The Name of the Rose (1986)

 

Off-List: The Name of the Rose

The third off-List movie of 1986 is “The Name of the Rose”. The is a movie I remember watching and liking back in the nineties, based on a book by Umberto Eco that I also liked tremendously. I do not remember which I experienced first. To me the two memories have blurred together and that to me is a sign of a successful adaptation.

It is the year 1327 (before the great plague) and church people of several orders a meeting at a renowned but remote monastery in the mountains of Italy. The point of the meeting is to discuss what sounds like a trivial detail, but something these church people find tremendously important. One of the visitors is William of Baskerville (Sean Connery), a Franciscan monk with a novice, Adso (Chistian Slater), the narrator, in tow. William has a reputation for solving mysteries so when monks are mysteriously dying in the monastery, the Abbot (Michael Lonsdale) asks William for his help, especially as the timing with illustrious visitors coming, is not so great.

William is indeed quite the detective and by applying logic, observation and what went for science in those days, he is making progress. He is not helped, though, by the fact that the deaths seem to be following the prophecy of the end of the world and that voices in the monastery, especially the old, blind monk Jorge (Feodor Chaliapin Jr.), are busy calling it the work of the devil or God’s punishment. Things are not getting easier when the inquisition arrives in the form of Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham), an old enemy of William and a man good at finding easy and convenient solutions with the help of torture and superstition.

The clues are leading William to the secret library of the monastery. It is hidden inside a labyrinth in a colossal tower. There is a book here that seems to kill and William is set on finding the answers despite the opposition he is facing. While Bernardo Gui is busy burning heretics and witches, William and Adso are fighting for their lives in the tower.

It is possible to reduce “The Name of the Rose” to a detective story and it would still be an exciting one. William of Baskerville is a hint at both William of Occam (Occams razor!) and Sherlock Holmes. Add some James Bond and some gory murders and we are pretty much home.

But this is so much more. There is a lot of authenticity in the sets and the environment and for a history buff like me this is first rate. This is dirty and grimy and with a sense of detail that feels real. Not the Hollywood interpretation of medieval times, but the ugly reality of actually going back there.

Mostly, though, “The Name of the Rose” introduces to us some of that religious idiocy that was so pervading in those times. William’s deductive methods are completely at odds with the church tyranny of Bernardo Gui. The sentiment that knowledge should only be preserved, not developed and that some knowledge is too dangerous because it might challenge church authority are so symptomatic of the infallibility of religion and the sway the Catholic church had over people of the time. It is not terribly different from other totalitarian systems throughout history, but sometimes you need to see it play out in a remote historical setting to really appreciate the scope and consequence of it. It is horrific and unfair, it is a power play and it is a lose-lose situation in which the individual is powerless. The peasants are depicted as dirty brutes, wallowing in their pigsties of hut, never speaking but in grunts. It is the perfect picture of how the monks in their arrogance are looking down on the peasants and demonstrate perfectly their hypocrisy when they themselves are squealing around like headless chicken in the face of the threat of the devil among them.

It is quite clear what the position of the movie is on the church, and this is also how I remember Umberto Eco’s book. Yet there is this love of the detail, of the achievements of the monasteries and the culture they did represent without which this story would never have been made.

This is a clever movie that requires something of its audience and gives back so much. There is an intellectual element here that makes this a rewarding but also frightening experience to watch. Dogma is dangerous at any time, but especially religious dogma when religion has the power to enforce its will.

Needless to say, this is still a fantastic movie and one that has not lost a step since 1986. I am surprised to not find it on the List, it really does belong there and at least I can include it on mine.