Eco spent 8 years writing a conspiracy novel to mock conspiracy theorists. The irony? They missed the joke.
Umberto Eco's novel Il pendolo di Foucault (1988) is an immensely ambitious, multi-layered and allusive book. The film contains an initial account and examination of this new book, which is as contentious as it is controversial. Eco's publisher and prominent Italian critics have their say and, of course, the author. He talks about the eight years of work on the book, about the two central images that stand at the beginning of his novel, and about what this story of magic, occultism, and delusion has to do with us and our present.
Writing
Eco's eight-year craft exposed in his own dry, self-aware words.
Direction
Knilli lets the labyrinth breathe—no rush, no hand-holding.
Director
Maria Knilli
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Eco wrote this after Name of the Rose made him a literary star; Pendulum was his deliberate attempt to alienate casual readers.
The 'Foucault' of the title refers to Léon Foucault's pendulum, not Michel Foucault—though Eco surely enjoyed that people assumed otherwise.
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