Name Of The Rose

Based on Umberto Eco's phenomenal international best seller, The Name of the Rose, this richly mounted production falls short of its source material, but works fairly well as an intellectual murder mystery. Set in an Italian monastery in 1327, the film follows the Holmesian type sleuth, William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) and his faithful sidekick novice, Adso (Christian Slater), as they try to unravel the mystery behind a series of ghastly murders. In order to make a commercial film, most of the tortuous religious and philosophical windings around the questions of heresy, Christ's poverty, and papal politics which gave the book its unique texture have been jettisoned. Still, for the first half of the film anyways, the storyline remains faithful to the action of Eco's novel. (In the second half, the character of Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham), the inquisitor, is fleshed out, because he did, after all, win an Oscar for his performance in Amadeus.) And, there is the added bonus that much of the film's plot revolves around secrets in the abbey's labyrinthine library (Connery acts in a library pretty much as a kid would in a candy store). The film is rated "R" for graphic violence, and one fairly intense heterosexual love scene. Recommended.