The Da Vinci Code
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that Teabing claims is in the Da Vinci painting. By the time Teabing finishes his
demonstration of why the figure of John in The Last Supper is really Mary
Magdalene, most viewers are ready to accept the theory that Da Vinci’s painting
contains a shocking secret about Jesus and the Holy Grail. Especially persuasive
is the moment when Teabing moves the image of “Mary” to the other side of
Jesus to show how the images fit together in a domestic or romantic position.
As the scene in the armored truck in the film demonstrates, an even stronger
connection with the sacred feminine is made when Sophie and Langdon are
fleeing from the bank. Langdon is sweating as a result of nerves triggered by his
claustrophobia, and Sophie puts her hands on his temples. Her healing touch
reduces his distress. While she is touching him, she tells how her mother did this
for her, foreshadowing her strengths based on her ancestry—the healing hands.
Healing, the film demonstrates, comes through the women, through the sacred
feminine.
Moreover, Mary Magdalene’s sarcophagus appears in the film several
times. Sophie’s face is on the sculptured body atop the sarcophagus. This visual
connection between Sophie and the figure on the sarcophagus functions as a
kind of visual DNA for film audiences.
The film also uses the image of an alabaster jar to emphasize the sacred
feminine. When Langdon and Sophie reach Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, they
find only an alabaster jar in the room where the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene
once rested. At the end of the film, an alabaster jar stands next to her
sarcophagus far below the Louvre. This image of the jar calls attention to the
story in the “Gospel of Matthew” in which an unnamed woman pours perfume
on Jesus’s head from an alabaster jar. This anonymous woman is often
connected to Mary Magdalene, although there is no indication in the gospel that
the woman with the jar is Mary Magdalene.
The images of the sarcophagus and the alabaster jar illustrate the power of
film to create a suspension of disbelief in an audience. In the novel, the “proof’
of the secret about Jesus and Mary Magdalene is buried amid pages and pages of
historical and theological information. The camera, however, can focus on a
specific element such as the alabaster jar and create a sort of “truth” through
showing rather than describing. The visual can persuade the audience.
Two seemingly minor plot shifts already noted are highly significant for the
film’s emphasis on the sacred feminine. The first plot change is the elimination
of Sophie’s living brother. In the novel, he is the docent at Rosslyn Chapel, and
Sophie is reunited with him. In the film, the docent is merely one of the crowd
of protectors who guard the ancient secret. By writing Sophie’s brother out of
the story, the film eliminates the masculine line of Jesus’s descendants and
places the historical-religious burden on Sophie, thus strengthening the concept
of the sacred feminine. Sophie is the only living descendant of Jesus and Mary
Magdalene in the film. The matriarchal line or the sacred feminine is the only
surviving connection with the beginnings of Christianity.