Apparently before Dan Brown there was Umberto Eco. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (Seven Years in Tibet (1997)). Apparently this revived Sean Connery's career sufficiently for him to go on to greater heights in Highlander (also 1986)... or was it the other way around? A very young Christian Slater. Michael Lonsdale does his usual.
Rationalist Franciscan monk Connery arrives at an austere knowledge-preserving Benedictine monastery in wintry northern Italy in 1327 as bad stuff is happening. Supernatural or just a side effect of things having to change to stay the same? Or a foreshadowing of a debate about how much property Jesus had? Or perhaps merely an excuse for the Inquisition (in the form of F. Murray Abraham) to intervene? Slater is Connery's pupil, notionally recounting the events from old age. Without his entanglement with "the girl" (Valentina Vargas) I doubt it was all that memorable. So much effort was poured into something so humourless.
Roger Ebert: two-and-a-half stars. Connery as "the first modern man"; shades of Zardoz (1974) therefore. It could have been something. (And that was a barrel of pig's blood not wine!) Vincent Canby. Obviously Holmes and Watson.
