The Name of the Rose: Monastery Wine and Garlic Soup 🥁 🥁 🥁 🥁
/Year Released: 1986
Directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Starring: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, Ron Perlman, F. Murray Abraham
(R, 131 min.)
Genre: Mystery and Suspense
“We have enough religion to make us hate each other, but not enough to make us love each other.” –Sidney J. Harris
Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Brother Cadfael, with a taste of Angels and Demons thrown in. Not to mention a bit of Voltaire with at passing nod to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and a wink, –just a wink – at Scooby Doo.
The Name of the Rose is a gothic medieval mystery thriller set in a 14th-century Italian monastery. Franciscan monk William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) and a young novice (Christian Slater) arrive for a conference to find that several monks have been murdered in mysterious circumstances.
A creepy medieval abbey, complete with a babbling hunchback, malevolent monks, spiral staircases, hidden passages, fires, burnings at the stake, and a few deaths that put Midsomer Murders to shame. What’s not to like?
Voltaire would not have been surprised:
“What! have you no monks who teach, who dispute, who govern, who cabal, and who burn people that are not of their opinion?”
― Voltaire, Candide
And then there’s Sean Connery as Franciscan friar William of Baskerville blending in the best of some past roles – his humorous authority from The Untouchables, his deep knowledge from The Last Crusade, with a little Sherlock Holmes thrown in for good measure. He even says, “It’s elementary,” at least once to his young novice, Adso (a quite young and handsome Christian Slater.)
He also deduces Adso’s tryst with a young peasant girl, when Adso describes her, sounding more like Romeo than a Franciscan novice:
Who was she? Who was this creature that rose like the dawn, as bewitching as the moon, radiant as the sun, terrible as an army poised for battle?
With his subtle humor he lets Adso know he knows:
William of Baskerville : [William and Adso witnessed a girl running away after payed service to a monk] He must have been a very ugly monk.
Adso of Melk : Why ugly?
William of Baskerville : If he'd been young and beautiful, she'd have blessed him with her carnal favors for nothing.
And then William of Baskerville – a purposeful allusion to Holmes, we wonder – goes on to give the smitten novice some advice on love, but humble and reassuring rather than reproachful:
William of Baskerville : You are in love.
Adso of Melk : Is that bad?
William of Baskerville : For a monk, it does present certain problems.
Adso of Melk : But doesn't St. Thomas Aquinas praise love above all other virtues?
William of Baskerville : Yes, the love of God, Adso. The love of God.
Adso of Melk : Oh... And the love of woman?
William of Baskerville : Of woman? Thomas Aquinas knew precious little, but the scriptures are very clear. Proverbs warns us, "Woman takes possession of a man's precious soul", while Ecclesiastes tells us, "More bitter than death is woman".
Adso of Melk : Yes, but what do you think, Master?
William of Baskerville : Well, of course I don't have the benefit of your experience, but I find it difficult to convince myself that God would have introduced such a foul being into creation without endowing her with *some* virtures. Hmm? How peaceful life would be without love, Adso, how safe, how tranquil, and how dull.
It is the friar’s own dry humor and reason that contradict the dark and somber visions of the Abbey Benedictine monks, especially Jorge de Burgo (Feodor Chaliapin), who sees laughter as an enemy because it kills fear, which in his distorted mind, is the source of religious faith.
One critic (John Simon) seems to agree, lampooning the film because of its “preposterously happy ending,” while the actual author of the book upon which the film is based was not thrilled either.
A book like this is a club sandwich, with turkey, salami, tomato, cheese, lettuce. And the movie is obliged to choose only the lettuce or the cheese, eliminating everything else – the theological side, the political side. – Umberto Eco
Perhaps if he had written the screenplay himself, as Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) did, or gone to Hollywood himself as did both William Faulkner and John Steinbeck and gotten some good lucre for it, Umberto might have been a bit happier.
Maybe you overlooked this clever mystery from almost 4 decades ago. Perhaps you even have forgotten when wit, character development, and atmosphere ruled instead of just cinematic eye candy.
Remedy that right now.
–Kathy Borich
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Trailer
Film-Loving Foodie
Our creepy monastery, overflowing with morose monks and an assortment of other grim relics, is not into enjoying anything except perhaps the occasional lusty transgression and the self-flagellation that comes afterward, which being the great source of enjoyment, we wonder.
So our meal is simple and without much adornment. The wine perhaps reminding us of the sad end of one of the monks found upside down in a vat of wine.
Our recipe comes from Different Drummer’s own Appetite for Murder: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbook, a tantalizing slant on cooking and crime. It relives favorite classic crime fiction and helps you whip up the food that helped solve the crime or catch the culprit.
Filled with authentic recipes to coax you into autumn, like today’s Monastery Wine and Garlic Soup, Appetite for Murder: A Mystery Lover’s Cookbook is filled with other gourmet recipes, such as Grilled Quail Salad, Smothered Pheasant, Cold Asparagus in Walnut Drizzle, Mushrooms in Sherry Cream, Seed Cake Drenched in Cognac, French Potato Salad Bathed in Vermouth, Iridescent Turtle Soup with Sherry on the Side, and Roquefort-Baked Avocados to name a few.
Treat yourself or a friend to this culinary tour of classic crime. You won’t regret it.
Monastery Wine and Garlic Soup
Ingredients
16 large garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons olive oil (or more)
1 cup dry white wine
6 cups bouillon
Salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
6 slices whole whet bread
3 egg yolks, beaten
3 egg whites, beaten stiff
Directions
Sauté the garlic in olive oil in a soup kettle for a few minutes. Add the wine, bouillon, salt and nutmeg, and bring to boil. Reduce the heat to low to medium, add the egg yolks, and cook for 15 minutes. Simmer for another 15 minutes, covered.
Place one slice of bread in each of six soup plates. Scatter the stiff egg whites over the bread. Ladle the hot soup over the bread and serve immediately
