The Name of the Rose

Movie Information

The Hendersonville Film Society will show The Name of the Rose at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 16, in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community (behind Epic Cinemas), 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville.
Score:
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Genre: Period-Piece Mystery
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud (Quest for Fire)
Starring: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Michael Lonsdale, F. Murray Abraham
Rated: R

It’s murder—or murders—in a Benedictine abbey in 1327. But as luck—and clever writing—would have it, nonconformist, modern-thinking monk William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) is on hand, and it just so happens that he’s something of a detective, too. So with his faithful sidekick Adso of Melk (Christian Slater), William sets out to find “whodunit” in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose (1986), the film adaptation of the highly regarded Umberto Eco novel. What should have been a clever mystery thriller—with somewhat pretentious overtones—is transformed by Annaud into one of his typically murky, underlit movies. I’m not sure it ever could have been a really great movie, but it undoubtedly could have been better in someone else’s hands. Even so, it is watchable (when you can see it) and is certainly better than the director’s previous movie, Quest for Fire (1981).

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About Ken Hanke
Head film critic for Mountain Xpress from December 2000 until his death in June 2016. Author of books "Ken Russell's Films," "Charlie Chan at the Movies," "A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series," "Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker."

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2 thoughts on “The Name of the Rose

  1. JonathanBarnard

    What? Quest for Fire was the greatest film with diaologue consisting entirely of grunts ever made!

  2. Ken Hanke

    Quest for Fire was the greatest film with diaologue consisting entirely of grunts ever made!

    Surely there must be some Stallone movie that outdoes it!

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