The Name of the Rose
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Movie Reviews of The Name of the Rose
Movie Review: A Thriller That Teases The Intellect
Summary: 5 Stars
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud has adapted Umbreto Eco's novel for the screen with stunning success. Sean Connery as William of Baskerville, along with his young friend Adso (Christian Slater) find themselves in a monastery where monks are dying in very strange circumstances. The plot of this murder mystery with its chase scenes gets quite as convoluted as the labyrinth these two characters find themselves in. While the story appeals to the intellect, William does remind us that life without love would be very dull indeed.
Connery and Slater are joined by an impeccable cast of supporting actors noted for their faces, each of which is worthy of a Medieval or Renaissance portrait. The monastery, costumes and props are authentic for the 14th Century, the time of the action of this film. The lighting for both the landscapes and closeup facial shots is very effective, giving the effect of natural light.
William of course solves the murder mystery quite nicely, ultimately tying up all the loose ends. This is a film that you will enjoy seeing again and again.
Movie Review: Medieval Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
This is truly a great movie. Although it has been out for quite some time, it is still a great movie to see the daily lives of monks inside a monastary and the quest for knowledge/laughter.
Did anyone ever notice that the peasant girl in the movie seems to be very well kept up considering she was just a peasant? Just a little something people should look for. I mean did peasants really have straight white teeth.
Movie Review: "A Place Abandoned By God" ~ Choosing Between The Path Of Love And The Path Of Wisdom
Summary: 4 Stars
While director Jean-Jacques Annaud may have missed the mark in his attempt to commit onto film some of the depth of thought and insight displayed in Umberto Eco's book 'The Name of the Rose,' he did succeed in creating a highly atmospheric Medieval world perfectly self-contained in and around the confines of a decaying Catholic monastery located in northern Italy in the year of our Lord 1327.
Brother William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) and his young novice-in-training Adso (Christian Slater) have just arrived at the monastery to take part in an upcoming debate between important clergyman on the subject of poverty within the priesthood. What they find instead of communal love and harmony is death, murder and suspicious behavior which somehow seems connected to a mysterious library with no books.
As Brother William methodically untangles the clues to the mysterious deaths and the role of library in those deaths, you will become slowly but surely drawn into the gloomy, almost surreal atmosphere of the place. Combine with that its cast of unsavory, even grotesque monks and peasants you are in for a rather disturbing view of life in 14th century Europe.
Underscored by a brief but unforgetable love affair between the young novice Adso and the attractive peasant girl with no name, the viewer eventually discovers what really matters in the final analysis. It's love that is remembered when all is said and done.
'The Name of the Rose' consists of a great international cast, mostly of names and faces you've probably never seen or heard of before. Among the names you may know is F. Murray Abraham as Bernardo Gui and Ron Perlman as the delightfully grotesque Salvatore. And, not to forget the beautiful young girl alluded to in the title of the film, Valentina Vargas as the Rose.
Death, murder, intrique, young love, interspersed between rather lively debates on philosophy, religion, spirituality make for a rewarding evening of entertainment. If you're in the mood for a good 14th century murder mystery ala Sherlock Holmes this is the movie for you!
Movie Review: Waste of Time
Summary: 1 Stars
This movie is a complete joke! After reading Umberto Eco's book The Name of the Rose I find this movie to be a horrible shame. I was not expecting an amazing movie, just some entertainment. This movie so repulsed me I felt I need to write my first review on Amazon. The movie manages to make Umberto Eco's captivating characters into grotesque distortions of themselves. Not to mention the entire movie seems to have been leading up to the sex scene. In the book this scene is important but not anyway graphic, but apparently the director felt it necessary to make it into a 3 minute sex scene with full nudity. This is not my only objection to the director's adoption but it provides an example that the rest of the movie lives up to. So I repeat this movie is a waste of time, and greatly lacking of what The Name of the Rose deserved.Movie Review: What's in a name?
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is a fascinating combination of modern and medieval elements. The setting is an abbey, whose name according to the narrator, 'it seems pious and prudent to omit'. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Umberto Eco, a semiologist and intellectual I had the pleasure of meeting twice - once at my university in America, and then again a few years later in London. Semiotics is a study of signs - in many ways, my theological training parallels, and it is this kind of parallel that is at the heart of the novel.
There is a debate about to be had at the high, inaccessible abbey. This debate, according to the leading Franciscan participant, is one that can determine the theology of the church for generations to come. So pivotal was this issue that papal envoys and monastics from around Christendom have gathered to determine the answer to the question - did Christ, or did he not, own the clothes he wore.
This is a play on the kind of theological musings that, then and now, distract the church from its proper functions of being a witness to the world. One could imagine the question of how many angels dancing on the head of a pin being used by Eco, except that that would be far too obvious a silliness.
However 'pivotal' this conference may be to the future of Christendom, it is in fact incidental to the storyline of the film. The real story revolves around the happenings at the hosting abbey, a Benedictine community whose vocation involves the preservation and transcription of a major library (libraries being full of books, written in language, full of signs and symbols). However, two things become immediately apparent - there don't seem to be any books around, and the transcriptionists are dying one by one.
Enter William of Baskerville (the name an obvious homage, a sign of respect, to Sherlock Holmes). William is a Franciscan journeying to the abbey with his novice, Adso, to take part in the upcoming conference. The Abbot enlists William's assistance in discovering how the monks are dying, which he does with Holmesian technique and precision. Analysing data such as footprints, fall-patterns from hillsides, and other such observational information, he comes to a few conclusions, but these distress the head librarian, who has seen it as his task to protect the world from blashphemous books (ironically, while maintaining their existence within the confines of the great library's labyrinth).
While William and Adso do their Holmes and Watson in a scientific manner, one of the other Franciscan visitors decides to apply a different interpretation to the happenings, preferring to see in the murderous environment of the abbey the signs of the apocalypse, particularly worrisome given the nature of the pivotal conference soon to take place.
Unfortunately for William, just as he is getting close to the truth, the Inquisition is called (no one expects the Spanish Inquistition), and in the figure of Bernardo Gui, the Inquisition descends upon the abbey with full force and terror. Gui accepts neither William's rational explanations nor Ubertino's end-times interpretations, preferring a more common staple of Inquisition deciphering - it must be the work of the devil. Finding a black cat and a woman smuggled into the abbey only help confirm this, particularly in an environment that sees little value in either.
Ultimately, however, the interpretation is wrong. William and Adso finally discover a way into the library, and make the further discovery that the key text the librarian is trying to hide is one by Aristotle, his work on Comedy, for he fears that in the Scholastic environment of the church, in which Aristotle is seen as the rational side of God's wisdom, that a book by Aristotle that permits laughter would be the undoing to the world.
In the end, the library burns with few books saved, the conference ends without a resolution, the Inquisition gets a judgement leveled against itself in a very 'just-desserts' fashion, and William and Adso depart.
But what of the name of the rose? We never learn the name of the rose; indeed, the rose is yet one more sign, a symbol for the love of Adso's life, the woman accused of being a witch. As the final credits fall, we learn that in the midst of all the tumult, Adso never learned her name.
The performances here are solid and gripping. Sean Connery plays William of Baskerville with aplomb. A young Christian Slater is a good novice, with still enough innocence to his performance to be believable. The abbot is played by Michael Lonsdale (not too many years off of playing a James Bond villain). Special mention goes to Helmut Qualtinger, who played the librarian Brother Remigio, who died just hours after filming his last scene, and was frequently in pain from the illness he was suffering during filming. William Hickey plays Franciscan Ubertino with an air of strangeness and mystery. Finally, F. Murray Abraham plays the dreaded Bernardo Gui, in every way as psychologically beguiling as in his starring role in 'Amadeus', but unfortunately with a much smaller role in this film.
Despite not making an Oscar bid, this film won numerous awards throughout Europe, including the BAFTA best actor award for Connery. It also was nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe award for mystery film.
The sets are dramatic, the costumes are perfect (particularly the contrast between the simplicity of the Franciscans, the durability of the Benedictines, the opulence of the papal envoys, the flair of the Inquisitors, and the rags of the peasants - all signs of a stratified society). The film is done in a cinematographic style that gives an overall feel of isolation; the abbey is isolated from the world, and the people are detached from each other for the most part.
This is a remarkable film in many ways, and one that I frequently turn to again to see what new signs I missed the last time through.