Within the genre of suspense, there are those films that keep you on the edge of your seat and those that leave you sleeping in your seat. There are those that race so fast you never see the end coming and those whose finish line looms further away with every minute. There are those that make you go wow, and those that make you go huh? As for where this weekend’s Angels & Demons fits into the spectrum? Let’s just say that it isn’t exactly the kind of heart-racing suspense that leaves you breathless. But at the same time, compared to so many suspense films that deal with no more than soap-opera drama, the one thing Angels & Demons remains holding onto even after two hours is a story that still offers some thought-provoking substance to chew on.
Basically, Angels & Demons is the story of the Vatican in peril. When the movie begins, the Pope has just died. Several days later as the College of Cardinals prepares to elect a new Pope, the four preferiti (the favorites for the position) are kidnapped. Throw in a ransom video promising the hourly execution of each Cardinal followed by the destruction of Vatican City by a canister of antimatter (the so called “God particle” recently discovered and stolen from the CERN). Sign it all with the brand of the Illuminati, an ancient society of scientists once condemned and persecuted by the church, and their quest for revenge. And what you’ve got is pretty much a late-night tourist trip through Rome led by Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), punctuated by several gruesome deaths, and topped off with a final revelation that doesn’t so much make sense of everything that came before it as it proves that most of it is actually irrelevant.
As for the meat at the story’s center, central to Angels & Demons from beginning to end is the notion of an almost cataclysmic conflict between religion and science. Pitting the Illuminati against the Catholic Church, the film’s central crisis not only resurrects past conflict between the two but also slowly ticks down to the very possible destruction of one by the other. Before the movie even starts, conflict is already brewing over the mere proposal that such a thing as antimatter, the particle supposedly central to the moment of creation, might exist. And with the antimatter set up to be the tool of the Vatican’s demise, as one character says, if the ticking clock is not stopped, science will literally obliterate religion.
But while almost the entire film derives its tension from the battle between science and religion, just as early as the ticking time bomb of religious and scientific conflict starts, so is it proposed that religion and science really need not be at odds at all. We see that one of the scientists working on the antimatter experiment is actually a priest. As one character says, science and religion are not enemies, they are just different languages. And although some might say that the theory behind antimatter attempts to replace God with science, as others propose, antimatter could just as easily be scientific evidence of what the hand of God the creator looks like.
However, with a few late-act twists and unmasked villains thrown in, almost more prominent in the unfolding story is another conflict. You could call it the battle between good and evil. You could look at it as the clash of saints and sinners. Or as the movie puts it, you can see it as the problematic coexistence of both angels and demons. Out of the body of the Catholic Church arises the movie’s villain. Out of proclaimed devotion to God come acts of violence and self-promotion. And from the hands of those who preach peace and goodwill toward all comes a threat to deliver death and destruction to thousands.
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May 18th, 2009 at 1:01 am
Science shows how it is done.
Faith shows who did it.
Science is amoral.
How to use science is a moral question.
So science ultimately cannot answer questions of life; most importantly the purpose of life itself.