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| September 7, 2023 Shelton Mason County Journal |  |
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Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023 — Shelton-Mason Counn/ Journal ‘ Page 15
q Umberto Eco enlightens, entertains
hen it comes to
sources of casually
consumable storytell—
ing, polymath scholar Um—
berto Eco isn’t the first name
anyone thinks of, which is a
shame, because while he pro—
duced challenging, data-dense
novels such as “The Name
of the Rose” and “Foucault’s
Pendulum,” he was playful
for an intellectual, as director
Davide Ferrario reveals in his
documentary, “Umberto Eco:
A Library of the World.”
Before Eco died in 2016,
he gave Ferrario a tour of his
library, which has since been
donated to the Italian govern-
ment. Eco amassed 50,000 vol-
umes, faVoring rare books and
unorthodox subjects
Through interviews and
dialogues with Eco, and also
anecdotes recounted after his
death by those close to him,
Ferrario reinforces what a ra-
conteur Eco was. He combined
a fantasist’s passion for wildly
inaccurate worldviews with a
truth-seeker’s commitment to
curating information.
Eco filled his library with
books devoted to totally incor-
rect yet intricately developed
alchemical theories, and atlas-
es’ worth of locales that never
existed in the real world,
but he preached constant
vigilance in questioning one’s
sources of learning;
Moreover, though Eco cher-
ished libraries as repositories
of humanity’s memories, he
also asserted that an essen-
tial aspect of memory is that
it should be incomplete, as
inconsequential details and
occurrences are discarded, to
underscore the relative impor-
tance of the more meaningful
knowledge and events that we
retain.
When it came to anticipat-
ing phenomena such as “fake
news,” Eco was ahead of the
curve, but as an Italian who
grew up under Mussolini, he
had the good sense to keep
an eye out for the return of
517 Franklin St. - Shelton (Across from Safeway) 0 www.sheltoncinemas.com
MR3;
IN THE
DARK REVIEWS
fascism.
For all his high-minded
reading, Eco was a fan of
comics ranging from “Super—
man” to “Peanuts,” as Ferrario
shows us the Charlie Brown
bobbleheads nodding on
shelves stacked with careworn
antiquities of literature.
Eco was a master of so
many academic disciplines
that it’s hilarious how Fer-
rario puts Eco’s career as a
novelist into context, as a
virtual footnote to the rest of
his pursuits. Eco’s 1980 de-
but novel, “The Name of the
Rose,” was practically pro—
duced on a dare, as a mere
thought-exercise, in response
to a mass solicitation for fic-'
tional stories from nonfiction
writers.
Although I was acquainted
with Eco as a critically well-
regarded novelist and public
thinker prior to seeing this
film, watching “Umberto Eco:
A Library of the World” made
me regret not familiarizing
myself further with the man
while he was still alive. Even
Ferrario’s glimpses of Eco in
life manage to convey how
charming and mentally engag-
ing he was.
Even if you have no inter-
est in Eco, I guarantee you’ll
come away from this film
feeling like you’ve sat in on a
pleasant dinner-table conver-
sation with an old friend. If
you love books, Ferrario’s foot-
age of Eco’s library and other
exceptional libraries of the
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As seen in “Umberto Eco: A Library of the World,” Italian scholar and
author Umberto
Eco’s private library reached 50,000 volumes before his death in 2016.
Courtesy photo
world will blow you away.
I followed watching “A Li-
brary of the World” by watch-
ing the 1986 movie adaptation
of “The Name of the Rose,”
which deserved a better recep—
tion than it got from audienc-
es and reviewers.
When he was asked wheth-
er he could write a short de—
tective story, Eco insisted that
it couldn’t be short, and that it
must be set in a medieval Ital-
ian monastery, which would
have limited the box office
drawing power of “The Name
of the Rose” adaptation, even
during the auteur-friendly
19703, never mind the block-
buster-driven 19808.
The film’s casting likely
was an attempt to offset its es-
oteric qualities, except most of
the actors were either far less
famous back then or in career
slumps. Their talent nonethe—
less shines on through.
Sean Connery plays a fic-
tionalized version of the real-
life Franciscan friar William
of Baskerville, accompanied
by a then-unknown Christian
Slater as his novice, Adso of
Melk, as they arrive at an
g
be
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early 14th-century Benedic-
tine abbey, to take part in a
theological Church conference,
just as a young manuscript
maker has mysteriously died.
What follows is the sort of
clever, well-constructed his-
torical whodunnit that would
qualify as mainstream view-
ing by modern television stan-
dards, but which was appar-
ently too “out there” for many
American moviegoers in the
19803.
Even with the loss of com—
plexity that naturally occurs
from translating a novel like
“The Name of the Rose” into a
two-hour film, Eco’s interests
animate the film’s spirit and
narrative, as it acknowledges
the disparities of standards of
living between social classes,
and the hypocrisies of over-
grown institutions.
It’s fitting that Eco’s hero is
a man who loves books enough
to be willing to risk his life to
save them, while the tale’s vil—
lain, if not quite a fascist per
se, is an authoritarian who
is every bit as undone by the
thought of comedy as Inspec-
tor Javert is by Jean Valjean’s
mercy in “Les Miserables.”
If you’re a fan of “Hey,
it’s that guy” actors, you can
anticipate compelling perfor-
mances from Michael Lon-
sdale (Hugo Drax from the
1979'James Bond film “Moon-
raker”) as the abbot, Elya
Baskin (Peter Parker’s land—
lord from Sam Raimi’s second
and third “Spider—Man” films)
as one of the monks, deeply
creepy character actor Wil—r
liam Hickey as real-life Fran»
ciscan friar Ubertino of Casa-
le, and Ron “Hellboy” Perlman
as a half-mad, multilingual
hunchback.
Oh, yes, and not long after
winning an Academy Award
for playing Antonio Salieri in
the 1984 biopic “Amadeus,”
we have F. Murray Abraham
as Dominican friar Bernard
Gui of the Inquisition (nobody
expects them), again taking
liberties in depicting an actual
historical figure, but in an
watchable way. .
Treat yourself to this dou-
ble feature of Umberto Eco,
and you should come away
feeling both enlightened and
entertained.
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