Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose was a wonderful labyrinthine novel of complexity and beauty -- a densely-structured work which should have been impossible to translate to film.

But French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, in a feat comparable to Volker Schlondorff's remarkable adaptation of Gunter Grass's epochal novel The Tin Drum, has managed to distill the essence of the novel into a powerful movie of great originality and emotion. This is triumphant cinema.

Sean Connery plays one of the most unusual, if reluctant, detectives in fiction or cinema -- a 14th Century Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville, who, with his young assistant novice Adso of Melk (Christian Slater), visit a closed Benedictine monastery of most unusual aspect.

This monastery may be closed to the outside world, but it is nonetheless open to all the outside world's influences -- of corrupion, venality, fear, greed and even murder. And William of Baskerville cannot prevent being drawn into this vortex of cloistered mystery -- this becomes a veritable mediaeval thriller with its special chills, thrills and even erotic excitement.

The eroticism comes courtesy of the very young Christian Slater and a hot-blooded peasant girl. She forces Christian to briefly forget his novitiate vows, as she shows him just what those bumps under the sack-cloth are. It's an extraordinary scene -- but we must relucantly drag ourselves back to the real story......

As a series of bizarre murders stuns this insular community, the Holy Inquisitor Bernado Gui(F. Murray Abraham) arrives on the scene. It's up to William of Baskerville to solve this bizarre case before the Holy Inquisitor finds his own solution, via thumbscrew and the rack -- it's a race against time, to prevent torture and persecution of the innocent.

Soecial credit must go to the production-designer Dante Ferretti, for the design of the extraordinary monastery with its complex maze of internal stairways -- a cross between Piranesi and Escher, and a total precursor to Hogwarts.

Yes, there are major differences between the novel and the film, and this is at best a very loose adaptation of the novel. But it's a first-rate cinema version of a book which, on reading, would seem untranslateable into cinema. As with The Tin Drum, readers of the book will draw most from this movie, but it can stand proud by itself.

While Sean Connery and Christian Slater take the acting honours, watch for a special performance too from the fine Italian actor Feodor Chaliapin Jr, who plays Venerable Jorge de Burgos -- his character being Eco's tribute to the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges. Chaliapin, who played the grandfather in Moonstruck, was in fact the son of one of the greatest singers of the 20th Century, the outstanding Russian bass-baritone Feodor Chaliapin.

The transfer is from an excellent source, and is in better condition visually than my first copy of this DVD - a French edition with burnt-on French subtitles.

Though the image is at times very dark with little detail, this is intentional, to highlight the gloom and claustrophobic atmosphere of the mediaeval monastery. There is plenty of tonal contrast and detail when needed. Do not adjust your sets -- the atmosphere is intentional.

The 5.1 soundtrack is very effective, even though the full sonic range isn't needed -- there's not much room for full-spectrum sound-effects in a mediaeval monastery.

The extras are reasonable. Chief is an audio commmentary by the director -- in fact, there are two of these, with choice between English and French. It's quite absorbing stuff, with lots of fascinating background about the project and its actors.

Then there is a 43-minute German documentary, 'The Abbey of Crime' which is unbearably tedious and solemn; a complete waste of digital-space. A 16-minute Photo-Video Journey is somewhat better, as our director Jean-Jacques Annaud comments, years after making the movie, on how difficult it was to get it made, on its comparatively undistinguished launch in front of a totally uninterested world, and its slow climb into cult-status.

There is a routine US anamorphic trailer for the movie, to round out the special features. Some European markets fare much better with a two-disc special edition -- they get a 117-minute documentary on its making.