For those wanting to know the original story, please make the effort to read the book by Alexandre Dumas.
This being said, this movie has everything I hate in french cinema ( I myself am french ! ) : it is pretentious, badly interpreted, the original story was largely rewritten and furthermore, I found the movie to be incoherent and incomprehensible. Dumas must be dancing in his grave ! When I see IMDb critics saying that this is a great artistic movie, I wonder if people saw the same movie I did...
Topmost, I find it inadmissible that Chereau permits himself to rewrite such a masterpiece written by one of France's most beloved writers, as if what Dumas wrote wasn't good enough to make a decent movie. It is a common flaw in movie making to change the story pretexting that the original material isn't suited for screen play.
A few examples : the St Barthelemy night which we have to endure for a long 15 or more minutes in the movie merely takes one page on the 600 of the book...
As for the friendship between La Mole and Coconnas ( who are amongst the most interesting characters of the book ) which is at the center of the original material, it is largely omitted in the movie and furthermore is totally incoherent : after fighting to the death and being quite unknown to each other, the fall in each other's arms in one ridiculous scene that had me laugh because it was so bad.
Anyways, all this is bad french cinema making, the kind which we would like to stop seeing. Do not bother to waste your time on that piece of trash and rather watch real french cinema d'auteur like Coup de Torchon or Rene Clair's movies which are the real heritage of french movie making that knew about the art, but are from another age which is sadly over.
Pityful ! PS : sorry my English isn't good enough to say everything I despise in this movie with the language it would require.
This being said, this movie has everything I hate in french cinema ( I myself am french ! ) : it is pretentious, badly interpreted, the original story was largely rewritten and furthermore, I found the movie to be incoherent and incomprehensible. Dumas must be dancing in his grave ! When I see IMDb critics saying that this is a great artistic movie, I wonder if people saw the same movie I did...
Topmost, I find it inadmissible that Chereau permits himself to rewrite such a masterpiece written by one of France's most beloved writers, as if what Dumas wrote wasn't good enough to make a decent movie. It is a common flaw in movie making to change the story pretexting that the original material isn't suited for screen play.
A few examples : the St Barthelemy night which we have to endure for a long 15 or more minutes in the movie merely takes one page on the 600 of the book...
As for the friendship between La Mole and Coconnas ( who are amongst the most interesting characters of the book ) which is at the center of the original material, it is largely omitted in the movie and furthermore is totally incoherent : after fighting to the death and being quite unknown to each other, the fall in each other's arms in one ridiculous scene that had me laugh because it was so bad.
Anyways, all this is bad french cinema making, the kind which we would like to stop seeing. Do not bother to waste your time on that piece of trash and rather watch real french cinema d'auteur like Coup de Torchon or Rene Clair's movies which are the real heritage of french movie making that knew about the art, but are from another age which is sadly over.
Pityful ! PS : sorry my English isn't good enough to say everything I despise in this movie with the language it would require.