The word “unfilmable” gets thrown around a lot about novels. And it’s true we have yet to see anyone take on Blood Meridian, Gravity’s Rainbow or Dhalgren… but so many books once considered unfilmable have still somehow been turned into great cinema.
Just look at Naked Lunch, Dune, The Lord Of The Rings (those last two took a few goes though). And few books (with the possible exception of Finnegan’s Wake) should have been more unfilmable than The Name Of The Rose, the debut novel by master semiotician Umberto Eco, which is basically a metaphysical treatise about, well, everything, wrapped round a murder mystery.
Perhaps wisely, though also somewhat undeservedly, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film adaptation described itself as “a palimpsest” of the book, just so we know he accepts that some things just can’t be directly translated. But adaptation’s a funny beast. We tend to think about the angle from which a text is approached, but I tend to think it’s more about the angle at which we pass through it — if a book is a big chunk of ideas, any adaptation is going to be a slice through it, and it’s which slice, out of the infinite slices possible, that is key to the whole business.
And it’s arguable that in the case of The Name Of The Rose, the plot is DEFINITELY the least important part of the book. But the real fun of it is that the novel’s themes and musings are all so inextricably woven into the plot that it’s kind of hard to lose them. I mean, it centres around a theological debate, FFS. Annaud gets as much of the other good stuff in as he can, but his main interest here is the story — and the environment in which it happens.
Brother William of Baskerville (Sean Connery), a Franciscan monk who, as his name would imply, is our Sherlock Holmes figure (or for younger readers, our Gregory House figure), arrives at a wonderfully Gormenghastian Benedictine abbey in Italy in the year 1327, with his novice Adso (Christian Slater), only to find himself investigating a mysterious death which quickly becomes a mysterious series of deaths (all very religiously thematic and apocalyptically portentous, like a mediæval precursor to David Fincher’s Se7en), and which could have grave consequences for the Franciscan order itself.
Now, this all sounds very heavy, but it really isn’t. Because the murder mystery itself is in the classic style. There are hidden passages, trapdoors, mysterious towers and a labyrinthine library, as well as a fantastic turn by Feodor Chaliapin Jr as Jorge de Burgos (another sneaky literary reference, this time to the visionary Argentinian fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, who of course created the greatest fictional library of all time in his short story The Library Of Babel). And, of course, a young Ron Perlman as the hunchbacked heretic Salvatore, who practically devours the scenery. And for bonus fun, those of a particular bent can have a good time spotting the bits that were sampled on the second Fields Of The Nephilim album.
But let’s not forget our lead. Sean Connery differs from most actors (well, most good actors, at any rate — bad ones do this because they’re incapable of doing anything else) in that instead of convincing us he’s the character, he convinces us the character is, was, and was always supposed to be Sean Connery. And one suspects that Steven Spielberg may have had the genial, bookish Brother William in mind when he cast him as Indiana Jones’s Dad in The Last Crusade.
Like Werner Herzog before him and Robert Eggers today, Annaud makes great use of his locations, and the faces of those inhabiting them, creating a fourteenth century you can almost smell. It may be a cracking adventure and a fun time at the movies, but you really wouldn’t want to live there. To say too much more would be to spoil a lot of the fun (and I know I’ve said “fun” a lot, but for a movie that tackles very serious subjects very seriously, it’s full of wit and charm), but suffice it to say it’s a banger.
I think I saw it once at the pictures and again at university, but this must be the first time I’ve seen it in about thirty-five years, and I was a bit worried it might not hold up. It really does. Other than the relative youth of its cast, it could have been made yesterday. Highly recommended.This new re-release from Second Sight (who, along with the likes of Arrow, have for the last few years been assembling their own incredible library of cult and classic films) comes with a wealth of special features, including a new audio commentary by Annaud and a bunch of interviews including Slater and Perlman, as well as (in the limited edition) a book of essays and six art cards.
All in all it’s well worth revisiting — and if you’ve not seen it before, then that’s a situation that needs rectifying. As for me, I think I might be about to fall down an Umberto Eco rabbit hole again, don’t think I’ve read any of his stuff since The Island Of The Day Before in the ’90s… hmm. I may be some time.-Justin Farrington-
