Revolution Evolution

Hard Coding.... (a title especially for my IT peeps)

So, the code was cracked. The hype has subsided. Dan Brown's epic, finally, has a counterpart on the big screen. And Ron Howard delivered it with finesse.

To give him his due, Howard left no stone unturned on detail, especially when it came to visuals, locations, cast selection and smooth conveyance of literature into film. But as eye-caressing as its visual appeal may be, a lot needs to be said about the adaptation. Howard masalafied the Code, to the extent that emotions that need have been stark, were made intensely evident.

In my honest opinion, Howard spoke Brown's Code, as if he was undermining the individual intelligences of the worldwide audience. Maybe he feared that the conundrums that the Code is resplete with, were not indeed as universal when placed on celluloid. That's perhaps why he eliminated so many of them. That's perhaps why he oversimplified so many of the intricate complexities that make the Code so special.

But at the end of the day, I feel that the mystic nature that Howard thoughtfully overlooked, by giving tonnes of resolution and painstaking explanation to every minute element of the movie (exemplified by Ian "Magneto" McKellen's or Teabing's explanation of the Last Supper and more), was what would have made this visual interpretation a classic.

After all, what gave the Da Vinci Code oodles of sex appeal, was its mystic allure. Its "fiction based on theory" approach. Its vamp-like hold on your psyche, as you imagined and mentally visualized the truth that may have been, the lies that may have been told and the "greatest cover-up in human history". But, on the other side, lay the unknown possibility that the Code itself could have been a mockery of the Church, which the 'pagans' created in order to cause tremors in the new world faith of the times, that had tsunamied across the planet.

And therein lies the magic that made the Code, a phenomenon. The inability, nay, disability to decipher reality from fiction. History has been a witness to the fact that unresolved mysteries have always been more successful than autobiographies or even solved mysteries. JFK, Area 51, Monroe, Titanic. The world loves conspiracy, more than success. And the Code highlights, perhaps, the most explosive conspiracy there ever was. Or was it?