All dressed up and nowhere to go

That Angels and Demons failed miserably is not entirely Ron Howard’s fault. Nor that Dan Brown is the man solely responsible, who is also the executive producer of this film. The fault lies in believing that novels like this could be made into movies.

Ron should get a sizeable share of the muck that the world is daubing his film with—the mass denigration that makes his career look like a predicament at this moment. And it’s a critical time for the director of the Academy Award Winning A Beautiful Mind; the unequivocal and trenchant comments and opinions that are flooding the media can almost convince one about how incapable a director he is.

Alternatively, we can think that he swallowed the offer against the grain, against his own will. Well, maybe, but twice over? That’s a riddle, and probably trickier than the ones that form the basis of Dan’s books.

What is it that people disliked about Angels and Demons? Is it the Vatican’s approving of it? Is it the script that hastens to develop pace in order to manufacture the thrill? Is it the oversimplification of the book’s riddles so that they become digestible on the screen? Or, is it the one-dimensional plot that sends Robert Langdon on a breathless sprint around Rome to stop the killings of four clergymen?

All these brought down the film. But this is what is believed by those who’ve read Dan’s books. For those who haven’t, the riddles have prominent giveaways, the pace is at best cosmetic that fails to achieve the desired thrill, and the single track storyline staggers to fulfil the prerequisites of a plot. All through, it is just Langdon doing all the talking, and he does this with unmatched vivacity, without ever stopping in between his dashes crisscrossing the ancient city. His ceaseless churning out of Dan’s take on History, Symbology and Archeology robs Tom Hanks of any chance to do justice to his actor self. One can easily guess the fate of the other characters. Ayelet Zurer as Vittoria Vetra is a prop on the Vatican set; Ian McGregor as Camerlengo Patrick McKenna gets to act to some extent, but a wussy script fails him most of the time.

Nobody ever complained of Dan Brown being too complicated in his books. But that shouldn’t have warranted the film’s script department, comprising of Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp, to stuff Dan’s Christianity digest into a film of average length—nor did the twists and changes they’ve brought about in the storyline help.

Books like this would probably need the treatment that Peter Jackson did to The Lord of the Rings—three films covering one story. The only seemingly prominent reason why a sequel to The Da Vinci Code was planned despite facing severe criticism is, it grossed a record amount in the opening week. Sony wanted a repeat, and this prompted the unit to create a replica of Vatican City with the help of CG and sets, when they were not allowed to shoot in the real location.

But they did that convincingly enough, and it remains the only watchable stuff in the film. After coming out of the theatre one might wonder if, given a chance, a Steven Spielberg or a Martin Scorsese would have broken the back of the beast—the challenge that made things go seriously awry for Ron Howard.

They would rather not touch it. And that makes the difference.


ilovekolkata