The Name of The Rose (Der Name der Rose) - 1986
Movie
A week ago, I've watched the
The Name of The Rose or as
originally entitled (Der Name der Rose).
The movie was recommended to my by a friend, stressing out that the
movie has to deal more or less with Christianity topics in general
and Catholicism in general.
Though the movie plot is based on
Umberto Eco's novel,
and he as an author is not among my favourite authors.
The movie is definitely worth seeing, if you're Christian.
It's also an interesting fact that the movie includes some
celebrities like:
Sean Connery and
Christian Slater
. The whole story revolves around a mystery that emerged in
Medieval Abbey in Italy.
For some strange reason, few suicides occur among monks.
That completely puzzles the monk, so the monks in the brotherhood
decide to invite a monk who is famous for his good skills in
solving mysteries.
The investigating monk (William of Baskerville) arrives at the
abbey with his young disciple.
It's interesting that William of Baskerville is a bit more thinker
than a believer, so he refuses to accept the idea of the Abbot that
the Devil is crawling the abbey and causes the suicides and
misfortunes in the abbey.
After some deep investigation he comes to some conclusion and finds
out that all the dead monks in the abbey has a black mark on their
right hand finger as well as on their tongue.
This drives him to the idea that the monks were probably
poisened.
A notable figure in the Movie is the Abbot who is an old monk whose
possesing a vision/image of a prophet.
The old abbot is strongly against the logical approach in solving
mysteries and completely trusts in God's providence.
Monk William of Baskerville as being a logical nature enters in a
dispute with the abbot, where they blazingly argue if the monks
should laugh or not, should they be allowed to read books with text
including laughter or life parody or not.
The abbot is firmly against the idea of the enlightenment of man
through books and believes the Christian Monk enlightenment should
be achieved mostly through experience in prayer thank in
Books.
As the movie progress since the killings in the monastery continue
without any solution, the Catholic church sends the Holy
Inquisition to solve the mystery.
The inquisition makes the situation even worse and the mystery
deepens even further on.
Eventually it turns out that this Abbey actually, has a secret
passage leading to one of the largest libraries of it's time.
The library holds thousands and thousand of books including many
laughter books. As the abbot finds out about the discovery, he
falls out in holy fear that the laughter books can emerge and be
copied and multipled many times.
Opening the humour and laughter genry for the whole Church world as
well for the laymen.
The superannuated monk realizes that this book transperancy could
underneath the Church authority among people and therefore decides
to burn the library putting on fire as he puts on fire the whole
monastery tower containing the textbooks.
In the meantine the inquisition doesn't sleep and judges for a
burning at the stake 3 people.
Among which are two monks, who the inquisition classifies as
schismatics and a young village girl, who is captured in the
monastery right before one of the monstreous monks attempts to rape
her.
The girl is innocent as she is completely illiterate and doesn't
have a clear idea on sin e.g. on what is right and what is
wrong.
However at the end of the movie the girl, rightously survives by
the Grace of the Virgin Mary, while the two dissenter monks are
burnt out.
The movie touches one major theme in Christianity which is quite
present even today, even though it's probably out of question among
Orthodox Christians.
It discusses the problem should we Christians read many spiritual
books to drawn closer to God or should we achieve our holiness in
concentrating on prayer.
It deals with the problem which is poisoning many christians
today.
Should we base our lifes on science or should we completely
consider science fallacy most of the time?
The movie stand point is the same as mine as well as in the
Orthodox Church.
While it tells the story it shows that, actually at the end
everything is in God's hands, but however it presents that human
factor is also important.
In other words I believe the movie teaches that,
We should be
moderate in all we do! and keep our faith while moderately
evaluating our surrounding world.
Of course ultimately we should place our faith in our God and
humble ourselves before him, but we shouldn't act as a madman and
we should also consider the logic which was also created by God in
the beginning.