An involuntary comedy

WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

"The name of the rose" is a movie featuring Sean Connery and a very young Christian Slater. It's mostly known for a steaming and completely unexpected sex scene involving Slater and a young girl. Me and my buddies at high school sure talked about that one!

Otherwise, I consider "The name of the rose" to be an involuntary comedy. The plot is set during the 14th century, and heavily stereotypes the High Middle Ages as a period of complete and utter darkness and superstition. The main character, William of Baskerville, is a Franciscan monk who investigates a murder mystery at a Benedictine monastery. It soon turns out that every monk is more or less crazy, some are homosexual, others visit prostitutes, and still others are religious fanatics. William realizes that the murders at the monastery are connected to a lost work by Aristotle, known as "The Comedy". Naturally, everyone who reads the work starts laughing. This is disagreeable to one of the elderly monks, a certain Venerable Jorge. He believes that laughter is of the devil, and therefore poisons the pages of the book, so that everyone who reads it dies! And no, the plot is not this straightforward: it contains several subplots and other twists, making the movie near-incomprehensible. I think I had to watch it five or six times before I got it. One of the subplots involves the love affair between Adso (Slater's character) and the girl (who is nameless).

In the end, the Inquisition arrives and starts accusing all the wrong people for the murders, including The Girl, whom they believe is possessed by the Devil himself. The Girl and two heretics are condemned to die at the stake, but in the last minute, The Girl is saved when the local peasants storm the monastery. The evil inquisitor (based on a real historical character, a certain Bernardo Gui) attempts to escape, but is spiked on his own torture instruments. William and Adso then leaves the monastery.

"The name of the rose" does include both violence, action, unexpected twists, and the previously mentioned sex scene. Sean Connery is excellent as usual. Still, the monks, inquisitors and heretics are so stereotyped that the whole things becomes almost funny. Who knows, maybe that's the point? The key to the whole murder mystery, after all, is "The Comedy" by Aristotle...