Tag Archives: B+

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

Producer: Dimitri Rassam   Directors: Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière   Screenplay: Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière   Cast: Pierre Niney, Bastien Bouillon, Anaïs Demoustier, Anamaria Vartolomei, Laurent Lafitte, Pierfrancesco Favino, Patrick Mille, Vassili Schneider, Julien De Saint Jean, Julie De Bona, Adèle Simphal, Stéphane Varupenne, Marie Narbonne, Bruno Raffaelli, Abde Maziane and Bernard Blancan   Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Pictures

Grade: B+

So many movies today are violent revenge tales that it’s refreshing to turn to one that takes a granddaddy of the genre and does it proud.  This latest version of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo,” which was first published in 1844-45 and has been filmed many times, is, despite a running-time of nearly three hours, necessarily a streamlined, simplified version of the extraordinarily dense and complex original, but it’s sumptuous and satisfying on its own.

Pierre Niney plays Edmond Dantès, who while serving on a French ship during Napoleon’s attempted return to power in 1815, rescues Angèle (Adèle Simphal), a shipwrecked woman, embarrassing the ship’s treasurer and current master, Danglars (Patrick Mille), who prefers to let her drown.  When the ship arrives at Marseille, its owner Morrel (Bruno Raffaelli) dismisses Danglars and promotes Dantès to the captaincy.  That enflames Danglars’ desire for revenge, and he has a card to play: a letter the late captain had entrusted to Dantès, compromising because of its Napoleonic sentiments.

When Edmond goes home to visit his father Louis (Bernard Blancan) and wed his fiancée Mercédès Herrera (Anaïs Demoustier), he’s arrested as a partisan of Bonaparte.  His cousin Fernand de Morcerf (Bastien Bouillon) vows to defend him against the charge, but when brought before prosecutor Gérard de Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) instead betrays him in hopes of marrying Mercédès himself.  Villefort also has reason to put Dantès away since Angèle is his sister, and her involvement in Napoleon’s attempted return could endanger his position, and her knowledge of his affair with Dangler’s wife is an additional problem.

So Edmond is unceremoniously sent to the infamous Château d’If prison, where he’s expected to die.  Instead he befriends the eccentric prisoner Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), who enlists him in an attempt to burrow their way to freedom, educates him in arts and letters over their eight years’ confinement, and tells him of a fabulous treasure secreted on the island of Monte Cristo.  When the Abbé perishes in a collapse of the tunnel, Dantès hides in his dead man’s body bag, which is tossed into the sea, allowing him to swim to safety.

Finding that Mercédès has married Fernand and borne him a son, Albert, Edmund returns to the sea to perfect his martial skills and travels to Monte Cristo, where he finds the treasure and uses it to create a new persona for himself as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo.  Returning to France, he locates Angèle, whom her brother and Danglers had forced into prostitution; and though on verge of death, she reveals that she had saved the illegitimate son Villefort had tried to bury alive after his birth and placed him in an orphanage.  Edmond finds the young man, André (Julien de Saint Jean), and enlists him as an ally posing as the count’s ward Prince Andrea Cavalcanti.  He also enlists a beautiful young woman, Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), who, as will eventually be revealed, has cause to seek revenge against Fernand, who is now an illustrious general, just as Danglers has built himself a prosperous career as a shipping magnate. 

Thus prepared, Dantès undertakes a complicated revenge scheme against all who have wronged him.  It involves worming his way into Fernand’s good graces by saving his son Albert (Vassili Schneider) in a staged assault and then having Haydée seduce the young man.  That in turn gives him entrée into the circle of Danglars and Villefort, and an opportunity for André, in his princely guise, to romance Danglars’ daughter Eugénie (Marie Narbonne) while also harboring hostility to his father Villefort.

All comes to a head when Dantès arranges the collapse of Danglars’ maritime empire into his hands and the revelation of Villefort’s crimes at resultant trial.  There are complications—an impetuous act by André, the blooming of true romance between Haydée and Albert, the revelation of Haydée’s identity, a plea to Edmond from Mercédès, who has recognized her former fiancé—but a couple of well-choreographed duels, marked by rousing exhibitions of swordsmanship, end matters on a satisfying note. 

Those who have read Dumas’ massive novel will recognize how severely Delaporte and de la Patellière have abridged and altered the narrative: only Edmond’s impersonation of Lord Halifax is retained to any extent, and especially given the prominence put on little Maximilien Morrel (Joachim Simon) in the early meeting between Dantès and his father, it’s surprising, and disappointing, that Dumas’ treatment of his later life is simply excised.  But they’ve been generally faithful to its tone, and they’ve ably assumed the directorial reins wielded by Martin Bourboulon for the duo’s previous Dumas adaptation, the two part version of “The Three Musketeers.” 

They’ve carried over much of the crew—including production designer Stéphane Taillasson and costumer Thierry Delettre, as well as cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc—and visually the result is equally splendid, though far brighter and less mud-drenched than was the case in the earlier films.  Editor Celia Lafitedupont, who was replaced by Stan Collet in the second Bourboulon installment, returns, and manages to keep most of the plot convolutions reasonably clear, though there remain a few muddled moments, while veteran Jérôme Rebotier’s robust score possesses all the swagger one could wish.

As Dantès Niney cuts a figure more like a hawk than an eagle, but he captures the character’s cunning, and provides ample dash when required.  Mille, Bouillon and Lafitte are all hissable, with Mille coming across as particularly loathsome; Demoustier is a lovely, conflicted Mercédès, while  Schneider, Vartolomei and de Saint Jean make an unbearably handsome trio of youngsters.  Favino chews the scenery engagingly as the Abbé.

In sum, while some devotees of Dumas’ novel may regret the changes Delaporte and de la Patellière have made to the narrative, most viewers will find this “Count” an enjoyable variant of it.  

Incidentally, an eight-part English-language mini-series based on the book has just appeared on European television.  It’s directed by Bille August, whose 1988 adaptation of “Les Misérables” is one of the better adaptations of that book.  It will probably follow Dumas more closely, and one of the more enterprising streaming services should snap it up. Yet another “Count” would be most welcome.

SEPTEMBER 5

Producers: Philipp Trauer, Thomas Wöbke, Sean Penn, John Ira Palmer, John Wildermuth, Costanze Guttmann, Rüdiger Böss and Egard Reitz Filmproduktion  Director: Tim Fehlbaum  Screenplay: Tim Fehlbaum and Moritz Binder   Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Zinedine Soualem, Georgina Rich, Corey Johnson, Benjamin Walker, Daniel Adeosun, Rony Herman and Jeff Book   Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Grade: B+

The Munich Massacre, the deaths of eleven members of the 1972 Israeli Olympic team and the five of the eight Palestinian terrorists who had taken them hostage, has been the subject of various documentaries and been dramatized several times, and Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” dealt with Mossad’s targeting of the militants who escaped, as well as of those who planned the operation.  “September 5” treats the tragic events of that day indirectly, from the viewpoint of the ABC sports team on site to cover the games for television, who were thrust into a different role—reporting the hostage story live to a horrified world and thereby making broadcast history themselves.

The day begins normally, with sports division president Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and operations manager Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) going off to rest, leaving newly-arrived Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) in charge of the console in the producer’s chair.  The sound of gunfire in the distance changes things; with their view of Building 31 of the Olympic Village, where the Israeli team was housed, the ABC broadcasters’ initial confusion gives rise to a sense of journalistic urgency as what’s unfolding becomes apparent.  Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker, whose role consists largely of a voice over the telephone) takes a strategic position with a view of the Israeli team’s rooms, and Arledge and Bader will be called back to the broadcast booth while Jim McKay (appearing through archival footage smoothly integrated into the action by editor Hansjörg Weissbrich) begins his daylong stint as anchor of the coverage.        

Thus the atmosphere of business as usual is transformed into a pressure-cooker environment—well caught by Weissbrich, director Tim Fehlbaum and cinematographer Markus Förderer—in which the team, prepared for an ordinary round of sports, must instead turn their focus to an unfolding catastrophe and confront the ethical quandaries that are necessarily implicit in such a task, as well as the practical difficulties that beset them as a result of what now seems like antediluvian early seventies technology. 

Should a lesser loaded term than terrorists we found to refer to the members of Black September who are holding the hostages?  How critical should the coverage be of the obviously inept German response, especially since the country’s Nazi past hangs over the Olympics, which are designed to convey the image of a changed nation?   Is it offensive to utilize tape of interviews done with David Berger (Rony Herman), an American on the Israeli wrestling team who’s now a hostage, or to interview his father (Jeff Book) while his son’s life is hanging in the balance?  Or to cite an even more crucial case, to which extent should one, in relaying information about live events, rely on reports that seem to possess the certainty of official pronouncements but cannot be independently verified?  That becomes a major question in the final stage of the coverage, and Mason’s decision has awful consequences.

On the practical side, the cumbersome equipment of the time is a constant issue, but so are questions of control.  Should the operation be turned over to the News division?  (Arledge, later President of ABC News, refuses, no doubt at least partially to prove his mettle in the larger organization.)  At a critical juncture ABC’s use of the sole satellite carrying coverage from Munich is to be transferred by prior agreement to CBS?  (A compromise is quickly arranged.)

“September 5” generally sticks to the historical record, though the screenplay by Fehlbaum and Moritz Binder does take dramatic license.  But some of the plot points that might seem fictionalized—like dressing up staffer Gary Slaughter (Daniel Adeosun) in the guise of an Olympic athlete to allow him to act as a courier of film canisters to and from the Village, which has been closed off to newsmen—in fact actually happened, while others that feel grounded in reality aren’t: team translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), who often plays a pivotal role in the action, is in fact a composite figure, an invention of the writers designed to illustrate how citizens of the “new Germany” (West Germany, actually), reacted to what was happening.  Of course, the film is not a documentary, and such sleights of hand are to be expected; they don’t vitiate its overall power.

None of the cast members—not even Sarsgaard, who has top billing—dominates in what’s an ensemble effort, but the standouts are Benesch, whose professionalism in the face of what such a person would have seen as a national disaster; Chapin, who as Bader, the son of Holocaust survivors, had personal demons to confront but still did his job; and especially Magaro, as the new kid on the block desperate to prove his competence but wracked by insecurity.  But all find their places in the claustrophobic set fashioned by production designer Julian R. Wagner.  The costumes of Leonie Zykan convey the period without overemphasis, while Lorenz Dangel’s score adds to the tension without overshadowing the visuals.

The perspective “September 5” offers on the Munich Massacre is limited, but within its parameters the film delivers an excitingly propulsive account of a watershed moment in modern news coverage, as well as a potent reminder of the first such tragedy broadcast to viewers as it was actually occurring.