Sean Connery Week: The Name of the Rose

Howdy folks and welcome to Day 4 of Sean Connery Week.  Yesterday allergies were fun, fun fun and we got knocked back a day.  Today we will examine a cinematic masterpiece directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear, The Lover, Seven Years in Tibet, Enemy at the Gates, Two Brother and Day of the Falcon) and based on Umberto Eco (Anthropologist, Medieval expert and writer of The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pedulum, The Island of the Day Before, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas and the Bomb and the General)  create the ideal scenery of a tranquil monastery besought by what is deemed evil and a honest to goodness murder.  This is The Name of the Rose.

Can't read my lines without my glasses.

William of Baskerville: Adso, if I knew the answers to spoilers, I would be teaching theology in Paris.





Friar William of Baskerville (Sean Connery of The Red Tent, The Molly Maguires, Diamonds are Forever, Zardoz, The Man Who Would Be King, Just Cause and DragonHeart) and his apprentice Adso of Melk (Christian Slater of Heathers, The Edge, Pump Up the Volume, Young Guns II, Mobsters, Broken Arrow, Alone in the Dark and Mind Games) have traveled to Northern Italy to abby.   A death of unnatural causes raises hackles and superstitions as an important theological conference was to occur prior.   Over the week, more bizarre deaths happen and our two travelers come to the conclusion that the abbey is not all what it appears to be.

Yes, I too, loathe the barber here but he is learning.

William and Adso meet Salvatore (Ron Perlman of Blind Man's Bluff, Beauty and the Beast, Cronos, Hellboy and Sons of Anarchy), a jibbering and seemingly demented hunchback that knows many spoken languages and his protector Remigio da Varagine (Helmut Qualtinger of The Business of Plueckhahn, Ice Age, Tales from the Vienna Woods and Die Hinrichtung).  William deduces from Salvatore's speech pattern that he may have been one of the Dulcinian (deemed by the Franciscan sect as those that stray from the traditional teachings as heretics by the Catholic church and yet this movement was inspired by the Franciscan sect in the eyes of the Dulcinian) heretical sects and both men are possibly involved with the murders.

Meanwhile young Adso meets a semi-feral girl who has snuck in the Abby for food via sexual favors and he starts to fall in love with the girl.   Quick to bypass any and all accusations of the Devil's work, William and Adso uncover a massive labyrinth in the abbey's forbidden tower (Yes, a forbidden zone and there lies cranky irradiated apes) a discover a variable maze of books and scripture the likes William has never seen,  to even come across works of Aristotle in a time where most of his works were burned by the Roman Empire.  This is one of many philosophers that was seen as pagan in the eyes of the Church and must be slowly introduced back into the realms of man and it is this book, Aristotles's Second Book of Poetics that seems to be the center of all the deaths.

His investigations are put on hold thanks to the arrival of Gui (F. Murray Abraham of Serpico, The Sunshine Boys, The Ritz, Slipstream, Mobsters, Nostradamus and Star Trek: Insurrection) of the Inquisition,( a superstitious sect of the Church hellbent on ferreting out blasphemers and burning them at the stake or torturing people until they confess sins).  He has little time to hear anything William has to say and will find the sinner that would take these precious lives.   Yeah this is the same type of Catholic that shames a woman at an abortion clinic and not even bothering to find out the reason for her decision or nuttier idea mind his or her own business.   * Sorry, I will come down from my soap box now*  

Gui and William have butted heads more than a few times.  Gui finds William to be frivolous and taunts God with his forbidden views of Sciences while William views Gui as a myopic, narrow-minded savage that inflicts pain and death in the sake of his God.  Who is the true murder?  What is the reasons behind it?  Who stands to gain anything from these deaths.

Just a few tidbits on the film at this time.  The monastery was actually a set replica built on a hilltop outside of Rome, making it one of the biggest exterior sets built in Europe since Cleopatra or Conan the Barbarian.
Credited as "The Girl" Valentina Vargas was the only female role in the movie.    Robert De Niro auditioned for the part of William but Jean- Jacques Annaud didn't envision De Niro for the part when he announced there should be a sword duel between William and Gui.
Most of the dialogue had to be synced up in post production thanks to all the airplanes coming and over the hill.

You'll have to sell your landspeeder..