Da Vinci people won?t bend

THE DA Vinci Code is fiction. Director Ron Howard, distributor Sony Pictures and the Indian organisations on a crusade against the movie have agreed on this fact. But then how do you word it? Should the disclaimer be in the beginning or towards the end?

Published on: May 20, 2006, 14:50:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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THE DA Vinci Code is fiction. Director Ron Howard, distributor Sony Pictures and the Indian organisations on a crusade against the movie have agreed on this fact. But then how do you word it? Should the disclaimer be in the beginning or towards the end?

There are no agreements here. The result: the film's release in India may be delayed. Following a petition from Christian organisations, the Censor Board had asked Sony Pictures to insert a disclaimer that "it is a work of pure fiction and has no correspondence to historical facts of the Christian religion". Sony Pictures declined, saying the regular legal card, which figured after the credits, stated, "The characters and incidents portrayed and the names herein are fictitious".

Is the meaning of "pure fiction" different from "fictitious"? While linguists and censors can figure that out, Howard was adamant at Cannes. "When we say 'a thriller', it is evident it is fiction," he said.

There is more to the hullabaloo. The Catholic forums wanted the disclaimer at the beginning and the end of the film. Howard said such a statement at the start would spoil the thriller. Never mind that the majority of film critics have already blamed Howard and Co for that.

But it is not the end of the road for The Code in India. "The producers or distributors can file an appeal against the Censor Board's decision at the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal," said an official in the I&B Ministry.

The distributors have already petitioned the censors to take a relook. "We are currently in dialogue with the board," said Vikramjit Roy of Sony Pictures. "So we cannot determine the release date yet." The Code buffs can keep their fingers crossed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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