It’s Sunday and this week I have a movie to recommend, and it’s a bit of an epic. It’s not often that I recommend a three hour-long film, but honestly The Count of Monte Cristo didn’t feel that long because there is so much going on and it’s so much fun.
So this is the latest adaptation of the book by Alexandre Dumas (pere), and unlike The Three Musketeers, it’s not one of his that I have read so I can’t tell you how much this new French version has left out, but I suspect it’s a lot because it is a long book and covers a huge period. The early phase of this has a lot of “x years later” slates to get you to the point where Edmond Dantes returns to seek his revenge. But I’ve skipped a few steps. Here is the rough outline of the story, as told in the movie:
In 1815 Edmond Dantes, a young sailor, is falsely accused of aiding Napoleon and is arrested on his wedding day (before the knot can be tied). Betrayed by his friends and convicted by a corrupt magistrate, he is sentenced to life in prison. Some years into his time in prison, he meets an old abbé and while the two of them work to escape the Abbé educates him and also tells him where to find a mysterious treasure. On his escape, Edmond locates the treasure and sets himself up as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo and in the 1830s arrives in Paris to wreak revenge on the people who put him in jail.
I love a bit of swashbuckling adventure, and this really delivers on that. It doesn’t have as starry a cast as the two recent French Musketeers movies, but it has a similar amount of swagger and adventure, and as I said at the top, there’s so much going on that you don’t notice the three hour run time. You might have to have a hunt around to find a screening of it, but it looks amazing on the big screen – it made me want to go to the south of France again as well as being entertaining.
Have a great Sunday!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 