When we sat down to watch The Name of the Rose I thought that it
would be another boring movie that the professor really liked but didn't make
sense to the rest of us at all. However, this after watching it I realized how
important movies like these are to us as a culture. Living in the 21st century
it is easy to take for granted all the access to literature and knowledge that
we have. By watching movies like this we are reminded just how valuable this
knowledge is and how it contributes to our everyday life. This movie had so
many different ideas packed into it, for me I took away the idea of how
important books and knowledge are to us and how they can impact our lives in
different ways.
I particularly liked how in the movie the
young apprentice, Adso, didn't understand why William (Sean Connery) was so
obsessed with finding the books and saving them. He had to grow to understand
why this type of knowledge could save people, such as the village girl from
living such destitute lives. I think that this is an important lesson that we
can take away from the film. That without the knowledge that we have come to
rely on we would slip back into the "Dark Ages". This is not to say
that all our knowledge is necessary or very important but it is pivotal to how
far we have come and how far we hope to go.
Another reason why this film is so
impactful is all the symbolism that it has packed in. It shows the depravity of
man through the deformities in the monks, all the issues they have can be
attributed to how deprived they are of knowledge and books. While in contrast
we see how important knowledge is by looking at how healthy William and Adso
are throughout the film. This contrast is obvious but is easily skipped over
because it doesn't seem as important. For me this shows how we as people could
take two paths through life. We can either become deformed or warped by going
through life without seeking knowledge or being afraid of it. Or we can go
through life being happy and health by feeding our minds with new knowledge and
ideas.
Thanks for the interesting and thoughtful review of the film. I am glad it wasn't just another boring movie a professor liked. I think it indeed has relevant issues and insights.
ReplyDeleteI was also skeptical of The Name of the Rose at the beginning of the film; however, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I was entertained. There were several relevant issues addressed, the main being that books equal knowledge, knowledge equals power, and power equals problems. I had no idea how extremist the views against books were during the Dark Ages. I can see why leaders would be fearful of commoners or revolutionists learning too much from books, if there was cause for overthrow and upheaval; however, just banning information that may go against a group’s beliefs seems a bit absurd to me.
ReplyDeleteThis film reminded me of the Red Summer of 1919. It was the summer after World War I and the soldiers were returning from war. Many of the soldiers were black Americans. White people began to worry that blacks had learned too much, while they were in Europe. Riots began to break out in the summer of 1919. Black people were ridiculed, tortured and killed for no reason other than white man’s fear that they had the knowledge to cause a revolution. This is similar to the movie because the head librarian and his assistant killed people solely because they did not want knowledge to spread. I wrote a blog post about the knowledge that comes from books, where I stated while the knowledge in books is important, the ultimate power of books lies within the reader.