The Count of Montecristo, a two hundred-year-old story and one of the best movies of the year

For some reason I could not really pinpoint, I have very little knowledge on classic French literature. It really never seemed interesting enough to me. Not to say it was bad, just that I never really put attention to it. To the point that, when this year there was a new adaptation in the form of a French three hour epic blockbuster that was even projected in Cannes of The Count of Montecristo, I believed, all the way until I finish watching the movie, that the original novel was from Victor Hugo. I am sorry, Alexandre Dumas, you deserve better than me... :'(

If you live in a cave and not know what this story is about, as I was before actually watching this adaptation from a novel published almost 200 years ago, it is a revenge story. Edmond (Pierre Niney) is a poor guy, recently named capitain of his own ship, so now he has the chance to marry her beloved and daughter of a high family Mercedes (Anaïs Demoustier). But on his wedding day the prosecutor (Laurent Lafitte), his former capitain (Patrick Mille) who was embarrassed by him, and his best friend Fernand (Bastien Bouillon) who is in love with Mercedes, work together to send him to prision for life accussing him of plotting with the late emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. In prision he knows a man (Pierfrancesco Favino) who told him about the gargantuan treassure in the Island of Montecristo, and when he finally manages to escape and learn that his life has not waited for him, he decides to go to this island and name himself the Count of Montecristo. With his new identity, and the aid of the young prosecutors bastard (Julien De Saint Jean) and a foreign girl (Anamaria Vartolomei) wrong by Fernand in war, Edmond creates a plan to get revenge of those who took his life away.

Holy sh*t! I came here looking for copper and I found gold. Honestly, I just went to the cinema to see this movie because of all the good critics I saw it has (not even read one, just look at the Rotten Tomatoes number), and they were not wrong. This adaptation of The Count of Montecristo is amazing in every sense of the word, and in every cinematic way.

The production values are mindblowing, a lot of locations, extras, VFX to recreaete the XIX century ports and villages, and even appear multiple ships and unique places. The vestry is amazing, with a lot of outfits for a whole bunch of characters with all kind of historically accurate fabrics. Every location is distinctive, going from big high class post-napoleonic French manners, all the way to a prision in the middle of the ocean with subterranean dome cells, as well as a tolkienish cave with a templary knight statue as the entrance, and none of this feel like a set, being always full of props and decorations to give verosimilitude.

The cinematography and direction is also very destacable in its camera use. The lighting, even when it is not always the most stylized, there is a true intention to try several light sources and always have some kind of contrast in the actors' faces. The camera work is effective, being able to convey the most intimate scenes in a calmer manner but full of tension, opposing to the action scenes overboarding with adrenaline. Also, the movie plays very appropiatetly with its production values, opting for open general shots of the locations to make them shine, as well as getting closer to the characters for the more emotional bits. Even with this, I could not deny that the shots by itself, as competent as they are, are not the most memorable and creative images.

All the actors do a great job. The way Edmond is consumed by rage and hate as the movie goes is histrionically noticeable, and the nuances that he adopts with every new identity and make-up (which are simple, yet effective for the idea of being another person), as well as with whom he is interacting and who is in the room to see him, are delicious to watch. The former capitain is very charismatic, is a son of a b****, but a carismatic one. Fernand's son, played by Vassili Schneide , as well as André (De Saint Jean), the prosecutor's bastard son, are two faces of the same coin that together work as foils and function as the thematic discussion proposed by the movie; the first one is absolutely passionate and lives (and is willing to die) for love, while the second one in full of hate and anger to the point of dieing in his pursuit of vengeance. Also Mercedes is stoic, but you could read in her expressions what is happenning in her mind, and the Count's protegie (Vartolomei) manages to be a hypnotic character that appears last in the story, but has such a presence in screen that for the third act she already is your emotional anchor charcter.

The melodramatic tone is really effective. Yes, maybe most characters are just one-noted and their growth and/or resulution are pretty obvious. But, this is precisely why this work. These are simple characters that, instead of trying to over-complex them in a naturalistic manner, they are used as peons in the service of the story, plot, a changing (not for that less enjoyable and effective) tone and an ever-scalating conflict. I do not mean they are just used to move forward the story, I mean that this simple an un-nuanced approach to characters, whom still are the heart of the story, contribute to create more intense, opposing and emotional conflicts. And conflicts equalls entertainment, and when this conflicts are bigger than what we use to see in modern day cinema, the entertainment is also much more than what you can find on the billboard.

Nontheless, what is the most surprising feature of this film, perhaps of the story but I have not read the book, is how influyent and how well it still works today. The way I could describe (and I do) this film is like a post-napoleonic Pirates of the Caribbean, with the thematic issue at the center of Matt Reeves' The Batman about vengeance vs. jusice in a Jeckyll&Hydeish kind of way, sparkled with a little touch of Oldboy and some Pride and Prejudice-type subplots. It is like a retroactive story and cinematic product, where the original novel influenced a lot of what came after it in a narrative and themac way, this film lets itself be influenced by movies and artristic products that came before this adaptation.

It is simply an amazing movie. Maybe is not the most original in its cinematic proposal, but it is completely effective. It is engaging and entertainment, emotional and funny, character driven and with a very complex conspiracy plot, has a contemporary feeling, yet transmits you an epic sensation like a great story of old. It is just a great experience to get to know this story by this movie.