As expected, The Da Vinci Code opened this weekend to massive box office. Whether it makes $100 million by Monday or settles for 90, nobody involved will be hurt by any negative reviews. While it’s Tom Hanks and Ron Howard on the front lines, the supporting cast sort of gets to sit back and enjoy the hype. Alfred Molina, who plays Bishop Aringarosa, had a sense of déjà vu after enduring his summer of Spider-Man 2 in 2004.
“I think the amount of interest in this film certainly is equal to the amount of interest in Spider-Man 2,” Molina said in a phone call from his London hotel room. “But I think the amount of interest in that was almost a foregone conclusion in the sense that there was already a built in core audience of Spider-Man fans. And also because it was number two, there was a great sort of expectation that already had built up from a couple of years before, from number one. So I think that really was a case of just knowing how to wrangle that audience and how to wrangle that interest and to make it. Whereas I think this was probably a bit more of a gamble because although the book had been a huge success, it’s never a guarantee that just because the book’s a big hit the film’s going to spark off any interest. So I think in that sense, it was different but I think certainly the interest on this film is enormous. Of course it’s thanks to the absolutely unprecedented success of the book but also the fact that the film itself is being done by such a high caliber of people that are involved in it. They really constitute the best of the best so I think that gives the whole thing a sense that this is very much an event, this is an important film in the year.”
Having brought humanity to the a most outlandish comic book character, playing a conspiratorial bishop was easy. “I think I’ve always felt very strongly that when you play a villain, the last thing you do is in some way turn it into an attitude where you’re basically telling the audience, ‘I am the villain.’ In the same way that if you’re playing the romantic lead in the movie, you don’t walk around carrying yourself around as if you’re the sexiest thing in the world. That would just be really boring. So I think what you try and do is just find… I don’t like using words like the reality because there’s nothing real about it. But try and find that thing that’s very plausible and very authentic so the audience feel comfortable about suspending their disbelief and are willing to buy you in that role and go on this journey with you.”
In the case of Aringarosa, that thing was belief itself. “With any character, you have to believe in what you’re saying in the same way that he does. I always use the example that the actor playing Sister Mary Theresa has exactly the same responsibility as the actor playing Adolf Hitler. The responsibility is to represent those people as accurately as you can, regardless of whether they’re good or bad, evil or saintly, regardless of what they’re like, you have to represent them. You can’t misrepresent them. You can’t suddenly decide, ‘You know what? I’m playing Mussolini but I’m going to give him an Irish accent because I think that works better for some of the dialogue.’ You can’t do that kind of thing. But when you’re playing a character that’s fictitious, really what they’re paying you for is to be as imaginative as you can.”
Getting suited up as a bishop helped Molina get into character. “The bishop outfit is actually terribly comfortable. It’s all made to measure because if that’s what you wear all the time then you’ve got to be comfortable, so it was certainly a lot easier than wearing the Spider-Man tentacles. It was a nice change really.”
While The Da Vinci Code may be the biggest movie of the summer, it does not have the explosions or special effects that tend to dominate the season. Most of the story is just people talking about history and art. “It felt like a big movie in the sense that we all knew it was going to be a big movie. The most talked about book being made into a film by probably one of the most successful directors of all time, starring one of probably the most famous actors of all time, you kind of think, ‘Well, this ain’t gonna go straight to video.’ So you’re sort of aware of that, but in the making of it, it did feel actually very intimate. It felt very cozy almost. You didn’t feel like, on the set for instance, you didn’t feel like you were part of something that was like being on a runaway train or anything like that.”
With some of the film’s most intense scenes between Aringarosa and Silas, the albino monk played by Paul Bettany, Molina and cohorts managed to keep the set light. “There was a certain amount of actor-like banter. That’s always inevitable when you get two English actors together. Part of our modus operandi is to kind of slightly laugh at oneself, at one’s antics. Any British actor I know has this. There’s always a small degree of you can’t quite take yourself seriously. You can’t quite believe that you’re actually getting paid to do this. Unlike a lot of- - but I think it’s a healthy thing. It’s healthy to have a certain degree of- - it greases the wheels. I remember Helen Mirren once being asked about this in an interview and she was asked by the interviewer, ‘Why is it British actors are always like joking?’ And she said, ‘It’s part of our currency. It’s how we communicate, how we grease the wheels. It’s how we create an intimacy, so you can do the work.’”
Molina had just wrapped filming the historical drama Silk with Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley in London before joining his Da Vinci cast in Cannes for the premiere. “I play a French sort of bourgeois who finances a trip or a series of trips to Japan. He sends this young man to look for silk, to look for authentic silkworms. The young man then goes off and has these adventures, so I spend most of my time sitting in a very nice room saying, ‘And then what happened? What did he say? What was that like?’”
He is optioned for Spider-Man 3 or 4 but as the upcoming 3 will be dominated by Sandman and Venom, it is unlikely he’ll make a Willem Dafoe-like cameo. “It seems unlikely given Doctor Octopus’s style of demise, but if I get a call, I’ll be the first one to say yeah.”
The Da Vinci Code is now playing.
