Film - Think

Watching from Cover to Cover: The Da Vinci Code as Spectacle
(Published in Veritasse Magazine – May, 2006)

Harold and the Purple Crayon was always my favorite book as a child. It is about how a little boy named Harold draws himself through a series of dreamy perils into bed; the book is elegant, simple, and hypnotic. It is so simple that it actually begins right on the front cover, where Harold is already poised with his purple crayon to rush headlong through the book and its wordless narrative. Like all good children’s books, Harold had me hooked right as it left the shelf and the cover caught my eye. Though it may seem immature, this method of book selection tailors my literary tastes to this day. It is what directed me to things like 1971 edition of Swiss Family Robinson, the 1959 edition of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, and on one fateful day, the irresistible minimalism of the old Penguin edition of Catcher in the Rye.

The publishing industry is keenly aware of the fact that the first thing we see of a book is its cover, and the eye of the average bookshop browser can instantly identify at least four different genres from the distance of 10 feet: romance novel, techno-thriller, chick-lit, DIY handbook. The Penguin Classic, the Library of America, these book covers are a badge of honor. Such volumes are most effective when strategically tossed on the edge of a Starbuck’s table, instantly marking it as the territory of someone “in the know.” With great reason, graphic designers will speak reverently of such names like Germano Facetti, the innovative Penguin designer, or Fred Troller, who introduced Swiss modernism to bookish Americans. And there are many other pioneering book cover artists who wrestled with serifs, tangled with font sizes, and effectively branded literary tastes for generations of publishing. These days, it is no accident that the hand of a housewife in the supermarket or her husband in the airport will gravitate towards a particular title.

It is only relatively recently that a hybrid has appeared, an aberrant branch in the evolving art of book cover design. These are what the industry calls “tie-in” covers, which happens to a book after it has been adapted into a film. It is the reason why the alluring artwork on Louis Sachar’s Holes was replaced by a bland ensemble of actors peering across the title. Seabiscuit traded its timeless photo of Red Pollard for something matching the DVD cover of its adaptation. Or for a while, Jack Nicholson’s mug replaced the groundbreaking design of the original cover of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The reason for such aesthetic tragedies is simple: the recognition factor involved with these new covers turns aging classics into new bestsellers. It signals the end of a transition in which a book has ceased to simply be a book, but part of a multi-media package built around an original storyline.

Interviewing a few book cover artists for this article exposed an antipathy for this marketing strategy among this specialist set of graphic designers. According to Kevin van der Leek, a good book cover is “one that conveys the content of the book in a way that is intriguing and compelling to its intended audiences.” So when it comes to the use of images from a film, “while it might seem to cheapen the novel in some fashion, i.e. it’s crass, it has been proven to work…If I had my druthers, I’d prefer something more tasteful and respectful of the author’s work rather than the accomplishments of the film.” Joel Holland agrees. Changing the book cover is as he says, “The easy way out and ensures a certain profit.” Karen Templer, founder of Readerville, quite readily remarked, “turning a book into an advertisement for a movie is nothing less than bizarre to me.”

Ron Howard’s recent film, The Da Vinci Code, is an interesting test case for this mysterious process as it is currently available in two versions, one of which is the film “tie-in” that was approved by Sony, the studio behind the film. From its first screening at Cannes, the verdict was out. The much anticipated film adaptation of Dan Brown’s controversial conspiracy thriller had turned out to be a boorish pot-boiler. Slavishly faithful to the dialogue of the book, the Da Vinci Code is as close one gets to a surround-sound theatrical experience of a book on tape. On the one hand, it may prove the age old critical adage that what makes a good book good does not make a good movie. But on the other hand, as it is such a painfully faithful reproduction of the book on screen, it may just demonstrate how shallow the book was in the first place. I tend to agree with the general critical consensus that the film is just “boring,” which in the information age is about the worst thing that can be said of such a massive production. This is a far greater sin these days than blasphemy.

Despite its attention to detail in the construction and use of famous locations central to the book, the film simply does not capture the spirit of what many called a “page-turner.” Ron Howard has built a career on the clean, solid direction of scripts rich with emotional detail and depth of character. Neither of these are features of Dan Brown’s writing. Unfortunately, the only times that Howard does fiddle with The Da Vinci Code are the few attempts he makes to take the edge off the more controversial features of Brown’s historiography. Robert Langdon is more of a skeptic in the film than he is in the book, becoming a bit of a foil to Sir Leigh Teabing’s extravagant religious claims. Some of Teabing’s lengthy speeches are even toned down a notch in the film. Rather than revealing a secret that will as the book says “devastate the very foundations of mankind,” the final cut of the film simply has Teabing revealing a something that will “devastate the very foundations of Christianity.” A far less sweeping, yet unintentionally more pointed, claim. And many of the conspiratorial pop-culture references made by Dan Brown in the book are simply eliminated. Excepting these few attempts at moderating Dan Brown’s excesses, the film is resolutely faithful to the book.

In Spike Jonze’s delightfully irreverent film Adaptation, we get an insider’s glimpse into the book to film process. In a direct mimicry of the actual struggle of screenwriter Charlie Kaufmann to adapt The Orchid Thief, the film chronicles the efforts of a fictional “Charlie Kaufmann” in adapting the same title. As The Orchid Thief is more about orchids than anything else, the real life Kaufmann turns to a wild assortment of plot twists and intrigues that plague the story of his onscreen counterpart in order to bring the book to life. What we are left with in this film about the making of a literary adaptation is the sense of struggle inherent to the process. Literary adaptation is more than just the process of transitioning a story from words to images, it is about the conflicting narratives of author and screenwriter and the reproduction of the reading experience in an entirely different aesthetic vocabulary.
I wish Akiva Goldsman, The Da Vinci Code screenwriter, would have had this same struggle in scripting this film. There is no sense at all that what we have in The Da Vinci Code is the result of a long process of wrestling words into images. As already noted, this is not entirely Goldsman’s or Howard’s fault. It is ironic that a book about the vitality and creativity of words, images, and religious symbols in history is so shallow from a literary point of view that it does not lend itself to an adaptation that taps into film’s predilection for symbolic reflection. C.S. Lewis once quipped that Satan’s best ploy was to convince the world that he is silly, just a cad. Likewise, this film will enjoy its mediocre status. Riddled with fantastic historical error, Dan Brown’s preposterous reasoning assaults both the dignified presence of Christ in early Christian theology and his unabated historical influence. The filmed adaptation of his reasoning, however, can really only be charged with the sin of bland sensationalism.

To be fair, critics argue over what makes a good literary adaptation. Should we expect a rigid faithfulness to the novel? Or should film give books a chance to breathe? Should it give directors an opportunity to express their freedom as a reader to expand upon the ambiguities of a text? We can see both of these approaches in the series of Harry Potter films, one director treating a volume literally (Chamber of Secrets), while another stakes his claim in the key images evoked by Rowling’s literary skill (Prisoner of Azkaban). This example is notable in that the Harry Potter series has resolutely adhered to its original cover artwork, so much so that the film has mimicked its imagination in the selection of its actors and costumes rather than the other way around.

There seems to be a fairly simple decision making process in place for the publication of these transitional book covers. Allison Barrow of Transworld Publishing, responsible for the British publication of The Da Vinci Code, shared with us the following logic: “Generally if we have already published a book, and we perceive that the subsequent film is going to make a major impact, then we would adapt a cover to reflect the imagery from the film.” If by “major impact” she means that the film does well in the box office, then The Da Vinci Code certainly fits the bill. As the book cover designers pointed out above, it makes sense then that the related cover would bank on the instant recognizability of the film’s major stars.

This poses a precarious relationship between filmed adaptation and their related book covers, and all this discussion of book cover design provides a convenient analogy for the relationship between books and film. There is a sense in which flawed literary adaptations share in the mistake made by their related book covers. Just as these new covers highlight a tangential, marketable image of the film’s storyline, some adapted films fail to transpose the compelling artistry and ambiguity of a given text to the screen. Likewise, just as good book covers serve as an instant point of contact between a reader and a novel, so do good filmed adaptations become imaginative representations of the thematic concerns of a literary classic. Showing rather than telling, they in some way become a symbol or reminder of the reading experience.

It may be the case that we can’t judge a book by its film, but we can certainly judge a filmed adaptation by its cover. The edition of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin linked to its panned 2001 adaptation features Nicholas Cage and Penélope Cruz in a cliché romantic embrace, a far cry from the profound elegance of this historical epic. On the other end of the spectrum, fans of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas think fondly of the film as they glance at its “tie-in” cover, featuring Johnny Depp and Benecio Del Toro as the effective embodiment of its infamous anti-heroes.

Concerning Dan Brown’s book, Allison Barrow pointed out that “sometimes a film
option is raised as part of the acquiring deal, but film options can exist for many, many years without being finalized, and it is rare for a book to translate so quickly to the large (or small) screen.” In the case of The Da Vinci Code, then, its new cover also participates in the unique spectacle of this Hollywood production. Even though the book and film may not merit the consideration they have received, it is easy for a publisher and publicity team to turn such books into cultural events. We all lived through the endless editorial about the book, and then the hype surrounding the film. And now as a representative of all flawed literary adaptations, the film is little more than a lengthy version of its new cover. Now we will always have the new book cover, and even Doubleday’s special edition of The Da Vinci Code screenplay, as a monument to this remarkable marketing achievement.