The DaVinci Code -- overreaction or a chance to rumble?

by cruzanheart 47 Replies latest jw friends

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Just came from seeing the movie. It's okay, but would have been far more interesting if Chris Rock were there telling Sophie that she was the great great great great great great great great great granddaughter of Jesus.

  • Snoozy
    Snoozy

    My Grandson gave me the book to read..it looked like it may be interesting. But once I started to read..nah!

    Did you ever feel like you have had enough religion to make you sick?

    I gave it back to him so his other Grandpa could read it. He's Catholic and I got the impression that's what it's about?

    Correct me if I'm wrong.

    Snoozy..

  • Midget-Sasquatch
    Midget-Sasquatch

    DOGMA was a great movie. :)

  • plmkrzy
    plmkrzy

    Just came back from seeing the movie. I'm glad I saw it. I thought it was entertaining. It could have moved a bit faster.

    plm

  • wednesday
    wednesday
    Funny how people will object to nigger but endorse rag-head.


    Ni**ger is way out of line, for goodness sakes don't say Rag H**ds, but any time you feel like it say, poor white trash, rednecks, trailer trash, etc, etc. Is RH a racial sur? nor sure, is poor white trash? oh and the movie, I wasn't going to see itm but think I will now just to see what al the fuss is about.

  • LittleToe
    LittleToe

    Does RH sound like a perjorative racial descriptor to you? It certainly does to me!

    "...but I kept quiet... ...and then they came for me!"

  • vitty
    vitty

    I went to see this film last night and really enjoyed it. I know its fiction but is their anything in that book that comes from theories that ppl believe in, if you know what i mean

    I know there are gnostics and I vaguely know what they believe, but do some really think that Jesus was married to mary magdelene and had a child? Or did Dan Brown make it ALL up.

    Im confused , but it doesnt take a lot to confuse me !

  • Jourles
    Jourles

    It's still morning and I'm dragging here at work, but this came to me yesterday after watching the movie(btw, i never bothered reading the book). My thought was --- Is the Catholic church so afraid of their flock viewing this movie and coming away asking too many questions that it would be entirely possible for them to lose faith and leave the church? What is Dan Brown's religious affiliation? Or former? Was it Dan's intention, other than to write a good piece of fiction for serious cash, to try and make Christians start asking questions about the church and its secrets? Did he realize that some Christians might actually view his work as truth and abandon their faith? There are people out there that will believe anything and use that information as an excuse to break away.

    One analogy I could think of was if an exjw made Crisis of Conscience into a movie(I know I know, CoC isn't fictional). The WTS would do the same thing as the Roman Catholic Church is doing - damage control. Just look at all of the examples of people on this board who read CoC and left soon thereafter(some even used the book as an excuse to break away). Was it Ray's intention to get JW's to leave the WTS? Or was he just simply telling his side of the story? Let's say instead of Knocking, it was CoC. The WTS would be terrified of JW's going to watch it. Of course, CoC would shake the spiritual foundation of most JW's. But not all. Is the same thing happening right now with the Catholic Church? Is the Church afraid that some of its members, looking for any excuse to abandon religion altogether, will leave based on the "evidence" of a movie or a book? It seems that way to me. But then again it is morning. I should stick to afternoon posts.

  • Gamaliel
    Gamaliel

    Just saw the movie last night with the wife and kids (sons 20 & 12 and daughter 18). I thought the clever methods of getting most of the book into the movie without running it more than 20 minutes overtime were excellent. And I was very glad for what they changed to appeal to the values of the movie audience vs. the values in the book. My oldest son was the only one who didn't enjoy it, and he was able to criticize it for all the same points the New York critics had done. But 4 out of 5 of us enjoyed it. The movie overplayed and misplayed the actual evidence it is based on, but not nearly so much as the book did. (I thought it overplayed Nicea and Constantine, rather than underplayed them.) But to watch it as entertainment, you show the same level of forgiveness as you would when watching technology get overplayed in MI-3 or 007.

    Before I read Davinci Code, I read Dan Brown's earlier Demons and Angels book which was an excellent spoof on Antichrist imagery against a Vatican backdrop. (At least that's how I read it.) It was also written more like a movie than a good literary story, like many popular novels are done these days. It's easy to imagine Dan Brown as an author whose hero is a less nerdy "autobiographical" version of himself. A person, like many of us here, who really has spent an unhealthy amount of time in a near scholarly pursuit of religious history and symbols, but who also has had some creative fantasies about how such a nerd finally gets the girl. (He still seems terribly amateurish at actually writing the actual *romantic* parts of his stories however.)

    The fact that such a work of fantasy has highlighted the prejudices and even possible racism of so many people - even people around here - is disappointing.

  • cruzanheart
    cruzanheart
    In my mind, its like going to see JFK or a movie based on 9/11 conspiracy theories, so what if it's totally misrepresenting historical facts (it's fiction, after all)...I guess I'll have to find enjoyment in the artistry or cinematography or acting.

    Last night, I had a lengthy conversation with her in Starbucks about gnostic mythology and the Gospel of Judas, and explained how the Da Vinci Code gets the "secret gospels" thing totally backwards, so she'll already know about that....

    Leolaia, I wish you lived closer to us! It would be GREAT talking with you about history and its myths!

    We saw the movie yesterday afternoon. We took our 12-year-old but left the 10-year-old at a friend's house because even though he was interested in seeing it we weren't sure he would last 2 1/2 hours. We all enjoyed the movie. It was faithful to the book, except for the last bit and I really don't see why Opie bothered to change that part.

    No, it's not Oscar-worthy, and I think Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou could've lightened things up a bit, but I suppose if I was being chased by the police forces of two countries and a few rogue religious fanatics, I'd be grim too. Chris Rock would DEFINITELY have helped (I loved "Dogma" too!).

    So, to quote one of my favorite movie critics from a long time ago: "No boobs, some buns, a couple of pints of blood -- Joe Bob says check it out."

    Nina

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