today we had an informal youth gathering where we went to watch the da vinci code. the plan was to watch the movie and then have a discussion time. only one of the youth had read the book, so this was their first taste of the whole hoop-la.
my personal take. it's a pretty good movie for the none reader of the book. there's enough going on to try to keep up with that you don't miss a long story. it does seem to end about three times before it actually does.
what i was really interested in though was the youth's reactions & questions to the movie. once we left the theater there were quite a few questions and thoughts. however, much of what the youth were interested in was, what i would view, the simple fictional creations. things like: "what's up with albino monk?" "why did that guy whip himself?" making the male female symbols, and "i didn't get where the pagans were in this, aren't they into devil worship?"
i suppose they never caught on to the Constantinian conspiracy development of the canon and exclusion of gospel of Mary Magdalene. in the movie that stuff moves by so quickly that for the viewer of the movie without having read the book, or having some good historic knowledge, would miss that stuff.
we had a debriefing/question time where i shared some of what i felt were significant liberties of history woven into the story. we talked as a group answering each others questions, but those were more like a discussion after any movie that has a number of turns with the "why was that the password?" type of question.
in all, not the most damaging film every created. it could be a tough to pallet if people are not okay with something that will challenge their 'truth' beliefs. if someone doesn't have a strong faith they could be persuaded into believing all things to be truth within the book. the movie may just get folks talking about the conspiracy theory of the church, but the history markers are probably safe.
if you are thinking of doing something like this do some research. might not have to do as much as you would think with youth, but it's probably important to touch all the bases. there are ton of dedicated sites to the story and debunking 'the code.' i also enjoyed listening to this conversation at duke divinity school on the subject.
