Word: visual
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They are not, however, intrinsically visual or dramatic. To make a real movie out of The Da Vinci Code, rather than an audio CD or a "special illustrated edition" (which have been done), requires a rethinking of the book. Or at least a thinking. Instead, director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman pounded out a faithful synopsis and filmed it. The result is a work that is politically brave, for a mainstream movie, and artistically stodgy...
...year career as a feature-filmmaker, Pedro Almodóvar has compiled an imposing track record that, I'd say, can't be matched by any contemporary director. His films mix deeply emotional stories - soap operas elevated to art - with sensational performers (usually actresses) and a visual style both exuberant and perfectly controlled. All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002) are a pair of flat-out masterpieces, the first of which was a finalist for Richard Schickel's and my all-TIME 100 Movies list, the second of which graced it. Bad Education (2004), slipping a story...
...people addicted to them. (Though in France the burgers sure taste better.) But I don't go to films only to have my prejudices reinforced; I'd like to see a story with surprising vectors, characters who are more than caricatures, a sense of vitality or elegance in the visual style. The Linklater Fast Food Nation has none of this. Why, it's so lifeless, it almost makes The Da Vinci Code seem like... a movie...
...talking. There's nothing as sexy as a tease and Gore probably knows that his dance of the seven veils does more to heighten the movie's profile than the movie could ever do for his. It's about global warming, for goodness' sakes. A significant portion of its visual content consists of charts. It's the concert video only Al Gore could be the star of. Gore's groupies in the Geographic rotunda responded to him in the way high school students greet a returning alum who has surpassed expectations, but that glamour tarnishes quickly should he start hanging...
...urgency. The games Brown plays - anagrams, the Fibonacci sequence, the art-history gamesmanship, the delving into Gnostic gospel lore, all the clues and miscues in his devious treasure hunt - are best savored by readers with a long night or a long flight ahead of them. They're not intrinsically visual or movie-dramatic, however many car chases the Howard version cranks...