As Chianese
•Taken from the famous best-seller by Umberto Eco, this film is the result of the initiative of producer Franco Cristaldi who hits the mark by entrusting the direction, with a considerable budget, to a true expert in the field: the Frenchman Jean-Jacques Annaud ("The Bear", "The Enemy at the Gates"). In the Middle Ages, in an abbey in northern Italy, a meeting is taking place between some Jesuit monks and the representatives of the Pope to solve the problem of the Pope's temporal goods. Among the guests is Guglielmo da Baskerville (a great Sean Connery), a monk who has dedicated his life to study and who has a past as a member of the Holy Inquisition. Meanwhile, in the abbey, strange and horrid crimes are being committed, the hand is always the same... that of a murderer who is inspired by the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse to slaughter anyone who comes into contact with a cursed book, jealously preserved in the vast library of the abbey. Guglielmo da Baskerville and the novice Adso Da Melk (a young Christian Slater) begin to investigate... Directed excellently by the skilled Annaud, this film features the presence of excellent actors, including, in addition to the already mentioned Connery and Slater, the sadistic Federick Murray Abraham as the inquisitor Bernardo Guy, Fedor Chaliapin Jr. the Varelli of Argento's "Inferno" and the sexy Valentina Vargas. Some negative notes only regarding the screenplay, written by four different authors: Brach, Birkin, A. Goddard, and Franklin: it focuses more on the mystery than on the ironic philosophical musings that are classic of Eco's writing style. But otherwise, cinematographically speaking, they do their job very well, the production designer Dante Ferretti and the photographer Tonino Delli Colli (his work for the film earned him the David di Donatello). In short, an excellent film that does not disappoint fans of mystery nor those who loved the book; definitely worth watching.
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