There’s a new version of The Count of Monte-Cristo in theaters. I saw it while staying in Marseille for a few days—didn’t think I would have any other opportunity to see this story in the city where it begins. Before going to the movie I looked up a map and realized I’d been to several places in the first chapters of the book—very cool! But I regret to report there is almost none of the city in the film, even less of Paris, and none of Rome nor anyplace else. Just one of several ways in which the adaptation tries to extricate the story from the particular time, place, and social/class context in which it’s set.
The movie is set in roughly six locations: the count’s house in Auteuil (outside Paris), Fernand’s wealthy family(???)'s estate outside Marseille, Fernand’s estate outside Paris, the cave on Montecristo, the inside of Villefort’s office, and 2 square meters on the pier in Marseille. I can recall the images I imagined of not just the inside of apartments, but the streets, the catacombs, the Colosseum! etc. where particular scenes in the novel take place, and I’m of course not disappointed the movie couldn’t read my mind, but more that it didn’t even make the attempt. Reconstructing all these places to period accuracy with CGI would have been difficult, or ugly, or both, that’s reason enough to have avoided it most of the time, but there could have been a little more scene-setting. So much of the movie is in closeup that it hardly matters where any of the action takes place, and when you can see the location it’s in the woods like 40% of the time. When Dantès reaches Montecristo—which would have been easier to film had they adhered to the cave in the book—it’s this silly and very conspicuous stairway leading to a very conspicuous Knights Templar statue which opens a mechanical door to an Indiana Jones cave (set to incredibly syrupy music). I guess noticing the absence or alteration of these places made me understand their importance. I miss Carnival :(
Broadly speaking, there are two common variations of the book-to-screen adaptation:
- targets theme and/or character, and develops them in its own direction i.e. differently from the book
- recounts as much of the plot as possible
Both abridge or otherwise alter the story such as it exists in the form of a novel; you can’t include everything especially when it’s something this dense in detail. It’s interesting to consider no one has really done a proper screen adaptation because the novel is not formally unusual, it’s a very straightforward story, but turning it into a less-than-three-hour film means it has to be changed. In any case this new version of Monte-Cristo appears at times to be the first kind of adaptation, but turns out to be—and demonstrates the various failures of—the second.
Dantès glares gloomily at his masks and his mirrors while practicing the lines he later speaks to his old enemies. Scenes of Haydée and André(a)—who is now the count’s protégé—meeting the count’s targets are doubled and intercut with scenes of their rehearsal. The problem is these are mostly fodder for montage, the motif isn’t really interrogated. It’s just another step along the path toward REVENGE. I like that this adaptation shows Dantès assuming his aliases—there’s an extended scene where Pierre Niney affects an English accent while speaking French which is fun—but again it doesn’t really mean anything, it’s just cute. They decided it looked cool when showing Dantès’s fractured reflection in all the mirrors at his dressing table and cut every half second to a different angle so none of the images can even really speak for themselves.
The abbé Faria is of course present, and he teaches Dantès everything he knows and motivates him to escape from prison as usual, but he doesn’t actually say anything specific. It’s just “look sonny boy, philosophy and math are weapons too! ;)” And that’s the movie’s problem in microcosm: it tells the outline of the story while skipping what is meaningful about it. Dantès risks losing himself to his thirst for vengeance, yes, and in the novel you see that there is a himself to lose when he acts with love and tenderness toward Morrel and his family. In the movie he is basically a ghost when he comes back from prison. It’s just thin, doesn’t make me want to root for him or anyone else.
misc. note: I realized when visiting Marseille that the Château d’If is extremely near the shore of the city, and so one change I didn’t really mind was after escaping prison Dantès swims back to the mainland to look for Mercédès (in the woods where she and everyone else live).
misc. note 2: Eugénie Danglars is not a very substantial character in the book, and is less of one in this movie. Shout-out to the anime adaptation for developing her into an interesting character.
After all that complaining I’m almost surprised to say I had an OK time watching it. But I’m never going to watch it again.
…
UNLIKE Megalopolis, oh my god.
