I saw this film a long time ago, soon after it came out. I did not remember much of the details except that it was dark and moody and set in a remote abbey in the Middle Ages and involved the murder of several monks that a visiting monk William of Baskerville (played by Sean Connery) and his assistant Adso of Melk (a very young Christian Slater) try to solve.

I read the book of the same name by Umberto Eco last month, and disliked it for its tedious and lengthy discussions of esoterica involving theology and heresy and religious and political intrigue of that period. The main redeeming feature of the second edition of the book was that it had a postscript by the author explaining how and why he wrote it the way he did, including his choice of the title. While it did not improve the book’s standing in my opinion, it did shed light on the writing process and what an author seeks to achieve.

I decided to watch the film again and did so last night. I found it to be definitely better than the book mainly because the heresy discussions were limited to only about whether Jesus ever laughed or approved of laughter and whether the church should renounce all its wealth and were kept mercifully brief. All the other contemporary political and religious issues that the book went into in at great detail were thankfully omitted. The film focused more on the effort by William and Adso to show that the murders were committed by someone in the abbey for secular motives, involving books hidden away in the great library that no one but the librarian and his assistant could access, and not that they were influenced by the Devil entering their bodies. But while the duo do succeed in doing that, the resolution as to who actually committed each murder and why and how is still left murky and unsatisfying, as it was in the book. The film is dark, both literally and in tone.

The film changes the book’s ending to make it a little happier, but not by much. It also takes swipes at the church and its opulence while being surrounded by grinding poverty, and at the sheer cruelty of the Inquisition, where the assigned inquisitor is less interested in the truth and seems to see his task as getting a confession of Devil-induced heresy at all costs, even if it requires torture, so that the victim can be burned at the stake. It reminded me of the way that prosecutors in US death penalty cases try their best to get the death penalty imposed, even if it means subverting justice, because it is good for their careers.

It is a good film but not great. At 131 minutes, it is a much quicker way of getting the general feel of the book than wading through the text.

Here’s the trailer.