{"id":4350,"date":"2021-11-05T11:47:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-05T11:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=4350"},"modified":"2023-01-22T22:12:15","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T22:12:15","slug":"film-da-vinci-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=4350","title":{"rendered":"FiLM REViEW: Da Vinci Code, 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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“What happens if people discover the greatest story ever told is a lie?” *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, duh… plenty of people have known this all along. And it doesn’t require a preposterously Byzantine conspiracy, predicated on the notion that there’s any sense in the gumbo of nonsense that is Christianity in the first place, to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Life of Brian<\/em> is sooo much better in how it deals with the whole Christianity thing, rightly lampooning humanity’s bizarrely persistent gullibility: ‘Blessed are the cheese-makers’; ‘We’re the People’s Front of Judea, not the Judean People’s Front’, \u2018What have the Romans ever done for us?\u2019 etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Seek the truth\u2019, says the strap-line in the poster\/DVD cover above. Not here, f-f-f-folks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But first, let\u2019s go back to that opening quote: I assumed that by \u2018the greatest story ever told\u2019 this film is referring to the same story sold under that name by George Stevens et al, in the 1965 \u2018sword and sandal\u2019 epic. Just like the awful religion we\u2019re skirting around here, all of this is freighted with unexamined assumptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My route out of this blind-alley rabbit hole, an increasingly common one, perhaps especially since the 1700s, or thereabouts (but actually from a wellspring of scepticism as old as humanity, gullibility, and active questioning minds themselves), was rational free thinking, and evidence based reasoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One doesn\u2019t need a cornball conspiracy theory movie – or do we? – to debunk blatant preposterousness-ness-ness\u2026 I really cannot be arsed wasting my time critiquing a movie that not even the powerful talent and charisma of Tom Hanks and other decent actors can rescue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And poor Max Von Sydow. From Ingmar Bergman to Conan<\/em>, Minority Report<\/em> and this. How the mighty are fallen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like religion itself, this movie is, in my opinion, 1) at best, a pointless waste of time, best avoided, and 2) at worst, a cynical exercise in making money from the ignorant masses by feeding them a toxic mix of baloney and conspiracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing to see here. Move right along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* I believe this is a quote I lifted from the movie. I forget who says it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“What happens if people discover the greatest story ever told is a lie?” * Well, duh… plenty of people have known this all along. And it doesn’t require a preposterously Byzantine conspiracy, predicated on the notion that there’s any sense in the gumbo of nonsense that is Christianity in the first place, to get there. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “FiLM REViEW: Da Vinci Code, 2006”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-18a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4350"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8144,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4350\/revisions\/8144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}