This was a disappointing adaptation of a very fine book. Robert deNiro seemed out of place as the Archbishop, a character which I don't recall from the book. There were many fine performances such as that of Harvey Keitel, Kathy Bates, and F. Murray Abraham, but what ruined the film for me was the addition of an Inquisition that did not occur in the book.
The whole point of the book is that we cannot tell why bad things happen to good people. With the simple-minded Catholic bashing that was appended to this film, that message became distorted. (It is not, as the film suggests, heresy for Catholics to hold this view.) Better editing and a truer-to-the-book script could have saved this film, even with Robert deNiro as an archbishop. They managed to save the fine opening and ending of the book by putting them into the mouths of some of the characters (such as when the archbishop delivered the eulogy for the dead at the beginning of the film). But the addition of a biased perspective against Catholicism at the beginning of the film ruined this for me. When they burned the monk at the end, I reached to the floor and felt a distinct vibration: Thornton Wilder was spinning in his grave.
The whole point of the book is that we cannot tell why bad things happen to good people. With the simple-minded Catholic bashing that was appended to this film, that message became distorted. (It is not, as the film suggests, heresy for Catholics to hold this view.) Better editing and a truer-to-the-book script could have saved this film, even with Robert deNiro as an archbishop. They managed to save the fine opening and ending of the book by putting them into the mouths of some of the characters (such as when the archbishop delivered the eulogy for the dead at the beginning of the film). But the addition of a biased perspective against Catholicism at the beginning of the film ruined this for me. When they burned the monk at the end, I reached to the floor and felt a distinct vibration: Thornton Wilder was spinning in his grave.