The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)

Not officially rated in the United States, but it's your standard PG-13 fare.  If you are using other countries' metrics to determine what we would give it, it would be PG-13.  There's a decent amount of violence, but nothing that would even raise an eyebrow.  I suppose the final fight gets a little brutal to the point of being unbelievable.  But the bigger issue is that this is a story of revenge where there are only small shifts towards a moral high ground.  Still, the movie would be considered unrated.

DIRECTORS:  Alexandre de La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte

I know I don't have the time to give this blog my all.  It's probably going to be split up again, so if there's a shift in tone at one point, please forgive me.  I teach The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.  I have for the past four years, I think.  I love this story.  It might be my favorite epic, even more than Les Miserables.  (I think that I like the musical better than the very long novel, which seems like heresy.) But the biggest problem when teaching The Count of Monte Cristo to high school seniors who are desperate to get out of any kind of actual work is the lack of payoff when it comes to movies.  Now, you guys are all thinking, "What about the Guy Pearce version?"  Do you understand what kind of heresy you are awakening within me?  The Count of Monte Cristo, as a novel, has a very specific message about revenge and redemption.  That movie completely butchers it.  

So when I was in Paris last summer and saw billboards for The Count of Monte Cristo all over France, I got really excited.  I watched a trailer and I thought I found a mildly accurate version of the book on the big screen?  Did I succeed?  Nope.  I mean, to a certain extent, some of the movie matches the book exactly.  If I had to explain the premise of the book without the richer tapestry of what Dumas did, the movie does a pretty good job.  I would pretend to wonder why no one has adapted The Count of Monte Cristo properly.  But I know exactly why.  The book is 1,400 pages long.  It's really in-depth and the slow parts kind of matter to making the final revenge all the sweeter.  But that doesn't exactly work for film all the time, does it?  I mean, this version of The Count of Monte Cristo is already pushing the three-hour mark and it still rushes a lot of the story.  This almost feels like it would need to be multiple movies and even then, I don't know where you could make the cut.  I suppose that there is a reason that ABC made Revenge into long-form storytelling.

The Count of Monte Cristo somehow seems to be simultaneously big-budget and cheap at the same time.  I am actually having a hard time verbalizing what exactly is wrong with the visuals of this movie.  Like, when you watch that trailer, it looks impressive as can be.  And there's nothing in the movie that necessarily negates that when watching the film.  I kind of want to applaud the movie because it does a lot to create the sense of grandeur that the epic novel has within it.  But at the same time, it also feels like there's something in the sauce that's off. There's almost something a little PBS about it.  Maybe it feels like a filmed TV show more than it does a theatrical release film, but I think --and this is awful! --that the fact that it is a big budget French movie has something to do with it.  There's something that's almost like an imitation as opposed to original in the way that the movie looks.  It looks like it is trying to capture a spectacle that comes across as just a little bit off.

I won't deny that I'm having a harder time writing about this movie than I do most movies.  I think when they hit a solid 3/5, I have difficulty writing.  Part of what I like about The Count of Monte Cristo is an attempt to get the vibe of the novel down while missing some of the elements that make the story the story.  For example, out of everything in the book, Pierre Niney as Edmond Dantes --while having major character changes --feels always like Dantes.  Dantes is a character that is incredibly sympathetic, even when he's doing horrible things to people.  If the goal was to make a small intimate story into something that plumbs the depths of human morality, putting Niney as Dantes as the foundation of that is perfect.  He seems so pitiable, yet when he spirals out of control, it is easy to dislike him. And the movie gets that.  The movie gets that Dantes's obsession with getting his revenge is killing the good man inside of him.

I think I realize what I don't like about the movie.  Now, the easy and dumb read of this take is that it isn't accurate.  I mean, sure, I was really hoping that the movie was going to shoot for being the quintessential adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. I would have loved that as a teacher.  It's just that the changes that they made almost felt like they were there for being cool.  One of my favorite things about It was that it took the novels and, through its changes, made the story --at its core --the same while the scares were different.  I liked that a lot.  I feel like the directors really tried to pull that card with The Count of Monte Cristo, but more shot for "cooler" reveals.  For example, as much as I preach about how Niney nails Edmond Dantes and all of his various personas, the side characters almost completely missed their marks.

One of the key concepts in the novel is the notion that Dantes will sacrifice anyone to get what he wants.  The way that Dantes has Benedetto as the son that he always loved doesn't really gel with the original Monte Cristo story.  Again, I get that a lot of this would be done for shorthand.  I'm sure that the team behind the movie were clapping themselves on the backs when they found out that they could merge characters together to get more emotional collateral when things went south.  Benedetto's sad ending in this movie doesn't quite read the way that Dumas has it.  There are so many moments in the very long novel where Dantes has to move his moral compass just a sliver to understand what is necessary to get revenge.  And I need to remind you that the Benedetto story is only an example, but it works.  When Benedetto dies a horrible death because of Dantes's actions, the move is too great.  There are so many moments that are tragic that Dantes feels, but he has shifted so much that these moments come as another grain of sand added to the pile.  It's different from the movie when he has to come to grips with the morality of his own choices.  

When Dantes comes to the realization that the Count has killed Edmond Dantes through all of these small moments (and partially because he can never truly be with Mercedes), it's a lifetime of mistakes.  His second life is as much of a prison as his first life.  Instead, the film's epiphany moment (which I appreciate is still in the movie) comes from a direct regret from an immediate action.  It feels more like the revenge that Dantes achieves is somewhat lacking.  The book has this idea that Mercedes reminds him of what it means to be a good man and to take care of those around him.  

And this is a stupid reason to complain.  I already stressed that the book is 1,400 pages long.  I get that it's intense.  But the book is really good at making each revenge kind of mean something.  Each time you get a little bit bored, one of the coolest revenges happens to remind you that you are part of this cabal of evil schemers.  Instead, the movie dumps them all as this one moment in time that comes across as both unsatisfactory and unbelievable.  There's times when I tried explaining to my wife what the revenge was trying to be and we both stared at the screen, questioning how these moments made any sense.  And trust me, I really wanted to make these moments make sense.  I did that thing that I always do and try to apologize for a movie's mistake because I wanted there to be a reasonable explanation.

I hate when movies are just fine.  I don't know.  I want to love this movie because it really tried at times. It's night and day from the Guy Pearce version, so please understand that this movie holds a good deal of value for me.  I don't regret owning it because I'll still probably use it in my class, despite how inaccurate it is. But it doesn't change the fact that I can't find a version of The Count of Monte Cristo that nails the most important elements of the story.  Instead, we get a vibes-accurate, but heart-inaccurate version of the movie.  But at least I have a French version of a movie that is an adaptation of a famous French novel, so I have to give the movie credit in that way.  Even if it doesn't have a digital copy.