when langdon had first seen the little mermaid , he had actually gasped aloud when he noticed that the painting in ariel 's underwater home was none other than seventeenth-century artist georges de la tour 's the penitent magdalene - a famous homage to the banished mary magdalene - fitting decor considering the movie turned out to be a ninety-minute collage of blatant symbolic references to the lost sanctity of isis , eve , pisces the fish goddess , and , repeatedly , mary magdalene .