Dan Burstein's Secrets of Angels, Demons & Masons

Like any lucrative pop-cultural phenomenon, the massive success of Dan Brown's novels Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code has spawned a veritable flood of DVDs and other products aimed at capitalizing on Brown's incredible success. Most of this opportunistic material is substandard fodder aimed at gullible consumers, but Dan Burstein's Secrets of Angels, Demons & Masons at least tries to offer a legitimate, deeper examination of the facts and (mostly) fiction behind Brown's books. Part one of this slickly produced two-part documentary covers concise histories of the Illuminati (the secret society that is intimately connected to the intrigues in Brown's work), conspiracies against the Catholic church, the historical controversies swirling around several papal legacies, and the age-old conflict between science and religion, while part two concerns the secret society of Freemasons and its role in the founding of America. Most of the information provided here seems adequately authoritative (backed by interviews with a variety of scholars and experts), with the segment on Masons emerging as the most interesting, primarily because it provides an insider's explanation of the activities and functions of Masonic groups around the world. What all of this historical and pseudo-historical detail amounts to is an argument suggesting that Brown's fiction plays fast and loose with the actual historical record, providing just enough verifiable detail to seduce the reader into the novels' make-believe reality. DVD extras include bonus interview footage. Sure to be a popular title, this is recommended, overall. Aud: P. (J. Shannon)