Angels and Demons

I watched the film Angels and Demons today with a few friends at Chandan theatre in Juhu. We bought tickets in the stalls, not because we ran short of money, but because we wanted to go through the plebeian experience of siting in the stall. It was quite a let down because the general crowd which graces the seats in the lower altitudes of the theatre and entertains the other movie goers with their antics such as whistling and loud comments was missing today. We should have known! The general Chandan crowd would be missing for an English movie. Our disappointment didn't end there, we were left disappointed with what we saw on the screen as well.

The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown of 'The Da Vinci code' fame. It is set in the Vatican city and the plot revolves around a symbologist trying to solve a murder mystery. The most notable stars in the cast are Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor.

The movie had the general flaw that all movies based on novels have. It is very difficult to incorporate the entire story from the novel unless its one written by Hemingway (but then a director might not be able to show on the several elements that make Hemingway's work great) and therefore the audiences that have read the novel before, may feel that the movie is incomplete. My friends accompanied had not read the book before, and hence their opinions were useful to me to gauge how that half of the audience felt about the film. They found the film to be too quick paced with the character of Robert Lagdon played by Tom Hanks talking too briskly about the various historical facts which were central to the plot. Even though the movie is fast paced it is 2 and half hours long and hence they said the forgot a great number of the interesting facts that the story reveals. The various historical facts about the catholic and art, and about the famous medieval period men such as Galileo, Michelangelo and Raphael was the USP of Dan Brown's novel. Without the seemingly controversial trivia the plot remains an ordinary murder mys try with only a couple of twists. This trivia was not as prominent in the movie as it is in the book and hence the movie did essentially seem like a murder mystery. Hence my friends were left felling that they were served an old wine in a new bottle.

It is clear that the director must have had two things to keep in mind while making the movie i.e. to make the audience understand the plot and to make the audience understand the the historical details. Unfortunately as illustrated earlier these to objectives are conflicting. If the director had chosen to make the audience understand the historical detail then the movie would have become unreasonably lengthy. Therefore it seems that Ron Howard has chosen to give the plot the paramount importance.

What the movie lacks the most is strong characters. The movie has half a dozen important characters and director hasn't focused enough on developing them and the relationships between them. If he would have focused more on the motives of these characters then the movie could have probably have been more entertaining. The acting being average at best does not help this cause. Moreover he has wasted time in the opening scene by showing an elaborate scientific experiment when he could have used that time for a prologue or developing the characters, which would have drawn a clearer picture about the plot.

What is good about the movie is that it is shot in Rome. Here the movie wins some easy brownie points as it takes the viewers on a virtual trip to all the historical Churches in the city, which are rich with art. The cinematography is brilliant and captures the buildings from various angles that makes them look breathtakingly beautiful. The one image that remains in my mind is the one inside the Sistine chapel. Since i have not been there in person i was stunned at the brilliance of all the art on the walls and can now understand why it is said that some people break down on their first visit to the arguable the greatest piece of art ever created by a man. There is only one small shot of the inside of the chapel in the film, which is probably a good thing, because few more seconds focusing on Michelangelo's marvelous paintings on the wall could have led to the audience forgetting what had so far happened in the movie!

Angels and Demons is great advertisement for Rome and the tourist board will be very happy with the out come. However as a movie it could have been much better given the success of the book.