An awful mess
of plots and chases
I'm no fan of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons,
says David V Barrett. But the film version is worse
15 May 2009

The new Dan Brown film is not offensive to Catholics: it is offensive to everyone who has to sit through it

Angels & Demons was expected to cause such great offence to Catholics that the Vatican banned any filming of it in Rome's churches, no doubt because of the previous Dan Brown film, The Da Vinci Code.

Now it has been released the offence it gives will be far wider: to include anyone who is unfortunate enough to sit through its two hours and 18 minutes. It's cluttered, messy and confused.

The plot, in a couple of sentences: a secret society called the Illuminati kill the pope and then steal a tiny amount of antimatter from CERN, the particle accelerator near Geneva - just enough to blow sky high the Vatican and everyone in it during the conclave. To emphasise their point they kidnap the four cardinals most likely to become the next pope, threatening to kill one each hour before the midnight Big Bang. Our hero, symbologist Robert Langdon, has very little time to solve a series of enigmatic clues, track down the killer, find the antimatter and save the world - or at least the Vatican.

Yes, it's all very silly, but then it is a Dan Brown story.

Considering its origins, don't expect much factual accuracy. Both the book and the film are frequently confused on science, history and religion (not to mention plot). For a start, there is absolutely no evidence of the Illuminati continuing after 1790, let alone till today, though Dan Brown appears to be a believer in all those "new world order" conspiracy theories about the Illuminati secretly running the world.

The film's reason for the Illuminati attack on the Vatican is that they are finally getting their own back in the long battle between religion and science. The Church has suppressed scientists for centuries; now it's payback time for the Illuminati, the Enlightened Ones. (The fact that the aims of the real Illuminati for their brief 14-year existence were actually social and political rather than scientific is ignored.)

The plot depends on clues left (very handily in English) in the margins of a document by Galileo, referring to various statues by Gian Lorenzo Bernini around Rome. Both are claimed to be members of the Illuminati. Galileo died in 1642; Bernini died in 1680; the Illuminati were founded in 1776. Enough said.

One of the main characters in the film is Fr Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), the Camerlengo, the Vatican official responsible for verifying the pope's death, for destroying his seal and for organising the conclave. Fundamental to the plot is that the Camerlengo is just an ordinary priest, not a cardinal, and hence not eligible for election as pope. This is wrong on every point: in reality the Camerlengo is a cardinal, is an elector in conclave, and thus is eligible for election _- as happened in 1939 when the Camerlengo became Pope Pius XII. And at the risk of giving away the ending of the story, there is no such thing as "election by adoration".

One further uncorrected Dan Brown inaccuracy: the film repeatedly calls the cardinals most likely to be elected as the next pope the preferiti rather than the correct term, the papabili.

But enough of nitpicking, however vital. Did the film succeed as a film, as an exciting, thought-provoking religious thriller? The answer is a resounding no.

The plot is mangled. I'm no fan of the novel, but at least it contained some clever working out of clues by the hero Langdon; this is completely lost in the film, which lurches from the killing of one cardinal to the next, with little in between other than frantic car chases through the streets of Rome. Entire sub-plots have been dropped, presumably to make the film simple enough to be understood by its intended audience. Unfortunately parts of the story have been rendered almost meaningless, including to a large extent the presence of Langdon's attractive female sidekick Vittoria, who stands around not doing a great deal for much of the film. The re-writing of the last quarter of the film reduces the original story to banality; the various climaxes, including the unveiling of the villain at the end, come over as unlikely, even ridiculous.

The dialogue is frequently unclear, especially when it's in an Italian accent - or in the case of Vittoria (Ayelet Zurer, "one of Israel's most acclaimed actresses") a faux Italian accent. Tom Hanks is wooden throughout, though from time to time he gives a meaningful stare with all the finesse of an actor in a school Nativity play.

The action is jerky, fragmentary, chaotic throughout. The plot and pacing have all the drive and direction of a blind man in a bulldozer. There are frequent leaps in action; too many vital points are poorly explained. At other times the action stops dead while Langdon, the Camerlengo or some other character delivers detailed expository lectures to other characters (but really to us, the audience), sometimes right in the middle of a chase. That's simply bad writing. The editing is clumsy; the score often a cacophony.

It's difficult to understand how such experienced film-makers can produce something so irredeemably awful without realising it. This film is, quite simply, a mess.

But is it offensive to Catholics? Not at all. It's almost as if this film is meant to make amends after The Da Vinci Code. Ultimately, even though there is corruption at the very heart of the Vatican, the Church comes out of it looking good. At the end a venerable cardinal takes Langdon to one side and says: "Religion is flawed - but only because men are flawed. All men - including this one" (indicating himself). If that's the moral of the film that we're all to take home with us, heaven save us from platitudinous clichés.