MOSCOW. (Pyotr Romanov, RIA Novosti political commentator) -- Notoriety came to Dan Brown as the controversy round his The Da Vinci Code boosted its sales, and is now working for the movie based on it. If all he author wanted was money, he would be happy about that. If not, he could get badly depressed.
We don't even need to mention religious people shocked by the Code - Christians, in the first place, and also Muslims, who revere Jesus Christ as Issa the Prophet. Brown has purely professional problems, too, with experts and journalists catching him on a vast number of bungles and inaccuracies. The book surely passes with the people-in-the-street, who do not know much about history, theology and the arts, but the author's reputation in his professional circle is badly dampened.
Angels and Demons, Dan Brown's preceding and equally sensational book, shares the faults of The Da Vinci Code. A Russian television channel sent a crew to Rome to retrace the steps of its heroes the day before the Da Vinci movie was premiered in Moscow. A program twenty minutes long exposed several dozen crying blunders and instances of deliberate fact juggling - so the Code problems have their precedent.
Dan Brown evidently treats the hard facts of history and art as usual metier that makes a thriller. The novelist is after suspense at the expense of the truth. Crime stories are treated differently. Crime experts have developed immunity to any absurdity that may appear in a bestseller, and merely shrug it off. Art and other historians are not so tolerant. What Dan Brown offers as sensational revelations are open secrets to them. Besides, an overwhelming majority of experts regard those secrets as hypotheses rather than truths. An unbiased historian treats the canonical New Testament version on a par with the Apocrypha such as the gospels according to Mary Magdalene or Philip. It all comes under thorough analysis, and scholars have a long way to travel before they arrive at final conclusions.
Developments round The Da Vinci Code, both the novel and the movie, in Russia closely repeat the Western. The novel is certainly what we know as a "well-made book." Whatever mistakes the author might have made, it is into-the-night reading, which, into the bargain, divulges a mystery that makes the readers gasp. The film came as one of the many, despite the efforts of its promoters. When I saw it in one of Moscow's largest cinemas last Saturday, the auditorium was half empty. Even the ignorant proved much more skeptical about the movie than the book - they already know the plot and its "mystery," while the cinematic merits are at the middling Hollywood level. Critics gave the Code the cold shoulder in Cannes. Their Moscow colleagues did the same. "I wonder why all that trash had to be made at all!" Russian movie star Leonid Yarmolnik said after the opening night.
I am no expert, and so can speak up only as an ordinary viewer, and report the response of the Saturday audience, including my friends who saw the movie with me. All were thoroughly indifferent, unlike movie critics. There were no catcalls, and no applause, either - which does not mean we Muscovites are so hard to please. I saw people leaving the cinema with red, swollen eyes after Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.
As for the indignation of the pious, it also repeats the West - an indication of Russia integrating into Europe, which may be greeted or regretted, as the case may be. The Russian Orthodox Church and the Muslims petitioned against the release of the Code movie, while secular authorities stood aloof to the controversy, as they should in a constitutionally secular country.
The movie, however, left too many profoundly shocked. As for the distributors, box office returns certainly mean more to them than the feelings of many million pious people. True, authorities were in no position to ban the film, but cinema tycoons could have done it. They were well aware of the Code insulting every Christian denomination, and so could see how many people would oppose a film that treats the Gospel as a fake, accuses Christianity of deliberately misrepresenting history, and shrugs off the godhead of Christ. The film shows an immaculate Priory of Zion - and never mind its actual pagan rites, while the Opus Dei and other Christian organizations are presented as satanic. The Code certainly overdoes the thing in its drive for a gripping story. After all, democracy presupposes not only freedom of speech but religious tolerance, about which Dan Brown does not care, just as his publishers and the filmmakers and distributors.
Many say the Code attacks are harmless, and Christians are making much ado about nothing. That is not so. The West has long been the site of bitter strife between democratic and religious fundamentalists. Russia has joined it now. Morals come as the principal battlefield, with utter freedom of self-expression coming up ever more frequently. Here, The Da Vinci Code comes as a vicious and thoroughly planned attack on Christianity - one compared to which the notorious Mohammad cartoons appear child's play.
Two thirds of British people who have read the Code firmly believe Mary Magdalene had a child by Jesus, as against 30% from among those who have not, says an opinion poll by The Telegraph. A respective 17% and 4% consider the Opus Dei a sadistic cult - that despite the organization having the patronage of the late Pope John Paul II. As many as 36% of people who have read the Code are sure the Roman Catholic Church is deliberately concealing much about Lord Jesus Christ's earthly life, the average for all respondents being 27%.
There is certainly much more to The Da Vinci Code than appears at first sight. Beware! You may be indoctrinated!
