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The Da Vinci Code : Preview
16th May 2006 21.30 IST
By N. K. Deoshi

The Da Vinci Code is about some mind-boggling codes hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci – codes that are believed to be indicating towards a secret ‘truth’ that has remained hidden for hundreds and thousands of years.

The movie stars Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou (of ‘Amelie’), Ian McKellen, Paul Bettany, Jean Reno and Alfred Molina.

The story begins with a murder in Paris’s Louvre Museum that houses some of the best art works in the world. Before dying, the man writes a cryptic message on the floor. A part of the message indicates towards an American symbologist, Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks).

Langdon is summoned to the scene of crime by the Paris police. While the chief cop interrogates Langdon, a French cryptographer Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) – who also happens to be the estranged granddaughter of the murdered man – arrives on the scene. Sophie knows that Langdon hasn’t killed her grandfather. She is also convinced that her grandfather is trying to tell her something in his cryptic message.

Being a symbologist himself, Langdon is fairly well versed with religious history and arts. At first, he is baffled by the dead man’s cipher, but he eventually decodes the message and finds that the dead man is pointing them towards the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci in the same museum.

What Langdon and Sophie find at the paintings shocks them both. They realize that the deceased man is leading them towards a bigger secret, a secret of great importance and significance – a keystone that will reveal to them something unimaginable, something related to the Holy Grail.

The keystone needs a password to open. Langdon and Sophie, who are by now fugitives in the eyes of the Paris police, go to the British historian Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), a Grail expert and enthusiast who has spent his life to find the keystone.

Leigh Teabing clears to Sophie many misconceptions about the Holy Grail. Often, the Grail is referred to as the cup of Jesus Christ, the chalice. But Teabing’s assertions baffle Sophie. As Teabing himself puts it – the question is not where is the Holy Grail, but what is the Holy Grail. Or still better, who is the Holy Grail?

Langdon must figure out the password to the keystone to find the Holy Grail. It is a mind-bending cipher, full of cryptic clues that are hard to understand.

But Langdon and Sophie are not the only ones on the Grail trail. There is a bishop who belongs to a very devout Catholic sect, who must get the keystone and prevent Langdon from finding the Grail.

And there is an albino monk, Silas (Paul Bettany), who will stop at nothing to get to the Grail. Guiding Silas in this hunt is a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate in advance Langdon and Sophie’s every move.

What follows is a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond. Unless Langdon and Sophie can decipher the enigmatic riddle in time, the ancient secret – an explosive historical ‘truth’ – will be lost forever.

The movie is based on Dan Brown’s bestseller novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’. The book makes some explosive claims about the history of Christianity and the life of Jesus Christ. The book has faced strong criticism from the church and various catholic sects.

The film is set to hit the theatres worldwide on May 19. Before that, it will also premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

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The Da Vinci Code