In Review: The Count of Monte Cristo

The new French adaptation is swaggering and romantic with a classical sense rarely seen in modern cinema

To say ‘they just don’t make them like they used to’ could readily apply to both the original historical epic novel of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ or the new three-hour film adaptation. The some 1200-page novel was first serialized in the 1840s and has since become one of the progenitors of the revenge tale, decorously adorned with elements of swashbuckling, espionage, adultery, romance, Knights Templar nonsense, and really great masks. For how much certain titans of literature loom large as inscrutable or archaic, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ is far more a romp than a homework assignment.

Directors Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte deftly bring the verve and panache of the novel to the big screen; churning through pages with a tenacity that enlivens the screen. If the three-hour runtime looks long, allow me to assure you how quickly this film moves to cover the entirety of the novel’s page count. The film moves with gusto, never once dropping its energy in reaching its denouement.

It's a classic film adaptation of a classic story; the kind of filmmaking that made Hollywood into an international powerhouse during the 1940s and 50s that feels as though it’s been lost to time somehow. Patellière and Delaporte bring all of the fun and gorgeous staging of an old Erroll Flynn movie into the modern age, avoiding too many of the ills of modern filmmaking and instead investing in the costume drama luxuriousness which the story deserves. Massive sets, gallant costumes, beautiful faces every which way you looks—this movie has it all in the way that now feels reserved for stories of smaller scope and smaller ambition. We simply don’t get to see a sprawl of this kind anymore, and certainly not to this scale.

The film feels like a sort of cinematic monument to the virtue of being French, in all the ways that could be ascribed. The gushing romance, sneering villains, and strong-nosed profiles all craft a film that wields its nation of origin as more than just the location from the novel, but a feeling that can itself be crafted and used to facilitate immersion and evoke certain sensations that bolster the specificity of the film’s story. There’s a pride here, the same kind of pride that makes the Soviet War and Peace such a tremendous, overwhelming cinematic experience; likewise deployed for one of that nation’s classic pieces of literature.

From a story perspective, writing about this film feels fraught in a way because of how loyal it is to the novel. There are changes and a few sly modernizations, of which there are too many and few noticeable enough to warrant discussion. However, the choice to change one of the key female characters, Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei) from slave-girl to a young charge was a welcome adaptation that fits better into a modern viewing without appreciably changing her role within the story itself.

For those unfamiliar with the tale (and it’s a long read, so don’t feel bad if you’ve never indulged), it is perhaps the most recognizable revenge tale of modern literature. When a French sailor of no nobility or class, Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) saves a shipwrecked woman in direct defiance of his captain, Danglars (Patrick Mille), the commendation he earns for his bravery comes with a promotion to captain himself, which affords him the money and status to wed his love, a daughter of the massively wealthy Morcerf family, Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier), which draws the ire of her cousin and wannabe suitor, Fernand (Bastien Bouillon). In a plot for revenge, Danglars and Fernand, with the help of the corrupt and enterprising prosecutor Gérard de Villefort (Laurent Lafitte), this coterie of ne'er-do-wells conspire to frame Dantès as a Napoleon sympathizer and have him thrown in prison as a traitor to the French crown.

In jail, after years of isolation, Dantès eventually meets Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino) when Faria tunnels into Dantès’ cell. The two hatch an escape plan which takes nearly another ten years of digging. While the two bond, Faria tells Dantès of a secret fortune from the old Knights Templar; a fortune that only he knows the location of thanks to a family secret. Faria dies before their escape plan can come to pass, but he tells Dantès where he can find the fortune, and beseeches him to use it for good.

The film does a fantastic job at getting audiences into a lather about this nefarious miscarriage of justice, which makes the eventually hammer blows of righteousness feel all the more cathartic. But as Dantès—who becomes the eponymous Count of Monte Cristo—exacts his revenge, with a deft touch and swirling sense of romance, the film calls into question what the virtue is of a life dedicated to revenge. When does justice stop being just? When does revenge become the perpetuation of the hate which has torn apart the lives of so many?

What The Count of Monte Cristo understands so well as a matter of construction is that a good movie—the best movies—are the ones where you can’t wait to see how it ends. Patellière and Delaporte aren’t holding back information or trying to build an artificial sense of suspense and tension. They are working with a great story, famously so, and are allowing it to shine on its own, riding its brilliance straight through to the end. There’s something to be said about an adaptation that doesn’t try to reinvent the material to personalize or modernize the story. That’s not to say that the filmmakers should relinquish their own authorship in the process of making the movie; rather, it’s to say that the very act of expressing a story in a visual and cinematic language is a form of authorship, and providing a sense of deference to the source material to carry the story in the way that it originally captured hearts is a valuable skill.

Not so gone are the days when the movies that could just be seen as junk food due to how outright tantalizing they are, could likewise feel so noble or austere. That films can show pathos, romance, idealism, the unquenchable desire for catharsis completely unincumbered by its simultaneous ambition to be fun. The Count of Monte Cristo is a blast, through and through; a joyride that is thoughtful and sensational, sweeping and magnetic without compromise. It’s like stepping into a time machine and experiencing a movie from the 1940s the way that someone of that time may have felt without ever feeling a piece of a bygone era or dated in some kind of failing way. With all the beauty and joy of reading a book you just can’t put down, Patellière and Delaporte have brought to the big screen a movie whose only ‘problem’ may be that it simply isn’t long enough.