The Name of the Rose, 1986.
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud.
Starring Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Helmut Qualtinger, Michael Lonsdale, William Hickey, Ron Perlman, F. Murray Abraham, and Valentina Vargas.
SYNOPSIS:
An intellectually nonconformist friar investigates a series of mysterious deaths in an isolated abbey.
Imagine, if you will, Sean Connery as a Columbo-style medieval monk investigating a series of murders within an abbey in Italy, an abbey whose Abbott is played by former Bond (Roger Moore era) villain Michael Lonsdale and whose inhabitants include the very deranged William Hickey and Ron Perlman playing a hunchback who speaks gibberish. Throw in a young Christian Slater as Connery’s sidekick and future Hellraiser cenobite Valentina Vargas as his love interest, and you have the makings of something very interesting. Wrap it all up in Second Sight’s immaculate presentation and we have a definite winner.
The Name of the Rose is based on the 1980 novel by Umberto Ecu, and sees Franciscan friar William of Baskerville (Connery) and his novice Adso of Melk (Slater) travelling cross-country to a remote Benedictine abbey in Northern Italy during the 14th century. William of Baskerville has been called in to investigate the death of one of the monks ahead of a theological Church conference. The Abbott is naturally worried about the events but once William and Adso start their investigations more deaths occur, with each victim displaying blackened fingers and tongues, which leads the monks to investigate the abbey’s hidden library.
While this is going on, Adso falls in love with a peasant girl (Vargas) who sneaks into the abbey for food in exchange for sex, and William meets Salvatore (Perlman), a hunchback monk who utters a word only used by a certain heretical sect, which furthers William’s suspicions about what is going on. However, things take a turn for the worse with the imminent arrival of Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham) of the Inquisition, a former foe of William of Baskerville, who is also looking for answers for the murders but with quicker and more direct methods.
Essentially, The Name of the Rose is a medieval murder mystery but one that never really gives any clear or definite answers, or at least one where the end resolve is not as strong as the build-up would suggest, and this is deliberate as Umberto Ecu acknowledges at the end of his book that ‘very little is discovered’. In many mystery movies this could be seen as something of an issue, but director Jean-Jacques Annaud has created such an immersive world for this plot to take place in that the journey – with William of Baskerville using rationale against the religious beliefs of the monks and the political stance of Gui – is one that you cannot bear to turn away from as new details are revealed.
Connery is magnetic as William of Baskerville, never less than thoroughly convincing (despite the Scottish accent, but that comes with the territory) and given how it was only three years previous since his final appearance as James Bond, this was one of the roles that showed Connery could still be witty, confrontational and full of charisma without having to wear a tuxedo or charm the ladies. Despite his youthful age and appearance, Christian Slater is surprisingly convincing in his role as the young apprentice monk, and given that he has a very sexy love scene with Valentina Vargas (that, according to the actor in the special features, took three days to film) he handles it all with a maturity way beyond his years and you can see why he became the name he did not long after.
But whilst The Name of the Rose has a strong cast, looks fantastic and keeps you drawn to it with likeable performances and the promise of a startling revelation, once you get to the end credits there is a sense of ‘Is that it?’ and you look back at the previous two-or-so hours and realise how deliberately drawn out it was. All credit to Jean-Jacques Annaud for making the most of the material to keep that intrigue going – as the book has often been described as unfilmable – but the movie watching experience is a very different one to reading a book, where the themes hit you in a different way, and as such the movie doesn’t end with quite the bang it really deserves.
Nevertheless, The Name of the Rose is still a solid religious thriller that is probably due a reassessment in this age of HD formats, and Second Sight have done their usual sterling job of presenting the movie with a wealth of extras, including new interviews with Christian Slater, Ron Perlman, writer Andrew Birkin and director Jean-Jacques Annaud, plus you get an archive audio commentary by Jean-Jacques Annaud, a new commentary track by filmmaker James Marsh and The Abbey of Crime: Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, an archive German TV documentary giving a behind-the-scenes look at the film. The movie itself looks fantastic, with a very clean and crisp image, and the new artwork on the box by Liza Shumskaya is nothing short of stunning, so chalk this release up as another success for the label.
As a movie, The Name of the Rose may not be as accessible a popcorn thriller as, say, The Da Vinci Code but it is worth your time, if only to soak up the technical aspects of the filmmaking, although the eventual climax may leave you wishing the writers hadn’t been quite so faithful in their adaptation of the book.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
