Angels and Demons– A More Thoughtful Film Than The Da Vinci Code
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
I’ll say up front that this isn’t my kind of movie. I generally don’t enjoy a narrative, be it in film, television, books, etc. that tries to tackle a hot-botton issue. Opinion articles are for telling people what you think about abortion or gay marriage or the constant science vs. religion debate that’s been going on since the dawn of time. By even including a controversial topic into a book or a film, you risk making the entire thing more about that issue than it is about its characters. That’s not to say it should never be done– I wouldn’t be much of a Star Trek fan with that mentality– but I think authors and film makers should tread lightly, and if they must include an “issue,” they should use it as a vehicle for the characters, not the other way around. If somebody uses a narrative to get on his/her soapbox, whether or not I agree with his/her position, chances are, I’m not going to be very entertained. I think it’s important for a movie (especially a very serious movie) to make its viewers think, not to tell them what to think. And that’s the difference between The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.
I won’t say much about The Da Vinci Code, other than the fact that I didn’t like it. Oh, it was well-directed and well-acted. But I felt like I was being preached at. The Catholics were stereotypical, misguided bad guys and since their religion had made them this way, I felt like I was supposed to disreguard the entire concept of religion in general, and this is backed up by some clever, made-up, theoretical history. It’s a fictional story and I don’t mind the theoretical artifacts and history, but I don’t want a movie to tell me how to think.
Angels and Demons did an excellent job of that. It gives both sides of the religion vs science argument and allows its viewers to decide. No matter how you believe, the film is simply inviting you to think about it (and especially how influential that question is on society) and building a fun mystery around it. While The Da Vinci Code was about finding clues to an old mystery, this movie is filled with a sense of urgency– the mystery must be solved in 8 hours or the Vatican will explode. Sometimes I felt like I was watching a tame episode of 24 with all the timestamps reminding me what time it is and how soon before the antimatter reacts with matter and explodes. The whole movie happens in less than two days. The film (following the story of the book, I’m sure, though I haven’t read it) has a simple plot but isn’t terribly preditctable and there’s an excellent mystery that isn’t completely solved until the very end, even after you might think you have all the answers.
The main idea here is that the Illuminati seem to have resurfaced to make the Catholic Church pay for centuries-old crimes against them. The Illuminati, of course, believed science disproved religion, and the Catholics wanted to destroy that notion. Unlike in the first film, the Catholics here aren’t all bad– people on both sides of the argument make mistakes, and several of the characters at the Vatican are made into very sympathetic (thought not well-developed) characters. One of the main themes of the film is the idea that perhaps both ideas work together, that one doesn’t neccessarily trump the other. But the argument is never argued at length, which I appreciated– it serves more as a backdrop for the mystery that Prof. Langdon is brought in to help solve. Langdon, played again by Tom Hanks, is a lot more interesting in this one than in the pervious film, but maybe it was just easier for me to sink my teeth into this particular plot. Langdon isn’t a religious man, but rather than taking no stock at all in religion, he shows that he has a deep respect for Catholic belief but doesn’t subscribe to it himself. When asked if he believes in God, he responds by saying he can never understand God. Even by the end of the film, when one of the priests tells him it was God’s will that he helped to solve the mystery that helps in finding the bomb, Langdon doesn’t come to believe in God. But even here, the film never comes down on one side– Langdon is conflicted, and he’s never satisfied not knowing if God exists. Like many people, he simply can never make up his mind.
But where the film really falls flat is in characterization. It really is more about solving a mystery and asking some big questions than it is about creating deep characters for the audience to invest themselves in. Langdon’s confliction is interesting but only briefly touched on– he’s used more often as a vehicle to move the plot along. I become more focused on the interesting tour of Rome I got to ride along for and wondering whether some of the various artifacts shown and mentioned were real or fictional. I respect this movie much more than the other, but it focuses too much on its ideas to make its characters real.
LLAP
-Cap’n Logan
