You may object to The Da Vinci Code, but is it worth skipping breakfast?
A Catholic leader in India seems to think so. Joseph Dias, head of the Catholic Secular Forum, started a hunger strike in downtown Bombay Tuesday and encouraged his fellow Indian Roman Catholics to join him until the film adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novel is banned in their country.
And that's just one of a wide array of protests that took shape as the Wednesday world premiere of The Da Vinci Code at the 59th Cannes Film Festival approached.
Dias may have been home in time for dinner. India's Information and Broadcasting Minister, Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, announced Tuesday that he has put The Da Vinci Code's premiere in his country on hold for the time being after receiving more than 200 complaints.
"We are a secular country," Dasmunshi told reporters. "On any sensitive issue, we should take action after we examine every aspect. We have to be careful." He said that the movie, scheduled to open Friday, would probably just be delayed by a day or two.
There are about 18 million Roman Catholics in India, including 500,000 in Bombay, and most of the rest of the country's 1 billion-strong population is either Hindu or Muslim.
Reverend Myron Pereira, a member of India's Central Board of Film Certification panel, told the Associated Press that there was no reason to ban The Da Vinci Code, saying that the film is a work of fiction and "does not portray anything in an obscene fashion."
"People can protest anything since we live in a democracy," he said.
On Thursday government reps confirmed that the movie would indeed be screened in India, but that negotiations were in the works to add disclaimers to emphasize The Da Vinci Code's fictionality.
"There will be no cuts, no editing," Dasmunsi said, "just a disclaimer in the beginning and the end saying the film is a work of pure fiction."
For months various religious groups all over the world have spoken out against Ron Howard's film, condemning its premise that suggests Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene before he died. And now that the movie is more than a gleam in Hollywood's eye, the angry and scandalized are coming out of the woodwork.
On Tuesday a South Korean court shot down a Christian group's request to block screenings of the film.
"As it is clear that the novel and movie are all fiction? there is no probability that the movie can make viewers mistakenly believe the contents of the movie are facts," Judge Song Jin-hyun stated in his ruling. South Korea is home to about 13 million Protestants and 4.6 million Roman Catholics.
Judge Jin-hyun gets it. But try telling that to the 200 members of the Greek Orthodox Church who peacefully marched to parliament Tuesday in Athens.
"All religions merit respect, so why don't they show respect in this case instead of attacking all that we hold sacred?" Athanasios Papageorgiou, president of a St. John the Theologian group in Peania, Greece, told reporters.
Christian groups in Thailand made a very old-fashioned move Tuesday in actually demanding censorship from their government. Organizations such as the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand asked that The Da Vinci Code's final 15 minutes be cut and that subtitles "disrespecting Jesus" be altered. The groups also took a cue from the Catholic sect Opus Dei and asked that a disclaimer about the film's untruthfulness be tacked on before and after the film.
(Howard and Sony Pictures Entertainment have refused to add disclaimers.)
That National Council of Churches in Singapore, where the film has received an NC16 rating, have planned lectures to separate fact from fiction for moviegoers who might otherwise be deluded by Leonardo Da Vinci and his wily ways.
Although the problems with The Da Vinci Code have mainly stemmed from religious opposition, including the Vatican's call for a boycott, the film may just be an equal opportunity offender.
According to the AP, members of the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation have expressed displeasure with one of the film/novel's central villains, who happens to be the 68th evil albino portrayed on film since 1968. At least this one is played by Paul Bettany, right?
"The problem is there has been no balance," the head of the organization, Michael McGown, told the AP. "There are no realistic, sympathetic or heroic characters with alblinism that you can find in movies or popular culture."
And just in case you thought there were any unturned stones?
Philippine censors almost turned The Da Vinci Code into Midnight Cowboy, stopping just short of giving the film an "X" rating (which certainly would have been a first for a Tom Hanks movie) although they agreed that it was for "adults only" and slapped it with an R-18 rating.
In the end, government officials couldn't give the movie the sign of the diagonal cross because it "does not constitute a clear, express or direct attack on the Catholic church or religion" and does not libel or defame anyone.
That? and Dan Brown pretty much made it up.
"Those groups, like the conservatives who want it banned, maybe they can tell their friends, discourage their friends from watching it," Marissa Laguardia, chairwoman of the Philippine government's movie-review panel, told the AP.
"But it has to be shown. Otherwise we will be the only country that will not show this film. Thirty-six countries have already reviewed this film and they have not banned it. So are we just out of the Stone Age?"
Perhaps. Philippine authorities banned screenings of the film in Manila, the country's capital, Thursday. A majority of the city's councillors signed a resolution stating that the big-budget Hollywood movie was "offensive to the established beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church." More than 80 percent of the 84 million people who live in the Philippines are Catholic.
People caught selling pirated DVDs of the film could also be jailed for up to six months. The country's penal code states that it is a crime "to exhibit films which offend a religion."