Clearly, this would be a juicy role for anyone to play; Paul Bettany, who also co-starred in Howard's A Beautiful Mind, manages to do something totally unexpected. He makes us fear Silas and feel sorry for him at the same time. He makes us stare at his naked, scarred body not because the sight of it is gratuitous, but because it helps us understand his need for self-flagellation, the depth of his torment, the extent of his will. All this in just the first few scenes.
And then there is Ian McKellen, who could have walked on a sound stage and read the entire Bible and made it worthy of a movie ticket. As Sir Leigh Teabing, the eccentric millionaire grail expert who provides Robert and Sophie with sanctuary and more answers than they had hoped for, McKellen flat-out steals every moment he inhabits. He livens things up, immediately and gracefully, as a brilliant but dirty old man wandering around his cluttered French castle with a pair of canes and a mind full of conspiracy theories.
But it is where he leads Robert and Sophie, and ultimately the film itself, that might irk a whole different group we have not mentioned yet: Da Vinci Code purists. We would not dream of giving any secrets away. We will just say the ending is slightly different, for better and for worse.
Something Robert says as the film reaches its conclusion, though, is more significant than anything else anyone has said about the film -- off-screen, that is, not on it.
As Sophie struggles to understand her true identity, Robert tries to assuage her: "What matters is what you believe." Later in the scene, he repeats that phrase, placing the emphasis on the word "you." Surely this is Howard's olive branch to the critics and protesters, who are vocal and organized -- his assurance that what he is offering is filmic fiction, and nothing blasphemous intended to undermine anyone's faith.
It's the strongest statement in the entire movie. And it comes far too late.
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