In the winter of 1327, a Benedictine abbey in the Italian mountains receives two travelers: a Franciscan friar and his novice. They have come for a theological debate. They will stay for a murder investigation.
The body is found at dawn, at the foot of a cliff. The face bears the marks of something unnatural. The abbot is nervous. The monks whisper of the Devil. But William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) does not believe in convenient demons. He believes in signs. In the pattern of footprints. In the smell of a room. In the particular silence of a library that is said to be labyrinth.
Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose (1986) should not exist. Umberto Eco’s novel was considered unfilmable—a 500-page medieval dissertation disguised as a thriller, stuffed with theology, semiotics, and Latin puns. And yet, here it is: stone-cold, candle-lit, and utterly gripping.
Trivia: When William discovers a book by “Umberto of Bologna” in the library, that’s Eco himself—the author, who taught at the University of Bologna, inserting his own signature into the mystery.
The Detective Who Shouldn’t Be
Sean Connery took this role at a career low point. Columbia Pictures refused to finance the film with him attached. He was, by Hollywood’s reckoning, box office poison.
He gives the performance of his life.
William of Baskerville is Sherlock Holmes rewritten by a monk: a man of reason in an age of faith, armed with Aristotle and eyeglasses, walking through a world that believes in omens. Connery plays him with a calm so absolute it becomes menacing. When he confronts the Inquisitor Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham), the room temperature drops. This is not 007 charm. This is intellectual steel.
Trivia: Christian Slater, playing novice Adso, described working with Connery as “like having a master class in acting, life, all sorts of things.” Ron Perlman came to set on his days off just to watch Connery work—who would spend eight hours between shots telling stories about Hitchcock and Huston.
The Library as Labyrinth
The abbey’s library—designed by Dante Ferretti—is the film’s true star. A maze of wooden balconies, hidden staircases, and forbidden books. The production built it on soundstages in Rome and at the real Eberbach Monastery in Germany, where the stone holds five centuries of cold.
Annaud wanted realism at any cost. He cast, by his own admission, the ugliest actors he could find, because he wanted faces that looked like they belonged to the 14th century. When he returned to his village, the men asked if he really considered them that ugly. He said yes.
The result is a film that smells authentic. You can feel the damp wool, the tallow smoke, the animal panic of men who believe the Apocalypse is overdue.
The Heresy of Laughter
At the center of the mystery is a book—Aristotle’s lost treatise on comedy—and a question: Is laughter heresy?
The killer believes yes. The victims are monks who have read too much, laughed too freely, questioned too openly. William must solve the puzzle before the Inquisition arrives and turns inquiry into auto-da-fé.
Trivia: Ron Perlman’s character Salvatore speaks “six languages at once”—Latin, Italian, German, English, French, and gibberish. Since Annaud hadn’t written much dialogue for him, Perlman obtained copies of Eco’s novel in all five languages and constructed Salvatore’s speeches by splicing words from each translation.
Why It Still Holds
- It respects the viewer’s intelligence. The film does not explain everything. It trusts you to follow the theological arguments, the political maneuvering, the coded messages in marginalia.
- It is genuinely frightening. Not with jump scares, but with atmosphere—the dread of enclosed spaces, the weight of doctrine, the certainty that knowledge can get you killed.
- It has a heart. Beneath the cold stone is a film about curiosity—about the dangerous, necessary, human drive to know.
How to Watch
- Follow the eyeglasses. William’s spectacles are both tool and symbol—the technology of observation in an age of revelation.
- Listen to the Latin. The film uses real medieval liturgy. You don’t need to translate it; the sound carries the meaning.
- Notice the food. The meals progress from abundance to austerity as the bodies pile up. The monastery is closing itself off, preparing for judgment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Name of the Rose about?
A Franciscan sleuth and his novice investigate a chain of deaths in a 14th-century Italian monastery, uncovering secrets in a forbidden library amid clashes over faith, knowledge, and the nature of truth.
How faithful is the film to Umberto Eco’s novel?
The adaptation preserves the central mystery and themes—censorship, interpretation, the politics of laughter—while simplifying Eco’s dense theological debates for cinematic pacing.
Who plays the main characters?
Sean Connery as William of Baskerville, Christian Slater as Adso of Melk, F. Murray Abraham as the Inquisitor Bernardo Gui, and Ron Perlman as the feral monk Salvatore.
Is it historically accurate?
The film evokes medieval monastic life with convincing detail (scriptoria, liturgy, material culture) but takes dramatic license with specific events and historical figures.
Is it suitable for younger viewers?
No. Mature themes, brief nudity, and disturbing imagery tied to the deaths make this best for adult audiences.
The Name of the Rose is a film about books that becomes a book itself—something you return to, finding new marginalia each time. It reminds us that the Middle Ages were not merely “the past” but a place where ideas had consequences, where a book could be a bomb, and where the crime was not murder but thinking.
The library still stands. The books are still waiting. And somewhere, in the dark, someone is still laughing.
