RON HOWARD - CODE STAGES JESUS MARRIAGE

A British film critic who has seen Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code says it depicts the novel's most controversial proposition -- that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered a daughter -- by staging the hypothetical events. John Hiscock writes in the London Daily Mirror: "As well as scenes of the Inquisition and of women being tortured, burned and drowned, Howard shows Mary fleeing the Holy Land for France and giving birth there." Hiscock calls the film "a superb thriller," and adds: "If anything, Howard has improved on the book by some judicious pruning and by going back into history to depict scenes that the novel referred to only briefly. There is no mystery about The Da Vinci Code's future at the box office. It will be a massive hit."

12/05/2006