The Name of the Rose

The 1980s mystery/thriller film "The Name of the Rose" starring Sean Connery and a young Christian Slater felt like an emotional workout. It was riveting, disturbing, and grotesque. It's from a book by Umberto Eco--I haven't read any of his books, but I remember a very thick hardbound copy of his "Foucault's Pendulum" at the library of the university where I studied in undergrad and later worked. I never touched it, but it was noticeable because I frequently passed by the aisle where it was and that was from 1998 to 2015. But I digress.

"The Name of the Rose" deals a bit about intellectual pride aside from distorted religious fanaticism. Sean Connery's character, William of Baskerville, is a Franciscan friar who was investigating a mysterious death at an abbey--very Sherlock Holmes. In many occasions, William is rebuked for being too rational and stubborn. It was his intellectual pride that led him to dangerous predicaments yet it gave him the determination to unfold the truth. I once read someone's comment about how this film had the ugliest looking characters (except for the ones played by Sean Connery, Christian Slater, and Valentina Vargas). Ron Perlman's hunchback crazy character was so comically gross, and his performance was effective in relaying that weird air of dystopia. 

The reason why I'm writing about this film now, after seeing it for the first time over two weeks ago, is that I just thought about how intellectual pride is both a boon and a bane. I used to admire intelligence...correction, I admire intelligence, but not as a standalone thing. I admire intelligence coupled with unassuming humble confidence and curiosity. Intelligence as a mediator for a greater virtue. Maybe like Gregor Mendel? These days, a vast majority can easily access information  using their portable devices (woe to you, Britannica, Colliers, and dictionaries/thesauruses). But true wisdom and wit, not the cynical and obnoxious kind, those traits are hard to make up on demand. William of Baskerville didn't possess admirable wisdom. The story is obviously molded to make the audience root for him--I certainly did--Sean Connery is portraying him, my goodness! But William was consumed with being right and that's a very annoying and off-putting trait. I'm not posting this to rant, I'm  writing to document some observations. I think I'm only seeing a superficial view of the story and it's probably studded with allegory. Did I enjoy it? I don't know--as I mentioned at the start of this post, it was like an internal exercise. It was hard not to feel anger, disgust, pity, etc. So I guess the film achieved in me something that any other art form aims to achieve and that is to express a kind of hyper reality to the audience. Part of art is to entertain, yet it is also a way for us humans to appreciate what only we humans are capable of as a species: sentience.