People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to. – Malcolm Muggeridge
I’m a fan of Ron Howard. I’m also a Roman Catholic. So when Howard recently defended his upcoming film, Angels and Demons, on the Huffington Post from criticism leveled by William Donohue of the Catholic League, I sat up and took notice.
Here’s an understatement for you: Not everybody likes William Donohue. Whereas some admire him as a passionate defender of the faith, others view him as a hectoring, self-righteous censor, with a tendency to get red-faced and a bit shouty when locking horns on one of the ubiquitous news talk shows.
Howard, of course, is always calm and collected. Besides, he’s Opie; and who doesn’t like Opie? So I enter this fray with the greatest trepidation, fully expecting to regret every minute of it.
Howard’s panoply of defenses included that familiar old warhorse: don’t knock it if you haven’t seen it. Ordinarily I have a lot of sympathy for such an argument. In this case, however, Howard’s new film is based on a novel of the same name first published nine years ago. And it was written by Dan Brown who also penned The Da Vinci Code, which Howard rather faithfully (no pun intended?) adapted into a movie with the same star (Tom Hanks). So, score one for Donohue.
But this isn’t about Howard vs. Donohue, as entertaining as that MMA match may be. It’s about Angels and Demons, alighting in a theater near you May 15.
A few years ago, intrigued by the fuss surrounding The Da Vinci Code, I read Angels and Demons. Why? Code was still in hardback, and Angels was only $7.99. I wasn’t about to give Brown the satisfaction of my $24.99 — not that I think his bank account noticed.
Later, I watched Code on cable (once again, not eager to give my money to an arguably anti-Christian work. So I think I’ve got sufficient standing to comment.
Reading Angels and Demons, I wasn’t so much struck by the work’s bigotry as by how badly it was written. The cliched style is the literary equivalent of cotton candy. And for someone with so much animus toward religion, Brown employs the deus ex machina more frequently than the Old Testament.
But more disturbing is Brown’s commingling of fact and fiction disguised as fact, aimed at convincing his readership that the Catholic Church is vehemently, even violently anti-science, and therefore anti-progress and anti-reason.
By fiction disguised as fact, I don’t mean standard historical fiction techniques like creating new characters against a backdrop of actual historical events. I mean massively altering or fabricating historical events and chronologies. For instance: virtually every historical fiction writer fudges dates a little, but Brown shifts key timelines by more than a century.
Perhaps Brown counts on most of us to be too lazy or obtuse to fact-check his work on the Internet. And judging from his hordes of unquestioning fans (and, usually, myself), he’s probably right.
[SPOILER ALERT: The rest of this article contains spoilers. If you don’t like spoilers and haven’t read or seen Angels and Demons yet, then you shouldn’t read further. On the other hand, maybe you should read on, because at least you’ll be armed against the falsehoods that pervade Angels. It’s up to you.]
So, I got off my duff (a matter of speech — I actually sat on my duff throughout this ordeal) and actually (gasp) looked up some of the claims Brown makes in Angels and Demons.
Here are just a few inaccuracies (hardly an exhaustive list) I picked up in several exhausting minutes on the Web:
Brown claims: Copernicus was murdered by the Catholic Church.
Fact: Copernicus died quietly in bed at age 70 from a stroke, and his research was supported by Church officials; he even dedicated his masterwork to the Pope.
Brown claims: “Antimatter is the ultimate energy source. It releases energy with 100% efficiency.”
Fact: CERN, the lab which plays an important role in his story, actually debunked this claim on their website: “The inefficiency of antimatter production is enormous: you get only a tenth of a billion of the invested energy back.”
Brown claims: Churchill was a “staunch Catholic.”
Fact: Any history buff could tell you that Churchill wasn’t Catholic, he was Anglican; nor was he particularly religious. The only things Churchill was staunch about were cigars, whiskey, and defending the British Empire.
Brown claims: Pope Urban VII banished Bernini’s famous statue The Ecstasy of St. Teresa “to some obscure chapel across town” because it was too racy for the Vatican.
Fact: The statue was actually commissioned by Cardinal Cornaro specifically for the Cornaro Chapel (Brown’s “obscure chapel”). Moreover, the sculpture was completed in 1652 — eight years after Urban’s death.
Brown claims: Bernini and famed scientist Galileo were members of the Illuminati.
Fact: The Illuminati was founded in Bavaria in 1776. Bernini died in 1680, while Galileo died in 1642 — more than a century before the Illuminati were first formed.
This last falsehood bears further examination, because the Illuminati are so integral to the plot of Angels and Demons. The great Baroque artist Bernini is also a central figure in Brown’s tale.
It may seem like a small “white lie” to change the timeline so drastically, and to make Bernini a key player in an Illuminati plot against the Catholic Church. But Bernini was an extraordinary Baroque artist who deserves better than Brown’s treatment.
Imagine that someone made a film that portrayed Steven Spielberg as a closet anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Movie fans would be justifiably outraged.
But Dan Brown wrote a book (soon to be a movie!) identifying another great artistic virtuoso, Bernini, as a secret atheist who hated the Catholic Church. In reality, though, Bernini was a devout Catholic who went to mass every day and pursued the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, which include up to five hours of daily silent meditation.
In one of the movie trailers (since taken down — I wonder why?), Tom Hanks chastises Vatican officials — “You guys don’t even read your own history!” — for not knowing about “La Purga,” the branding and execution of four Illuminati scientists in 1668.
The irony’s so rich, it could pay off the national debt. Because, you see, it’s Hanks’ character who doesn’t know his history. Repeat after me: there were no Illluminati before 1776. (Of course, that’s just what they want us to believe! Mwu-hahaha!)
Most of Brown’s historical misrepresentations tend to malign Christianity or the Catholic Church in particular. If these were just haphazard mistakes, you’d expect roughly half to be positive. But the book’s agenda clearly is to tarnish the Church’s image.
Some might argue that the Church has done a good enough job of that on its own, what with the Crusades, the Inquisition, the child-abuse scandals, and other shameful episodes in its past. Brown is like the cop who plants evidence on a suspect because he thinks he’s guilty. If his case against the Church is so strong, why make things up?
Nevertheless, Ron Howard encourages William Donohue to see the movie version of Angels and Demons for himself. The only reason that could make a difference is if the movie tones down some of the anti-Catholic aspects of the novel. So perhaps that’s a kind of acknowledgement that the book was too harsh, and the movie will, indeed, be different.
Well, there is one area, apparently, where we already know the film will stray from the novel. One of the bad guys is the Hassassin, whom Brown described as a “mahogany-skinned,” misogynistic Middle Easterner. According to the movie’s IMDb page, however, the actor portraying this character is… Danish.
His character name is altered from Hassassin (related to the Persian term for a Muslim sect) to the more generic-sounding Assassin. Some on the IMDb message boards suggest that the filmmakers changed him from a Middle Easterner because they were afraid of potential controversy.
So let’s get this straight: It’s okay to bash the Catholic Church as a violent institution opposed to reason. But don’t you dare make one bad guy (out of several) a Middle Easterner.
Why? Because Catholics may gripe, write letters, boycott, even sic William Donohue on you. But they won’t riot. And they won’t behead anybody.
To quote one of my favorite movies, “How do you like that? I buried the lead.”
Part II to come later…. Maybe….
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.