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The Name of the Rose (1986)
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
As intelligent a reductio of Umberto Eco's sly farrago of whodunnit and medieval metaphysics as one could have wished for. Just who is killing the monks of an isolated monastery in a variety of vile ways, and why? William of Baskerville is the Franciscan Holmes called upon to point the finger: a complex man, at once the great detective delighted with his own powers of deduction, and a man both defeated by the brutality of his age and enthralled by its mysteries (and it's to Sean Connery's credit that he portrays as much and more). In addition, the film simply looks good, really succeeds in communicating the sense and spirit of a time when the world was quite literally read like a book, with impressively claustrophobic sets, particularly the Escher-like labyrinth of a library with its momentous secret. The monks themselves are marvellous, a gallery of grotesques straight out of Brueghel, and if the film has faults, they are quibbles: the murder mystery is solved too soon, and rather too much plot is crammed into the available space. AMac.Author: AMac
User reviews of this film
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- Ankita Kothari said...
- Posted on Nov 01 2007 11:30 I am doing an assignment on this film, and i have to write about how christianity is portrayed in this film, if any one has any opinions please let me know through this BLOG site.
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Cast & crew
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Producer: Bernd Eichinger
Cast: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Helmut Qualtinger, Elya Baskin, Michel Lonsdale, Volker Prechtel, F Murray Abraham full cast
Genre(s): Period/Swashbucklers
Duration: 131 mins
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