THE blockbuster novel “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown, which has been read by millions of readers around the globe, has now been turned into a film starring Tom Hanks as the code-cracking scholar Robert Langdon.
In this exclusive interview, Hanks talks about the film and the experiences he had making it.
What is so fascinating about the novel of the century?
Well, I was fascinated by the realistic pace that Dan Brown kept up. The book really just tears through and it’s really such a page-turner. The scavenger hunt aspect of it, the way it takes you from clue to clue to clue — it’s a participatory book. The reader takes part in trying to figure out what each anagram means and what each clue could possibly mean. Then when they’re all let in on the solution, people slap their heads and say, “Oh, wow! Why didn’t I see that?” I think that’s one of the reasons why it is so popular. Da Vinci himself is...
He’s an enigma.
He is. We all are so familiar with so many of his works, and yet here he was, this man of blinding genius who could write backwards with both hands. I think that the title itself, just the fact that it includes Leonardo, has an awful lot to do with the attraction to it. We just love Leonardo Da Vinci. Everybody does.
He painted the Mona Lisa when he was 51. You are going to be 50.
I will soon be, yes, so I still have my Mona Lisa to come. Good to know. It’s nice to know.
It was the smile of his mother.
Well, you do a little bit of research. You find out these fascinating things about how he painted. I think people view him as some sort of diabolical genius simply because he was a genius, because he was just so creative and he hands us this magnificent output. And [we] lesser mortals try to figure out, “Well, he must have been up to something.” But I actually think he just loved to paint, and loved to think, and loved to write things down, and that’s the way he lived.
Are you happy with your decision to play Robert Langdon? What were the challenges in playing this character?
All parts are challenges. The challenge for this role was to have it all make sense. He’s a brilliant symbologist. The chore is to keep it lively and be able to communicate somehow in a film all the stuff that is written down in the book. You can’t just talk and say all this stuff on and on and on. You have to put it into conversations. You have to let it bleed out somehow. But it’s actually a very well-made role because there’s no extraneous stuff really that goes on with it. It’s just enough back story of what he’s doing in Paris and from there you just take off. You just make it live. That’s the challenge of doing any role, is to make it live.
Did you also meet Dan Brown?
I spoke to Dan Brown briefly on the phone well before we started actually working on it. Then we were together in London with the cast for initial meetings, going over the script and what not, three or four months before we started shooting. A lot of it was asking him, “Okay, explain the rationale of why this stuff is so important.” I mean, part of it is the sacred feminine and part of it is the alchemy of going from man/woman all the way up to the Son and how that translates from the pure pseudo-science that it was, to the spiritual quest that the great heroes are on. It was a continuously fascinating discussion because every time he would explain something, it would lead to another question that we had. His volume of knowledge about the character and about the Grail quest and what have you, goes back for centuries upon centuries so I think he was able to confirm for everybody, but particularly for me, why it is so important and so fascinating to Langdon, the guy who sees symbols everywhere. And Dan Brown has that knowledge.
What was the most difficult moment and what was the best moment during the shooting?
The difficult part of the film was trying to get all of this information, this subliminal information, this knowledge inside every character’s head, to have it come out somehow in a way that was realistic. We were constantly talking in the rehearsals and going over [it] with all the cast members and with Ron — I’d say, “Well, yes, but I would already know that. Why would I say it if I already know it?” The great puzzle was how to construct these scenes where there is an organic presentation of all this information. That was the huge challenge and it never went away. Every day on the set, every scene, if we were dealing with big chunks of dialogue we were constantly trying to balance out. What do we know? And what do we have to communicate? And do we really have to communicate it? We don’t have the luxury of people reading five pages about Madonna of the Rocks per se. So how do you deal with it, if at all? The great part is that we got to do it on such a grand scale. We did everything in this movie, from having important words being communicated in a car — of course we’re in a Smart Car, shooting on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris at 3 o’clock in the morning, in the middle of the Louvre as opposed to a fake bathroom or an office somewhere. That was the grandiose part of it all. We were operating on this huge, massive, very, very popular canvas that everybody knows about. And when everybody knows about it of course, then the great challenge is, if everybody knows about it, how are we going to surprise them? The challenges never go away.
Describe your feelings about acting at night in the Louvre under the eyes of the Mona Lisa, running through galleries of masterpieces.
We were continuously enthralled by all the masterpieces that we were around.
We shot other scenes that aren’t used in the movie, like a scene when I’m walking with Jean Reno in front of the huge painting of the coronation of the Empress Josephine. It’s one of the most famous paintings ever, never mind that the Mona Lisa is in another room where all of our equipment is being stored and where I have to go change my clothes. I have to go around the corner and change my clothes in front of a statue of Apollo that is [probably] 5000 years old. It was a constant bonus to the day, to the night, to the experience. And [we] still worked the same way. We still had the slate. We still had the cameras. We still had the dolly track. We still had to get the shots. But it’s one of the huge bonuses of the movie. In other circumstances, you’d have to change everything. You’d have to build a completely fake Louvre and that’s not easy to do. You’d have to say, “Well, we’re not going to shoot in the Louvre. We’re going to make this other museum sort of look like the Louvre. And it’s not even a museum. It’s an abandoned hospital, but the rooms sort of look like it.” A substantial challenge to the movie is to live up to the world’s biggest-selling book, as well as [to] a couple of the world’s most famous buildings, the Louvre being one of them.
What are your personal top five movies?
Of all time? Oh, dear. Well, the movies that I can see over and over again? Well, I can still watch “2001: A Space Odyssey” over and over again. Let me try to figure out some more recent films. If you haven’t seen Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant,” it is one of the most bone-chilling films I’ve ever seen. It’s almost as “now” as you can imagine. It’s mostly the subject matter and how they handle it. That was astounding. I’m trying to figure out the best movies of the last 10 or 15 years because I’ll just go back to the same classics. You know, “The Godfather.” Also, “Fargo” by the Coen brothers, which you can just watch over and over again. I can, anyway. I just think it’s perfect. I think it’s absolutely flawless. I won’t name any of the movies of the last year or so because it sounds like you’re talking about the Academy Awards or something, but there were some awfully good films. Oh, and I still say, “Boogie Nights” by Paul Thomas Anderson — that movie was a revelation.
Why do people love to go to the movies? Is it an escape or is it a passion?
That’s a good question. It’s all of those things. It’s not just one thing. Sometimes we have to go off and be with other people in a room, in a collective room and have our attention in one place. But you don’t have to go with somebody. You can go by yourself to the movies and feel that. I think sometimes you have to feel like you’re a part of something bigger than just yourself and certainly the cinema has always been able to do that. But so has a day in the park or a visit to a museum or going to a sporting event. That can make you feel as though you are connected to everybody else in the world. Certainly, not all movies do that. Sometimes you go to the movies and you hate the time you wasted sitting at the movies. But movies are, at their core, both a participatory art in that you’re taking part in something much larger than yourself, and at the same time, a very, very particular, personal experience. I think it’s the human condition to seek that out periodically. I think you have to. I’m not saying you have to go to the movies periodically. You have to seek out that thing every now and again. You have to go to the cycle races or you have to go to the carnival or you have to go and sit in the café and have a conversation with somebody or you have to go to church. You have to do that. It’s what human beings do.
You have to dream.
You have to go off and be inspired. You have to ponder things and have things come into your head and say, “I’ve never thought of that before. I didn’t think about it until I saw this film or had this conversation or saw these two little kids playing in the sandbox.”
Do you have any advice for young people to succeed in life?
Avoid liars and jerks.
Were you able to meet President Chirac at the Louvre during the shooting?
No, not the President. We met the Minister of Culture who came and visited. But he has a very interesting philosophy about letting us shoot in the Louvre and letting other people utilize all of those treasured buildings throughout all of France, including ruins and castles, because otherwise they become just these dead, static buildings that people come and visit. Then they go away and they either make money or they don’t. He wanted to make them alive and vibrant in some way that is not just “stop number five” on their tour. France is rich with that. It will be very interesting to see how much more people are going to be able to start shooting in Versailles. Are they going to be able to shoot in Aix-en-Provence and places like that, which are still the cultural sites that people want to see?
Is the genius of Leonardo da Vinci central to the success of the book and the movie?
I think so. I think the unspoken character that exists in this is Da Vinci. He’s somewhere, constantly lingering off-camera, guiding from the grave so to speak.
How did you like working with Audrey Tautou? Did you fall in love with her?
Audrey is an artist. She would do this funny thing. We would be at a table and we’d be talking, talking, talking, all in English. And I would just look over at her and she’d be going back over things, not paying any attention to what we were saying. It was going in one ear and out the other. Not getting any of our jokes. Then we’d think we were done with some scene or some page that we were discussing and then she would say, “Yes, but . . .” and out would come this point that had completely passed us by or that could only come from the person who’s trying to make sense out of playing Sophie. They were ground-breaking questions or opinions. She’s not a pushover. I’ve seen “Amélie” and “A Very Long Engagement,” and her characters were both very mysterious and very internal. There’s something going on there that is obviously coming from a place beyond, “well, these are my lines and these are my marks, so I’m just going to say them.” I think she’s very happy doing that kind of work. I think with the big attention on the big American movie, there were days when she yearned just to be on a small set where everybody knows exactly what they’re doing. Where they’re going to do three takes and then it’s going to be very specific, then they’re going to move on. I was always interested to get her version of how French films would handle certain circumstances and it was always very different. She’s intimidating in a lot of ways, but at the same time she’s an artist of the cinema. I mean, she’s not enthralled by the power or the attention that comes along with it. She has work that she has to do. If she doesn’t have a chance to do it right, it’s not a good day for her.
What makes Brian Grazer stand out in Hollywood?
He’s a very aggressive producer. There are some people that become producers because they fall into it from other disciplines. And he is not that. He is a producer. He knows how to work the meetings and get the material and force it on through. He’s willing and able to make alliances for the sake of the project. That’s a very particular kind of beast because a true producer plays a very particular type of role in the evolution of a movie. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s born to do. That’s what he lives and breathes every day.
How was it to act in an international cast?
It was exciting. It was huge with different disciplines coming into it, particularly when you’re working with people from other nations. They have much more varied resumes and backgrounds and experiences because a lot of actors have never been on the stage, have never done anything other than a couple of TV series and some commercials before they get into movies. It’s just a whole different sort of discipline that can come along with it. And to be with Paul Bettany and Sir Ian [McKellen], who have oceans of theatrical experience behind them, to see how they play inside the role, inside the scene... they have all come from distinctly different philosophies of how to be an actor that’s different from the American way. It’s valid and it’s impressive and it’s inspiring.
Is your philosophy of acting different than the European approach?
Well, I think everybody is going to have a different take on it based on all of their experiences. For example, Sir Ian, you can’t anticipate any sort of behavior or any sort of process from him. He just did it every time in some sort of new, delightful way. He just made sense out of things in a brand new way and every time he did it, he seemed to be having fun playing around with it, twisting it around a little bit. That ends up making every take being just ever so slightly different. And Jürgen Prochnow would come in and he was already so refined, right down to the individual timing and the pauses. He was so thoroughly prepared that it ended up being intimidating, exactly the way we needed to be intimidated by his character.
People have said you are a chameleon when it comes to acting. How do you achieve this quality?
I just think that my job is — as Shakespeare said a long time ago — to hold a mirror up to nature. I think that’s the only thing that I truly do bring to something. I say, “Well, what would really happen in a circumstance like this?” Part of it is, what do you need for the story? And what is this particular scene about? I think I have to be a conductor for a role. Why make it up? Let’s find out what would really happen in these kinds of circumstances and go on from there, if that’s what we’re trying to do.
What qualities do you look for when you accept a new role? Especially since you are in the position to be able to say “no” to projects.
Somehow the theme of the movie has to be worthy of being examined by it. It’s very expensive to make movies and they take a really long time. It can be a comedy. It can be romance. It can be a drama. It can be a movie about war. It can be about killing. But there has to be some sort of thematic question or position that is taken that everybody in the theater can relate to, everybody can say, “Well, what would I do if I was in that circumstance?” That’s what I look for when I go to the movies, just as an audience member. It’s not about the time it takes place in — I can see costume movies. I can see movies that take place in the future and I will still be asking myself, “Boy, what would I do if I was in that circumstance?” A movie that takes place thousands of years ago or 20 years ago or right now, they can all land in the same thematic place. I think that when I was first enthralled by the theater and by the cinema, by going to the movies, it was fun to see James Bond do his thing. Sometimes you could even put yourself in his situation — it would be cool to be James Bond. But the true emotional connections that I had to a film were the times that I came out thinking, “Oh my God, I want to be an artist like the people that were on that stage or in that film.” They made me wonder, what would I do if I was in this circumstance? Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. That ends up being what I look for in everything, not just in the movies that I make, but also in the movies that I see.
It was a pleasure to talk, thank you.
Thank you.
Showtime Discovery Channel will be showing “Da Vinci Code Declassified” starting May 10 at 22:00 KSA every Wednesday exclusive to the Showtime network.
The Da Vinci Code movie will be playing in most GCC cinemas on May 17, 2006.
