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A. ANGELS AND DEMONS
Little Capsule:
Cerebral symbolist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), brooding about the "meaning of it all" at Harvard University, is importuned by a Vatican cop to use his talent in the service of the Vatican. The occasion for such an unexpected offer of employment is a threat from an ancient foe of Christianity generally and Roman Catholicism particularly. The foe is the Illuminati. Although Langdon is a bit dyspeptic toward Rome for denying him access to the Vatican Library Archives and, thus, preventing him from completing volume II of his oeuve, he agrees to go. The Illuminati is a legendary organization worth learning more about. He goes. The pope has recently died, and the cardinals were gathering in Rome to elect a replacement. The papal office during this period was controlled by the Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor). There he encounters Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), who is a Swiss scientist.
She recently collected a respectable amount of anti-matter, which was suspended in a tube and held in place by a battery with a twelve hour shelf-life. When it goes, the anti-matter drifts toward matter, creating a very big "bang" at contact. Worse luck! It's been stolen. There is a deadly Assassin who is apparently working for the Illuminati. Eyeballs and bodies vie for floor space. Langdon, Vetra, the Vatican police, the Swiss Guard, and a potpouri of cardinals and priests enter the body of the film. As they interact, duplicity must occur. But who in the Vatican is a snake?
Having considered the symbolic meaning of the threatening note received by the Vatican, Langdon was now convinced that four shanghai-ed cardinals, each high-contenders for the seat of St. Peter, as the next pope, were the referenced "four pillars" in the note. Further, he understood that they were to be literally sacrificed as symbolic representatives of the "four elements" - with the "fifth element" remaining, meaningful and obscure. There was a "fifth element" because the occult ideology upheld it. Now, Langdon must be about his fathers' business! [His movie-character fathers: Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan, et al.] His mission to discover "the path" which might save the captured cardinals conveniently required that he have access to the Vatican Library Archive. Vittoria goes with him, becoming a translator in the process. Parenthetically, it seemed highly unlikely that "egghead" Langdon could have advanced so far without a knowledge of languages such as Latin. Naturally, Galileo was the pedant scientist causing Langdon such a problem.
At this point one might point out that Galileo was precisely the sort of scientist that the Vatican attempted to stifle, according to this didactic movie. Harassment of scientists "ticked off" the group that came together as the "Illuminati." They saw themselves as Promethean figures, while viewing the Vatican as being in league with "mean old Adonay." If Light were to prevail against Darkness, the Vatican & Company had to go, according to the Illuminati. Now, as a matter of fact, the Illuminati were descendant from ancient sources, and few of them were altogether respectable. Alchemists would precede them, for example. Indeed, Vittoria Vetra, capturer of the first significant "quantity" of anti-matter, thought her experiment might lead science to understand the condition existent just prior to creation (usually referenced as "the big bang"). Curiously, the Cabalah's rendering of creation "from a point" precisely matches that of the Big Bang Theorists. The Cabalah was also the intellectual/occult source for the "science of alchemy."
After Vittoria purloined a page from Galileo's volume III in the Vatican Library, she and especially Robert Langdon were off to the races, pursuing clues in the desperate hope of saving the captured and mortally endangered, papal front-runners. Beginning at eight o'clock, according to the note, one of the cardinals would be killed. At midnight the Vatican itself would be destroyed. I found the pursuit interesting. Further, the Assassin (Nikolaj Lie Haas) was played with suitable evilness. He was professional & quite cold at murder.
I also found the politics involved in the selection of another pope interesting. Both the Camerlengo McKenna, who has a surprise relationship to the pope, and Cardinal Strauss (Armin Mueller-Stahl) added intrigue and substance, respectively, to this story. I will mention Cosimo Fusco as Father Simeon as demonstrating how a small role can be done well.
Tom Hanks has received criticism from the Washington, D.C., crowd of critics, as they find his character, Robert Langdon, to be lacking warmth, liveliness, wit, sexiness, or violent disposition. They are devoted to Mel Brooks, Johnny Depp, and Sean Penn. They seem to blame Ron Howard and his writers, David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, more than Tom Hanks. I reject this criticism. I see Robert Langdon as being cut from the same pattern as Basil Rathbone's Sherlocke Holmes. I have always liked the Rathbone version and have never seen any Holmesian actor who was not rather sober and thoughtful. With Holmes it is the hunt! So it is with Langdon. Ron Howard provides an interesting puzzle, as well as dramatic events running parallel to the hunt to keep interest in the movie reasonably high. The locale offers considerable interest to those who treasure the monuments to papal and Roman visions of glory. However, the film is too long. The media "filler" could have been liberally edited out.
Hans Zimmer directed the music for this film, and Salvatore Totino directed the photography. There was a brief instance of camera work that seemed unaccountably shakey.
When I heard the critics of this film, I could not help but to think of a line from The Mighty: "Kenny Kane, Kenny Kane, had a son who had no brain!"
--JGS, June, 2009.
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