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The Name of the Rose

Der Name der Rose (Le nom de la rose)

1986

Jean-Jacques Annaud

Sean Connery, Christian Slater, F. Murray Abraham, Michael Lonsdale ...

7.8

99,507

Mystery. Drama Based on the best-selling book by Italian author Umberto Eco. In the 14th Century, during a meeting of the papacy in a remote italian Abbey, a brilliant English monk, William of Baskerville, uses reason to solve a series of bizarre murders attributed to the devil--and risks being burned for heresy by the holy inquisition.

	Media	Author	Review
		Chris Nashawaty Entertainment Weekly	"Long before Tom Hanks ran around the Louvre spouting crackpot theories about Renaissance painters and Vatican assassins, Sean Connery was solving religious riddles in the far better thriller The Name of the Rose"
		Vincent Canby The New York Times	"Reduced to its story (as the screen adaptation is) (...) 'The Name of the Rose' becomes lightweight as well as lugubrious."
		Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"What we have here is the setup for a wonderful movie. What we get is a very confused story, photographed in such murky gloom that sometimes it is hard to be sure exactly what is happening (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"
		Variety	"A sorrowfully mediocre screen version of Umberto Eco's surprise international bestselling novel (...) ['Der name der Rose'] has been completely flubbed by director Jean-Jacques Annaud and his team of four screenwriters"
		Andrew Pulver The Guardian	"Annaud's film guts the story of its prolonged theological disputations, concentrating on the whodunnit aspects (...) Annaud compensated for this pruning with an obsessive attention to historical authenticity"
		Ian Nathan Empire	"Connery convinces in his cassock and, though the themes will not capture everyone's interest, this is a refreshing, inventive whodunit (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Pat Graham Chicago Reader	"Lots and lots of monotony(...) An uncinematically plodding detective tale"
		Sheila Benson Los Angeles Times	"There are lovely details to 'The Name of the Rose' (...) The details never blur into a rich backdrop; the editing is so jumpy that each scene stays resolutely separate"
		Time Out	"The monks themselves are marvellous, a gallery of grotesques straight out of Brueghel, and if the film has faults, they are quibbles"
		Tom Hutchinson Radio Times	"Sean Connery is in majestic form here (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		The Washington Post	"If the style of the film matches the story, that doesn't make it any easier to look at -- it's just too bleak (...) Annaud never finds the right rhythm for the movie"

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The Name of the Rose

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