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.

What on Earth is Christian Film Criticism? (MHP Column, 8.06)

There is a gaunt literary cliché that perfectly describes the state of what can only problematically be described as “Christian film criticism”: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For lack of a better term, self-professed Christians have been writing film reviews for a number of years, making savvy use of the internet to build large archives of Hollywood, independent, and foreign film reviews along with large readerships running the gamut from the irreligious to the classically fundamentalist. I count many of these critics as friends, and I hesitate to start naming names lest I leave anyone out. It is, however, handy to point to the Film Forum column run weekly (by the inimitable Jeffrey Overstreet) at the Christianity Today website as a current index of “Christian film critics.”

The taxonomist in me has attempted in the past to define “Christian film criticism” as a critical genre. Such attempts have been thwarted by the slippery nature of the terms “Christian” and “criticism.” But for now, and at the risk of certain judgment, one can assume something along the lines of the following unintentionally snarky clarification: “Christian film criticism is what happens when a Christian watches a film and then writes about it.” Over the years, Christian film criticism has naturally aligned itself with the same spectrum one finds in the mainstream media, from Entertainment Weekly type starred reviews offering catchy and alliterative little summaries of a given film to the full-orbed technical criticism one finds in Jonathan Rosenbaum’s frequent Chicago Reader slot, genuinely replete with film historical erudition and insight. At any given point, readers can find reviews on every point of the spectrum in between if they are willing to do a little digging.

Up to this point, “Christian film criticism” has been fine operating under this vague consensus, and only every once and a while does a somewhat definitive “guild” of practiced Christian critics flare up in debates over self-identity and purpose, most often on the Arts and Faith discussion board. There is a point to which mainstream “film criticism” labors under a similarly indefinite banner, the intent of criticism being most often defined by the type of media outlet for which it has been written. But there have been a few recent developments in the Christianity and Film world that seem to indicate that the best way forward for “Christian film criticism” is a more carefully defined set of expectations and intents, an extended moment of self-reflection before jumping back into the fight for readerships and recognition. I would even settle for a loose working definition, something along the lines of: “Christian film criticism is what happens when a Christian watches a film and then writes about it in light of X, Y, and Z.”

The Worst of Times

It is a bit rough calling it “the worst of times” for Christian film criticism. It would be better to say that it is potentially “the worst of times.” I am thinking here of one recent case in which a Christian film criticism outlet with a very large readership has begun a relationship with the largest Hollywood publicity machine focusing specifically on the niche Christian market. At the very least, the occurrence raised the possibility that Christian film review outlets could be co-opted by larger commercial concerns in the same way that any large mainstream magazine is eventually linked to a set of Hollywood production interests. In these cases, the lines between reviewing and advertising become blurred enough to render any film review useless. Simply put, Hollywood has discovered how eager American Christian ticket-holders are to see themselves on the big screen. The attention of Hollywood publicity machines did not fail to follow suit with all due haste. What sort of effect could this have on “Christian film criticism”? In the famous case of websites like Movieguide (or is it MOVIEGUIDE, I can never tell), the worst sort. Film criticism/reviewing can be big business, and as the market shifts to accommodate Christian tastes, so will the age-old Christian concern to be “culturally relevant” to accommodate typical market practices as well.

The Best of Times

On the other hand, Christian film criticism has come into its own over the last several years. One can flip through any number of monthly magazines, weekly columns, or frequently updated websites for current, cogent criticism. Apart from all this success in terms of quality and numbers, however, there are a few interesting features of this emerging landscape that herald good things to come. One could look at “Christian film criticism” in the same way that critics look at the emergence of several key moments in film history. The French New Wave, for example, was catalyzed by a small body of somewhat like-minder writers tackling contemporary and classic films from a remarkably different bent. Ideologically driven, technically informed, and undertaken as a labor of love, such criticism effectively altered the landscape of 1960’s cinema, arguably for the better. By no means would I want to establish a one to one correspondence on this point. Yet, in the same way, Christian film criticism is now widely published enough that it serves not just as a minor alternative to mainstream criticism, but as a provocative voice in a broader public and historic discussion. Some brands of Christian criticism are more effective in this respect than others. But if genres are defined by their strongest examples then “Christian film criticism” is well on its way to public self-definition.

The Good, The Bad, and the Slightly More Well-Defined

In light of some of the above comments, I think it is possible to say the following things about what “Christian film criticism” could be and/or should be:

1. Christian film criticism is the experience and analysis of film in light of both Christian theological and ethical concerns. It is theological in that it attempts to root the abstractions of film theory, film history, and film watching in the presence and experience of God in time and space. Aesthetic thoughts are theological thoughts whether one is conscious of it or not. It is ethical in that it seeks to adjudicate between good and bad film. It seeks to ascribe value to films that aspire to social justice, expose historical or intellectual falsehoods, and genuinely commiserate with the human spirit in its earthly travails. If theology is “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” then film is “thinking man’s thoughts after him,” and Christian film criticism consciously exists in the exchange between these two thought worlds.

2. Christian film criticism is distinct from the market concerns that influence many other mainstream media outlets. It is one of the central concerns of any criticism to ascribe value to a specific work of art, book, or film and rehearse the reasoning that leads to such a judgment. Legitimate criticism seeks ways to champion certain films, genres, or directors apart from the direct financial influence of an interested third-party. This freedom from the general market allows Christian critics to spend more time on the highways and byways, in festivals and arthouses, searching for underrated expressions of the human condition rather than simply covering what an editor with an eye towards publicity considers relevant. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) It is often thought that Christian cultural criticism needs primarily to be relevant. But Christian film criticism seems uniquely suited to the irrelevant and relatively unseen, utterly capable of interacting with the least likely to appear in Entertainment Weekly.

3. Christian film criticism is linked to the practical, technical experience of filmmaking. As mentioned above, the French New Wave gained so much steam by its desire to be in the trenches with filmmakers, and the movement was finally born when the distinction between critic and director became sufficiently blurred. As Godard once famously quipped, “The best way to criticize a film is to make a film.” This is not to say that every Christian film critic needs to drop what they are doing and start making films. This is to say that every Christian film critic at some point needs to step back and get at least a little hands-on experience in some sort of filmmaking. Fortunately enough, the visionary efforts of Mike Hertenstein with the Flickerings Film Festival (www.flickerings.com) offers precisely such an opportunity every year along with a great selection of screenings. Other than the practical concerns of actually watching films with more technical clarity, this feature of good film criticism has unique appeal to the Christian sensibility.

A key motivation for film criticism is the celebration of creation and ingenuity. A key motivation for Christian film criticism should be a theological appreciation of the very act of filmmaking itself, a technical awareness of the process of sight and sound. Far from being the anorakic hobby horse of film buffs, our building-block understanding of artistic craft should constantly, unfailingly emerge from our awareness of God as a creative being.

These three points go a long way towards further defining what “Christian film criticism” is, both with and against the sorts of film criticism one will encounter in other media outlets. And I don’t claim to speak for many here, as every practicing critic is a critic because somewhere in the back of their mind they have some niggling thoughts on criticism that are asking to be articulated. But by and large, the above three points are a good place to start the little conversation that will allow Christian film criticism to engage more fruitfully in the Great Conversation that is film and all of its interpreters. If anyone out there can define “Christian film criticism” in a few hundred words is interested in sending that along to me, I would be interested in printing those thoughts in an upcoming column.