Film, Fiction, Faith and Fact

Spirituality Column #134
June 2, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Film, Fiction, Faith and Fact
By Bob Walters

Normally it doesn’t matter when a novelist gets as many facts wrong as Dan Brown does. I think Angels & Demons is a good example of that.

Yes, there is a Vatican, a Pope and a place called Rome. There are Christian icons, locations, histories and mysteries attendant to all three. Europe’s CERN laboratory is a real place; Harvard is a real college.

Brown’s novels though are fiction, as are his imaginative depictions of historic conspiracies and secret religious societies. In Angels & Demons, Brown’s 2000 novel concocts a thrilling tale with a thread of truth here and there, woven into a fictional fabric of highly entertaining action and historical rubbish.

Ron Howard’s 2009 film adaptation of the book starring Tom Hanks is a movie I planned to refuse to see, because I am still ticked at Brown for The Da Vinci Code. I don’t care so much that he writes fictional things about Christ or the Church or the Pope, because the Jesus Christ Who is my Lord and Savior is plenty big enough to withstand a novelist’s keystrokes.

So are the Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome.

What did tick me off were Brown’s disingenuous and potentially hurtful “Hey, this is the true story” attitude in his Da Vinci media interviews, and his ridiculous “Fact” preambles to these two fictional stories.

Note an important distinction: Telling a wild yarn isn’t a lie; it’s a wild yarn. That Brown calls these books fact-based, well, that’s a lie.

That the faith of so many people may have been shaken, dampened, or muddled by The Da Vinci Code’s misrepresentation of history, tradition and facts, surely grieves the Holy Spirit. It matters that the facts were wrong.

On the up side, thousands (or maybe millions) of us went into specific Bible studies to refute Brown’s theological nonsense. We heightened our awareness of important religious history and better understand the veracity of the Bible. That’s better than OK … it glorifies God.

At the end of the far-less-dangerous Angels & Demons movie – which I wound up seeing and enjoying – there is a tender line of utter truth that does not appear in the book, and to me vindicates the story’s spurious “facts” and dark ecclesiastical innuendo.

The chief Cardinal says to Tom Hanks’ character: “It is surprising sometimes who God sends to help us.”

Amen to that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) rarely goes to the movies, reads few novels, and as a general rule ignores network television.