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jueves, 12 de marzo de 2009

THE NAME OF THE ROSE

The Name of the Rose is billed as a palimpsest of the Umberto Eco novel. You may or may not know what the heck a palimpsest is or whether you can order one through the Sharper Image catalogue, but the point is that Sean Connery could hardly pronounce it. When, as William of Baskerville, he tells you how much he loves books, he sounds like a long-haul trucker, and that, as much as anything else.
When he's not loving the classics to death, William is a sage friar with a squirrelly sidekick (Christian Slater) and a nose for mysteries. A Franciscan, he comes to investigate a death at a Benedictine monastery. He discovers clues, but not as quickly as he discovers new bodies -- in a vat of blood, or an herbal bath -- all of them bearing a telltale ink stain on forefinger and tongue.
Historical epics have a tendency to get sodden, to collapse under their sets and costumes and period atmosphere, and "Name of the Rose" is no exception. A star with some energy could keep it moving and, more importantly, keep it personal, but with his long robe, tonsured head and salt-and-pepper beard, Connery moves across the barren landscape like a vacationing psychiatrist scouring the beach for the meaning of it all. His brand of leaden melancholy is the last thing "The Name of the Rose" needs.
Well after your second nap, an Inquisitor who years ago had William cashiered and tortured But it's a little late, to say the least, and a red herring as well -- the real conflict, it turns out, is an intellectual one between Connery and the old Father Superior over whether God intended man to laugh. Why a movie that makes such a big point out of this is so dour, only God knows.