Angels and Demons (3/5 Stars) August 26, 2009

Convoluted Exposition interrupted by Chases and Executions! 


The second movie adapted from a novel by Dan Brown, author of “The Da Vinci Code.” Ron Howard directs and Tom Hanks returns as symbology professor extraordinaire Robert Langdon. This time he is not exposing a Vatican conspiracy, he is saving it from a secret cult named the Illuminati, which apparently has somehow kidnapped four cardinals and placed a time bomb in the form of antimatter device that they stole from the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. The Illuminati will kill the four cardinals in four different churches in Rome every hour until midnight when the bomb will go off and the entire Vatican will be disintegrated. The Catholic Church, apparently unaware of the Illuminati, calls on Professor Langdon to explain Church history to them. Since there is a time bomb ticking, Langdon does so in a breathless highly abbreviated (at least in comparison to the book) way. He explains that there is a riddled maze through Rome that will lead to the Secret Illuminati meeting hall where they will find the cardinals. The way is found by following the pointer fingers of sculptures of Angels that were made by an Illuminati sculptor (Bernini in this case). Langdon knows exactly where to look for the start of the maze, the notes of Galileo in the massive Vatican Archives. 

Does this sound like it was just completely made up to you. I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean if it wasn’t for a lifetime of Catholic school education and a year abroad in Italy very little of this would sound familiar to me. I know who Bernini is. Do you? Probably not right? It’s not common knowledge that he was a Baroque sculptor that did a lot of commissions from the Vatican in the 17th century. Unfortunately the movie has no time to explain why the guy was cool or important. Or why for that matter why he would be an Illuminati. He gets about three lines of dialogue explaining him before Langdon and the police need to get in their cars and rush off to the next Roman church on their manhunt/sightseeing tour. This is the main problem when trying to adapt a Dan Brown novel. Dan Brown’s novels are a unique combination of arcane knowledge, riddles, and action scenes. It’s a bit like art history on crack. But when you try to take the book and make it into a movie, the professorial academic parts (the very things that give the action scenes their purpose) are lost somewhat. Watching Professor Langdon in this movie I was truly taken aback by his Batman-ish ability to decipher codes in about a second’s time. In the book, Langdon’s thought process is much slower and deliberative. Brown takes the time to inform the reader of all the clues and provides several different explanations for confusing symbols. Then because the book is a book and not a movie it gives the reader a chance to pause his reading and perhaps try to find out the riddle themselves before Langdon has a chance. This is perhaps why a Dan Brown novel will never be as good as the book. It’s because the action movie is so fast paced that it inherently robs the audience’s ability to think long and hard about the kinds of complicated riddles that a Brown novel usually employs. Langdon’s cinematic ability to figure the clues out in a split second beat me every time. Add to that the situation we find in this movie, where the subject matter is so arcane and old that nobody in the audience will know what the riddle is even about before Tom Hanks gives the exasperated answer. And then it is so dumb-downed and simplified to save time; we can’t even critically assess it to see if it has any soundness to any logical historical context. We just sort of have to take his word for it. Having read the book I can testify that a lot of very interesting stuff had to be cut out. It’s a shame that a most of it had to do with the science part in this ‘science-religion’ feud. The very idea of anti-matter as the evidence of the God-particle that will or will not prove God’s existence in the Big Bang is gone into such important depth in the book. In the movie it is gleaned over and the importance is lost. The anti-matter is simply just another type of bomb. Again I felt that Catholic Church got preferential treatment in the adaptation of “Angels and Demons” just like it got in the adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code.” I don’t think it was purposeful, its just that for these underground theories to have any conviction in them they really need a chapter’s persuasion not just a scene. 

I must confess though that seeing the Catholic Church in a blockbuster is a sort of thrill in it of itself. The Church as everyone knows is presently the longest running institution on the face of this Earth. In that time it has accumulated a lot of incredible art, architecture, and mysteries. It is the perfect backdrop for an action picture. The movie does a very good job of recreating the extraordinary Vatican and Sistine Chapel. We also get to see the Pantheon, St. Peter’s Square, Castle de Angelos, and several other great Roman landmarks. Spectacle is provided in the murder of four cardinals and a giant explosion above the Vatican all intertwined within the structure of a fast-paced mystery plot to find a ticking time bomb that will destroy the entire church. Ron Howard may have found it impossible to make do with the professorial parts of the book but he did do a very good job with the action parts. 

Frost/Nixon (3/5 Stars) 01/23/09

Frost/Nixon is the name of a award-winning play that recreated the famous post-presidential interview of Richard Nixon and English talk show host David Frost. This movie is an adaptation of that play. So what we have is an adaptation of an adaptation. It’s weird than that this movie has an odd mockumentary vibe to it. By that I mean certain characters that witnessed the interviews interrupt the movie to speak of the events unfolding on the screen as if they already happened. It is used in the beginning and the end, but not during the middle. It’s weird because it throws the whole genre into question. Am I watching a straight up biopic, or a mockumentary of that biopic? And why isn’t it consistent?
I had the opportunity to watch some of the Frost/Nixon interview clips on YouTube before somebody was a real jerk and took them down because of a copyright. Watching those and then watching this movie I witnessed a real difference especially in the final supposedly most dramatic scenes. In the real interviews Frost seems like a perfectly capable interviewer. This is at odds with Michael Sheen’s portrayal of a complete boob. The real Richard Nixon is equally not so dramatic. In the movie the big line is “No I’m saying when the President does it, it’s not illegal.” Frank Langella milks this line for all its worth and it comes as if it some sort of Freudian slip. In the real interviews Richard Frost asks a completely different question (and a better one too) about wiretapping unsuspecting American citizens (In the movie the question is about Watergate.) It is sober and Nixon’s famous answer although still incredible seems at least somewhat thought out. This playing with the dialogue I found a little irresponsible especially when were dealing with an ex-president. Of course you may say, hey it’s just a movie. I would counter that the thing is up for a best picture nomination and people watching it will assume that the dialogue is actually verbatim. Therefore the filmmakers, Ron Howard, should have exercised a little more responsibility in keeping the record straight. I’m somewhat surprised by this because Ron Howard is usually very good at these biopic stories (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man). Anyway it still is an entertaining film. Just give the real interviews a look while you’re at it, just to be objective.
Frank Langella just got a best actor nomination for his portrayal of Richard Nixon. Not really knowing Richard Nixon I don’t know if it is good impression. I know he doesn’t look a thing like the man. If there is a great performance in this movie it doesn’t belong to Langella though. It belongs to Sam Rockwell, who brings a real vitality to his role as one of Frost’s leading investigator of Nixon. He does a very good job of representing the nation’s outrage against Richard Nixon. I looked him up on imdb and found out that I had already seen him in several other movies. (He was that dude in ‘The Green Mile?’) This is the first time I really noticed him though and thought ‘hey I think I’ll look that guy up.’ On the other side of fence is Kevin Bacon who plays the assistant of Richard Nixon. He’s a stalwart army guy. Its kind of nice to see Bacon playing supporting bits in movies with good casts again. Maybe a couple of years of this and we will be able to play his game again. It’s been getting kind of hard since he became a headliner around 1996 and stopped doing those sort of films.