I saw the DaVinci code today with my ten year old son. We both loved it. We were delighted that so very much of the movie was in well spoken Latin. The movie is subtitled for those that have unfamiliar with the language. If subtitles bother you, you may not like this movie! The movie is much more violent than I perceived the book to be. Though there is violence, there's very little gore. It was well presented, enough to give it some punch but subdued enough with the blood to maintain its PG-13 rating. It was refreshing to see this was such a CLEAN movie - very little harsh language, and very little nudity. The movie WAS long, but it did not drag. My son did not once wiggle, or go to the bathroom. When the movie was over, he said it was "VERY GOOD" as compared to Narnia's being "OK." In the theater that I was in - for a Sunday matinee- there was considerable applause at the end of the movie. We did not see the 911 preview that some people have complained about. We did see a preview for The Omen, opening 6-6-2006.
------------------------------------------------ Now, for my rant. I personally am sick of all the fiction/nonfiction controversy over this movie, except for the fact that it is driving more people into the theaters. In all the debunking of the book that I've seen/heard, I have YET to hear anyone really address the ugly history of the Catholic Church that is presented in this movie. For all the chatter about Christians being uniformed of Biblical history, or history of the early Christian Church, the truth is that our populous is more informed that ever. There are millions of people that actively seek out and read the Gnostic gospels and look into the history of the Church. It is all available online - just a Google away - even the newly revealed Gospel of Judas. There is something very unsatisfying about Christianity for a lot of people. While it is true that the masses do need their opiates, and that the Church is that for many, there are a lot of people who are not intellectually or spiritually served by a cracker and some grape juice. There are many that do not even understand what the word Gnostic means - yet they intuitively sense that some higher teaching has been left out - there's something to Christianity that they just don't GET. Between the people that are looking for THAT, and people that have a disdain for the authority of the church, and people that just love crypto and puzzles - you've just got one wide audience that is willing to enjoy and consider such a theory as this movie provides. To argue over what the templars did or didn't do, or what blah blah blah did - WHO CARES? I have not yet heard the church respond to the DaVinci code by acknowledging how many Gnostics that they killed to preserve their power. They did. So much was secret back then - there was no real communication of such things as the massacre of the templars to the general public! Let them try that NOW. They simply hid the copies of the Gnostic gospels deep in the Vatican, and that was that. Now, we have a public that is highly literate AND highly wired. People ask questions and question authority. This IS the Age of Aquarius. Now I am a heretic, and pagan to boot. I see the Catholic Church's insistence that people do NOT use birth control as simply a way to insure it's power as a majority. I think they must care little for man's stewardship of the earth. So, to me, the response to the movie is highly positive - it IS people questioning authority, and allowing a man to publicly present a theory that is heretical to the power and teachings of the Catholic Church. But the real question is what if Jesus was simply just a man, and it was all about his divine message - not the innate divinity of his body of lack thereof. What if we really had to love our neighbors and consider that love as part of our foreign policy? What if we had to STOP loaning money for interest? What if we had to invite strangers to dinner every night, or shelter the homeless in our homes to be doing God's will instead of just putting money in some coffers and dressing up in our finest on Sundays? How many Christians would there be then? Probably as few as there are camels that could get through the eye of a needle. :) | 
