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Saturday, May 20, 2006Michael Novak didn't much like the DaVinci Code, notes Instapundit. Says Novak:The one thing that really shocked me was the movie's underlying intention, stated several times with great clarity: the depth and passion of its anti-Christian, anti-monotheism craziness. To say the movie wishes actually to be the anti-Christ would only sound extravagant; still that is the constant and underlying message.But later, he notes: So The Da Vinci Code will not exactly be stating any new thesis that secular people don't already accept. What it may succeed in doing, however, is to make dramatically manifest the silliness, madness, and love of illusion in what being secular means, at least to these film makers. It is for this reason, perhaps, that so many secular critics have found this movie repellent. Although it seeks to mock Christians and Jews, it actually makes a purely secular view seem absolutely batty.Novak is usually a relatively sane individual, but here he's as crazy as Jesse Jackson reviewing a white man's movie about Harlem. The assumption that the secularists come off bad by accident but the Catholics on purpose tells us how Novak feels about Hollywood, not what the story actually offers. Those of us who read thrillers for fun, as opposed to for getting our Catholic sensibilities in a lather, will recognize most of the tricks of the trade in the DaVinci Code. One of the biggies is that friends turn out to be enemies, enemies turn out to be friends and there are bad guys on both sides to keep the heroes guessing. The DaVinci Code pits the dark forces of secularism against the dark forces of Opus Dei Catholicism and suggests to us that when the freaks who love ideas but care little for people start driving events, everything goes down the crapper and innocent people get their lives messed up in the tussle. Just the same as Jack Ryan dealing with corrupt bad guys at the CIA when he goes after drug lords in Patriot Games. We're avoiding spoilers for the six remaining people who don't know the story, but suffice to say that the ending offers more possibilities than suggested by Novak's shrill rant about variable truth. Robert Langdon, skeptic of Catholicism, can't shake the idea that God - indeed, Jesus - brought him through the most terrible night of his life, but all Novak can hear in Langdon's choosing to believe, rather than doing so of necessity, is Pontius Pilate asking "What is truth?" A decade and a half ago, I greatly admired Michael Novak's push to let people behind the Iron Curtain choose a life of faith over the godless Marxism into which they were being indoctrinated. But this former hero of spiritual freedom seems to have lost his sense and reason, so prepared was he to lead the charge to save the Catholic Church even before the opening sequence began. 
posted by gbarto at 6:29 PM |
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