‘Da Vinci Code’ lacks book’s momentum

The phenomenal success of Brown’s novel undoubtedly has much to do with recent Catholic scandals, discoveries like the gnostic gospels and widespread disgust that the church is covering up for criminal priests. The movie may seem even harder than the book on Opus Dei, perhaps because Silas’ bloody behavior is so much more graphic on film. His murder of a devout nun is especially nasty.

Defending the film against Catholic critics, Howard has emphasized that the script is fiction, and Hanks has even distanced himself from the story by calling it “hooey.” But the mixture of fact and fiction invites confusion, especially when Brown calls The Priory of Sion (which is crucial to the story) “a real organization” that was “founded in 1099.” Biblical scholars have proven otherwise, and so did last month’s “60 Minutes,” which debunked it as a 1950s hoax.

Will the book repeat its success on film? Record-breakers in one medium don’t always cross over to another. While “Decoding Da Vinci,” “The Da Vinci Deception” and other literary spin-offs from Brown’s novel are crowding book stories, movie spin-offs have not made much of an impression. “Rape of the Soul,” a documentary that shares Brown’s fascination with hidden messages in religious art, died at the box office earlier this year.

The huge success of Brown’s book, which was published in 2003, may have had something to do with timing. His earlier novel, “Angels and Demons,” published in 2000, covered similar territory (Robert Langdon was a major character), but it did not become a great success until after the publication of “The Da Vinci Code.”

It doesn’t necessarily mean anything that “The Da Vinci Code” topped the best-seller list for so long. After all, so did “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” which bombed as a film. And “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” starring a miscast Tom Hanks.

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