The Da Vinci Code: Difference between movie and book

The Da Vinci Code

Differences between book and movie

Dan Brown was born at Exeter the 22nd of june 1964 and he is an american writer, the da vinci code is considered his best work.

His father, Richard brown, was an important professor at Phillips Exeter Academy, university where dan studied.

Dan moved to holliwood to work as a song-writer but he left the city to study Art in Spain, where he started to develop his passion both for cryptography and Leonardo da vinci’s masterpieces.

The da vinci code is the fourth thriller novel of the writer, which was written in 2003 but its movie was released the 19^th of may 2006. The book has received several critics especially by some representatives of the catholic church who took offence of the accusations launched against the opus dei and accused brown to belong to a pro-masonic area in return.

Other critics arise because of the amount of historical inconsistencies, but the author himself remembers at the very beginning of his book that his work is partially result of his fantasy.

The Da Vinci Code starts with the murder of jaques saurniere, former curator of the museum of the louvres, place where saurniere has been assaulted in the dark of the night by an appalling mysterious man, Silas.

Silas was an albino monk of the opus dei, and he strongly desired something of which the curator was in possession of, tough the curator wasn’t willing to hand it over to him at all.

Mortally wounded, Saurniere makes the alarm of the museum ring  holding himself strongly to a Caravaggio painting and leaving hints which he wrote with his own blood on the floor.

One of the two hints was a numerical code, which was later found out to be the fibonacci sequence, the other was a post scriptum which indicated a name, the name of robert langdon.

Landon was an art and simbology scholar and he was a teacher at Harvard University and he often held conferences on simbology and criptology all over the world.  That night Langdon was the first to be suspected for the murder of jaques saurniere even tough he had nothing to do with it. When the Police Inspector Bezu Fache invited him at the museum at that unusual time of the night, Robert was in serious trouble. if agent of the department of cryptology ,Sophie Neveu, hadn’t arrived to make him run away from the louvres he would have been unjustly arrested by the police.

Only after some events it turns out that sophie neveu was jaques saurniere’ niece, whom had arranged for Robert and sophie a treasure hunt using riddles and puns which were extremely difficult to solve. But what was it that jaques saurniere wanted the two protagonists to find? Why Jaques Saurniere had written with his own blood the name of Langdon? Robert and Sophie had received the supreme task of finding and protecting the holy grail, which is one of the biggest question marks of humanity, it is said that the holy grail encompasses all the secrets of the offspring of Christ. The opus dei was not an easy opponent to eliminate, and the two continue to flee and escape from it finding shelter from the knight Sir. Leigh Teabing, a famous researcher of the grail constantly accompanied by his butler: Remy.

Teabing soon became an opponent of the two protagonists, blinded by his progressive approach to the subject of research of all his life, the holy-grail. Teabing doesn’t know that his butler is actually a helper of the opus dei which with the promise to give remy a huge amount of money pushed him to spy and control any research cavalier Teabing did to get to the grail.

The key point of the clues is the interpretation of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, in which the figure at the right hand of Christ would not be the beloved disciple, but Mary Magdalene, as it can be noticed by the alleged feminine features of the figure. According to the alleged discoveries of the author of the novel, the hierarchy of the Church, throughout its history, would have intentionally concealed what is reported by the Gnostic and apocryphal Gospel of Philip, which speaks of a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. According to the mysterious and esoteric sources of Brown it is right Magdalene to be symbolized in the medieval legend of the “Holy Grail”. According to Brown, Christ himself had designated the Magdalene to succeed him as head of the Church, in tribute to a “divine feminine principle” often cited by the author. Maddalena would be the incarnation of the Sacred Feminine, which represents the spirit of the Mother Goddess. The secret of Christ and Mary Magdalene’s offspring was kept throughout history, first by the Merovingian dynasty and then – from 1090 into the Holy Land – through the Priory of Sion, a secret society which the custodian of the secret of the Holy Grail. This secret society was prolonged throughout history, first by the Rosicrucians and then in the typical form of esoteric and occult secret societies, counting among its adherents characters of the rank Leonardo, Newton, Hugo. The last heirs of the secret of the Holy Grail are at the top of this Priory and are the only connoisseurs of this important secret (the last offspring of the marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene) that threatens the fate of the Church and of Christianity. Opposition to the last heirs of the Priory is led by Opus Dei in the person of Bishop Manuel Aringarosa, which hires a converted killer, Silas, to steal the cryptex (a small stone cylinder) from leaders of the Priory of Sion that contains the secret of Jesus and Magdalene. The story becomes convoluted due to unexpected murders at the hands of this killer who kills the last four custodians of the secret. This is a complex as exciting investigation that develops as a path of Indiana Jones .. And the agent sophie neveu finds out at the end to have a key role in the whole affair, she was the direct descendant of Jesus’ offspring.

The Da Vinci Code movie was released in cinemas around the world the 19^th of may 2006. It can be said that ,in general, the film is very faithful to the book .. although some small changes have actually occurred:

1. Remy, in the book, confesses to Silas to work on behalf of the master, while in the movie he claims to be the master himself.

2. In the book, Robert is suspected by the police inspector bezu fache of murdering the curator of the louvres because his name was written on the ground and with the blood of saurniere, while in the movie langdon is suspected because the bishop Aringarosa tells the police that he heard langdon confess to the murder.

3. In the book, Sophie and Langdon find a note written by Teabing on the tomb of newton, while in the movie Teabing meets them personally, but he threatens them with a gun.

4. One Important difference is that in the book the agent sophie neveu at the end of story meets her brother at roslyn church, while in the movie the character of her brother has been deleted.

5. In the version of the book Langdon is in his room When he is awakened by the police, while in the movie when the police arrived he was signing some autographs.

6. Andre Vernet who in the book was a friend of saurniere and the director of a Swiss bank which robert and sophie had to visit, tries to subtract the two protagonists what saurniere had left them, saying that anything they found inside the box wouldn’t have been in  good hands if the two had continued to keep it in custody. While ,in the movie, andre vernet and jaques saurniere had never met eachother and so vernet tries to steal the protagonists the content of the box only for personal gain.

Compared to the movie, the book has a best sense of rithm, the writer dan brown is in fact considered to be a genius of the rhythm in writing. Both the masterpieces, book and movie, leave continuously with bated breath and with the desire to know always more and more, the search for truth is in fact the constant theme of this book … though “The Da Vinci Code” must probably be seen as a novel only, an invention, a thriller that has no pretense, but to keep glued to the book and why not, also to push a personal reflection on Church’s and art’s world.