The movie is a screen adaptation of the best-selling book by Umberto Eco. Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his novice, Adso, arrive at an Italian abbey in northern Italy to investigate a suicide. A suicide: how frequent should suicides be? How easy is it to stage a homicide as a suicide? William acts as though there are no certain suicides if the "suicided" person has at least one enemy. And he is not mistaken. Once the investigation begins, a series of deaths follow in the abbey.The abbey serves as a microcosm, representing a concentration of individuals engaged in intellectual debates. Modernly, it could be compared to a university. Meanwhile, Adso, William's novice, encounters a woman for the first time. She is presented as a very simple and naive character, offering him sexual favors in exchange for food. I won’t spoil the ending of the movie, but I will briefly touch on some important theme I found in the movie.First, women and culture. Whether right or wrong, women are portrayed as separate from intellectual debates. Depicting the only significant female character in the movie as so simple and naive is not necessarily judgmental: I am 100% sure that men, too, would trade sexual favors for food if they were starving—there is nothing to judge in that. The real question is why women are not included in intellectual debates, a question that is neither addressed by the movie nor the book. Are they averse to enemies (as debates often bring adversaries)? Are they discriminated against?The second important theme is laughter. Laughter, or riso in Italian, resembles the word rose (which is spelled the same in Italian). Laughter plays a significant role in the intellectual debates depicted in the movie. Sadistic personalities don’t like when others laugh, reserving laughter for themselves, making this theme as relevant today as it was in the story’s setting.Finally, fires. This review is being written during one of the worst waves of wildfires in Southern California’s history. The movie explores the "bad guys’" temptation to destroy or obscure knowledge that educates the masses against them. At first, they try to hide such material, but once it becomes too visible, they resort to burning it.All in all, both the book and the movie are masterpieces, beyond a reasonable doubt.