English gentleman Leigh Teabing and provides a good voice to convey much of the grail legend to Langdon, Neveu and the audience. The actress who plays Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou – better known for her role in Amelie) doesn’t particularly stand out, but like I said, it is quite difficult to excel in such an adapted role. Alfred Molina does very well as the leader of Opus Dei, but he too suffers from the same hangover from the book as most of the other cast. Ultimately, this film only serves to provide a visualisation of the book in my opinion. There is nothing about it which makes it stand out from any other film.

I did like the way that the symbolism was portrayed in the film as it makes up such a major part of the book. All four of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon books feature the symbolism in popular culture as a major theme and this contributes to the astounding success of the series. As a result, there must have been a lot of pressure on the film to deliver this in a convincing and realistic way. Director Ron Howard does this very well and stays true to the vast majority of the meaning in the book.

Ultimately, this is a very hard film to make because of the obvious comparisons to the book. Personally, I don’t think it is a bad film at all, but it does suffer from the inevitable comparisons to the book. The casting is (mostly) spot on, and the presentation of the story is brilliant, but because of how incredible the book was, the film tends to suffer. If you wanted to watch the film then I cannot advise you strongly enough to read the book first. I guarantee it will keep you entertained for so long, but if you watch the film first then a lot of the twists and turns of the novel will be lost because of how well they are written. 

Other films starring Tom Hanks:

Saving Private Ryan - http://mattsthoughtsonmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/saving-private-ryan.html

Forrest Gump - http://mattsthoughtsonmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/forest-gump.html

Another film starring Paul Bettany:
A Beautiful Mind - http://mattsthoughtsonmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/a-beautiful-mind.html

Other films starring Ian McKellen:

The Lord of the Rings (Part 1) - http://mattsthoughtsonmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/lord-of-rings-part-1.html

(Part 2) - http://mattsthoughtsonmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/lord-of-rings-part-2.html

(Part 3) - http://mattsthoughtsonmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/lord-of-rings-part-3.html

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - http://mattsthoughtsonmovies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-hobbit-unexpected-journey.html

A Beautiful Mind

Now regular readers will know that I am not Russell Crowe’s biggest fan. If I’m honest I can’t stand the guy. In the vast majority of roles that I've seen him in he is wooden and bland, and I don’t like him as a person. However, A Beautiful Mind is the exception to this. This is the Academy Award winning film about the life of John Nash and his struggle with schizophrenia.

John Nash starts off as a student of mathematics at Princeton and immediately the audience sees that he is a very dedicated and hard-working individual. He is striving immensely hard for an ‘original idea’ in order to revolutionise his field. His room-mate is his polar opposite, but they get along very well despite him not getting on well with other people. During his teaching of a class at Princeton he meets a student in the typical manner – she is the one who challenges the teacher. After he finishes at Princeton he becomes a codebreaker and is subsequently sought by the secret services to break a Russian code about a bomb that is planning to be dropped on America. He has since married Alicia, the student in his class, and they have a son. However all is not what it seems, and she begins to get suspicious of his behaviour, calling in a psychiatrist to help him. He is subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia and we wee how his life is dramatically affected by this. His room-mate at Princeton, his room-mate’s niece and the secret services agent are all revealed to be hallucinations, and Nash’s life begins to fall apart. After an incredibly long struggle with his illness Nash is awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution to modern business and economics, and this is a heartwarming conclusion as he dedicates his achievement to his wife who is ‘his reason’.

Now, much as it pains me to say this, Russell Crowe is absolutely incredible in A Beautiful Mind. A few posts back I compared Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean to Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and Robert de Niro in Awakenings. Well now Russell Crowe can be added to that list. He is spectacular at getting the little parts of the character right. His gait and the manner in which he walks so consistently throughout the film is brilliant, and his speech and accent, which I have criticised Crowe for before, is almost nailed on throughout the movie. Despite being a thoroughly unlikable character, the audience immediately takes to John Nash as the underdog of life, and Russell Crowe brings a strong sense of engagement and emotion to the role. The emotions that Nash experiences when he is first committed is conveyed beautifully by Crowe, and even better is his emotion at the end. I watched  A Beautiful Mind recently with my Mum and she was saying how tragically sad it is at the end, and I agree. I can only praise Russell Crowe for his acting in this film, and am genuinely surprised that he missed out on the Academy Award for Best Actor. Having said that, I haven’t seen Training Day, so I can’t possibly comment.

Jennifer Connelly plays John’s wife, Alicia Nash, and she does a very good job. By no means can it be easy to play the wife of a schizophrenic man, and Connelly does fantastically well to convey the emotion, frustration and difficulty that this illness brings to the lives of everyone affected by it. Now the film embellishes the finer details of John and Alicia’s marriage a bit. In reality they divorce during the stages of John’s illness, but John lived in her house after his was discharged. They re-married in 2001, but the film doesn't mention any of this. I think that whether or they were married doesn't matter though. To me, them not being married is incidental as she still devotes a substantial amount of her time to taking care of him. I wouldn't have tipped her for an Academy Award based on A Beautiful Mind, but I am not going to begrudge her it. She puts in a very good performance in a very tricky role.

The other supporting actors are fairly incidental, and like the other films with actors that steal the show, Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer and Paul Bettany sort of fade into the background. Their roles in the film aren't especially exceptional, and while none of them put in a staggeringly bad performance, they are massively overshadowed by the fantastic character that Russell Crowe creates. I cannot think of a single aspect of his character that I don’t like. From his dedication to his work, through his dismay at losing, his joking about hallucinations, his determination to ignore the hallucinations and his mannerisms when he reaches old age and is accepted and lauded by everyone I find his character so charmingly lovable that I am always rooting for him. It might be my background in psychology or the fact that this type of film is my absolute favourite, but I really like the character.

John Nash is undoubtedly a genius, and undoubtedly not enough people are aware of his influence. A Beautiful Mind is the opportunity to find out about someone you might not have heard about. If you have heard about him then it is an emotional and enjoyable journey through the struggles of a man whose difficulties many of us cannot begin to comprehend. I rate this film so highly, and consider it to be one of the best winners of the Best Picture award. There is no-one that I wouldn’t recommend it to, and would encourage everyone to watch it. I myself watched it again yesterday, and already I want to see it again.