AllMovie

This documentary attempts to create an interesting and profitable encounter between the filmmakers, award-winning writer Umberto Eco, and Jean-Jacques Annaud, the director of a film based on one of Eco's more popular books The Name of the Rose and starring Sean Connery. In the process, the author's contempt for anyone he does not see as his intellectual equal (arguably, everyone) is made manifest. The film's other attempt, to detail the story of the book and interest potential viewers in the film, gets lost in the story's labyrinthine plot. For those not familiar with it, the story follows a rationalistic ex-warrior and monk as he uses real-life clues and logic to solve a murder during the superstitious middle ages. Annaud and Connery have little insight to offer, and by all reports this attempt to create an interesting film about the making of Annaud's film is a complete failure.