The Name of the Rose (1986)
Country: US
Technical: col 130m
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Michel Lonsdale, F. Murray Abraham
Synopsis:
In the early Fourteenth century the church is torn by internal dissent concerning the poverty of Christ, and a Franciscan friar travels to a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy to represent the German emperor at a council on that topic. Simultaneously he and his novice are involved in the solution of a series of mysterious deaths which appear to be centred on the enormous library and the search for an alleged surviving copy of Aristotle's second book of Poetics, on Comedy.
Review:
Admirably inclusive 'palimpsest' of Umberto Eco's labyrinthine, encyclopaedic novel; only the semiotic musings are, of necessity, discarded. What survives does more than justice to the whodunnit plot, has a fair stab at the historical background and is a superb evocation of the monastery itself. Special mention should be made of James Horner's atmospheric music. Essentially a work about language, the book's title refers to its omnipotence (a rose would not be a rose without its name), and it is the language here which is most enjoyable, as Connery allows words like 'conundrum' to trip off his tongue; the 80s had not seen such erudition. (Tellingly, for Adso, it is the girl whose face he remembers more clearly than anything else over the distance of years, and whose name was not known to him: clearly, in the realm of human emotions language is a far less essential carrier of meaning. Eco, the semiotician, allows us this one concession!)
Country: US
Technical: col 130m
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Michel Lonsdale, F. Murray Abraham
Synopsis:
In the early Fourteenth century the church is torn by internal dissent concerning the poverty of Christ, and a Franciscan friar travels to a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy to represent the German emperor at a council on that topic. Simultaneously he and his novice are involved in the solution of a series of mysterious deaths which appear to be centred on the enormous library and the search for an alleged surviving copy of Aristotle's second book of Poetics, on Comedy.
Review:
Admirably inclusive 'palimpsest' of Umberto Eco's labyrinthine, encyclopaedic novel; only the semiotic musings are, of necessity, discarded. What survives does more than justice to the whodunnit plot, has a fair stab at the historical background and is a superb evocation of the monastery itself. Special mention should be made of James Horner's atmospheric music. Essentially a work about language, the book's title refers to its omnipotence (a rose would not be a rose without its name), and it is the language here which is most enjoyable, as Connery allows words like 'conundrum' to trip off his tongue; the 80s had not seen such erudition. (Tellingly, for Adso, it is the girl whose face he remembers more clearly than anything else over the distance of years, and whose name was not known to him: clearly, in the realm of human emotions language is a far less essential carrier of meaning. Eco, the semiotician, allows us this one concession!)
Country: US
Technical: col 130m
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Michel Lonsdale, F. Murray Abraham
Synopsis:
In the early Fourteenth century the church is torn by internal dissent concerning the poverty of Christ, and a Franciscan friar travels to a Benedictine monastery in northern Italy to represent the German emperor at a council on that topic. Simultaneously he and his novice are involved in the solution of a series of mysterious deaths which appear to be centred on the enormous library and the search for an alleged surviving copy of Aristotle's second book of Poetics, on Comedy.
Review:
Admirably inclusive 'palimpsest' of Umberto Eco's labyrinthine, encyclopaedic novel; only the semiotic musings are, of necessity, discarded. What survives does more than justice to the whodunnit plot, has a fair stab at the historical background and is a superb evocation of the monastery itself. Special mention should be made of James Horner's atmospheric music. Essentially a work about language, the book's title refers to its omnipotence (a rose would not be a rose without its name), and it is the language here which is most enjoyable, as Connery allows words like 'conundrum' to trip off his tongue; the 80s had not seen such erudition. (Tellingly, for Adso, it is the girl whose face he remembers more clearly than anything else over the distance of years, and whose name was not known to him: clearly, in the realm of human emotions language is a far less essential carrier of meaning. Eco, the semiotician, allows us this one concession!)