Eco's story starts with a 100+ page immersion in medieval thinking patterns and conceptual themes, from the mind of Adso of Melk, now aged, but remembering a striking adventure in his youth. The film immerses us in the historic sense of those times, but without the conceptual themes.
Something lost and something gained, however. Starting with a 10 stars out of a possible 10 story, the film honors what it can, acts out what it cannot honor, and transacts what it can't act out. It's hard for me to say whether this is a better film or a better book, it's so close.
The control of information is the representative theme .. the collection of information in a tower of power, the library in the fortress-monastery that is lost nameless in time. The political wheelings and dealings, the lust for information, the self-abasement to satisfy the goal of acquiring hidden knowledge ... all among the monks who are supposed to have the highest of ideals.
Laughter is the focal point of the drama .. whether Christ ever laughed and whether laughter is divine or satanic, good or evil .. and the hidden knowledge that is lusted after is related to the lost volume of Aristotle's Poetics, On Comedy. The !? last extant copy !? of On Comedy is housed in this monastic library .. and someone has decided that anyone who reads this work must die .. that anyone who knows, with certainty, that the work exists, must die. Why? Because Aristotle is such a powerful intellectual figure that the monks who read his thoughts in On Comedy will be unable to make the "right" choice and reject his arguments. (The murderer, of course, is able to see right through Aristotle's error in this case ...)
Should it ever be the policy that "the information must be kept out of the hands of the common people"? (Although in The Rose, the monks, in their time, were likely in the 99th percentile of education.)
One last thematic issue is the nature of libraries themselves .. no matter how much you try to "make the materials accessible" .. there must be gatekeepers and guardians: to keep out the rats, to keep out the ruffians, scalawags and Visigoths, etc.
The library at Alexandria .. the greatest collection of knowledge of ancient time .. burned. There's a risk, keeping all that valuable information in one place, or accessible in one system ...
Cheers
Something lost and something gained, however. Starting with a 10 stars out of a possible 10 story, the film honors what it can, acts out what it cannot honor, and transacts what it can't act out. It's hard for me to say whether this is a better film or a better book, it's so close.
The control of information is the representative theme .. the collection of information in a tower of power, the library in the fortress-monastery that is lost nameless in time. The political wheelings and dealings, the lust for information, the self-abasement to satisfy the goal of acquiring hidden knowledge ... all among the monks who are supposed to have the highest of ideals.
Laughter is the focal point of the drama .. whether Christ ever laughed and whether laughter is divine or satanic, good or evil .. and the hidden knowledge that is lusted after is related to the lost volume of Aristotle's Poetics, On Comedy. The !? last extant copy !? of On Comedy is housed in this monastic library .. and someone has decided that anyone who reads this work must die .. that anyone who knows, with certainty, that the work exists, must die. Why? Because Aristotle is such a powerful intellectual figure that the monks who read his thoughts in On Comedy will be unable to make the "right" choice and reject his arguments. (The murderer, of course, is able to see right through Aristotle's error in this case ...)
Should it ever be the policy that "the information must be kept out of the hands of the common people"? (Although in The Rose, the monks, in their time, were likely in the 99th percentile of education.)
One last thematic issue is the nature of libraries themselves .. no matter how much you try to "make the materials accessible" .. there must be gatekeepers and guardians: to keep out the rats, to keep out the ruffians, scalawags and Visigoths, etc.
The library at Alexandria .. the greatest collection of knowledge of ancient time .. burned. There's a risk, keeping all that valuable information in one place, or accessible in one system ...
Cheers
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