Hello everyone!
As I've promised, here is the accompanying blog post to Tuesday's movie review, because, as some of the most memorable movies that have ever been made, a lot of them are based off literary works.
The Count of Monte Cristo was no exception.
The thing with the movie, however, was that it was pretty severely hacked down. If you can imagine a tree with a lot of branches and leaves and everything, that would be the book that Alexandre Dumas (Pere) wrote down.
And then take a chainsaw, rev it up, and hack off most of the foliage.
Then you get the movie.
No offense meant to the movie makers, of course - they took the main story of the book and dropped the accompanying ones, and no one is any wiser unless you've actually sat down to read the monstrous thing itself.
Trust me, it should come with its own insurance.
So if we recap what, exactly Monte Cristo is all about (and I am shamelessly quoting myself here):
"There was this young sailor (with a fiancée) who got caught up in a Napoleon-esque plot without knowing it, ended up in prison (sans fiancée) while his supposed best friend married the woman of his dreams (THAT fiancée, yes) and went on to become wealthy, as did the rest of the conspirators who got rid of this Edmond Dantes. Dantes, however, escaped his prison after years of willing away time inside it, found an ancient treasure, remade himself into Monte Cristo, and returned to Paris to bring vengeance on those who got him caught in the first place. Succeeding, he and the love of his life then live happily ever after."
Yeah, cheating is super cool!
The book, however, is a teeny bit more complex than that.
Okay, sure: Edmond Dantes gets himself arrested for Bonapartism because Fernand, his would-be BFF, is jealous of him and wants his job, his fiancée Mercedez, his life, etc. And Dantes, the poor boy, doesn't even know how to read, so he doesn't know what's in the letter he was asked to deliver. Sadly, Villefort, the magistrate, does, and he chucks him in prison (this being a concoction, however, that was brewed by Fernand and someone else named Danglars; more on them later).
Dantes is imprisoned for 14 years before he escapes by impersonating another dead prisoner (the priest who taught him everything he now knows, and gave him the location of the hidden treasure which will eventually make him filthy rich) and swimming.
Then, after that, we kind of leave Dantes to his own devices for a bit, as in essence, he disappears from the story.
We are instead introduced to some other players in the came, namely a young man named Albert and his friend Franz who both encounter the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo (Albert actually gets himself into a fix and needs rescuing, of course) and who later on introduce him to polite society in Paris upon his arrival.
Once there, we (re)meet the other characters.
Villefort, who at the beginning of the story was actually on the verge of marrying, is now married a second time, and has a son with his second wife, while a daughter by his first is more or less her grandfather's caretaker (this grandfather, it is to be noted, is the man to whom Dantes should have originally given the letter from Napoleon). She is also in love and secretly meeting Maximillian Morrel, who is coincidentally the son of a Monsieur Morrel who was like a father to Dantes back in the day. However, she is supposed to marry Franz, as promised by her father.
On the other hand, Danglar, a banker and extremely succesful, is also married and has an only daughter whom he wants to marry well, which is why he is seeking for the highest possible bidder - and he finds him in a "prince", who is actually Benedetto, who is actually a son born to Villefort and Madame Danglars back in the day, but it was all hush-hush and he was thought dead.
Whew.
Wait, no, I'm not quite done yet.
Another player in this game is a woman named Haidee, who comes to Paris with Monte Cristo and is considered his slave, altough she is of royal lineage and pretty much could be an empress if she wanted to be.
Now the stage is set - it has been more than 14 years by this point, as Monte Cristo is presented as the contemporary of Villefort and Danglars, while Albert & Co are all in their teenage years, after 15 but not quite there at 18 I believe. I think the only one old enough is Morrel, who is definitely older than 20.
Anyway.
The point of this whole thing being that EVERYONE has a secret they don't want ousted to anyone else, and Monte Cristo, without fail, exploits precisely those secrets, as fast as he can do it, but as patiently as a predator waiting for its pray.
After all - he survived prison, hadn't he?
So, one by one, they all begin to fall.
Danglars is eventually left without any kind of money or assets, with a gambling wife and no daughter to marry off (also, that whole prince thing is unearthed along the way) as the lady in question doesn't even WANT to be married (originally, she was supposed to marry Albert) and so she runs away with her singing tutor (also a woman).
Villefort is slowly driven mad while everyone around him in his family dies off; initially, suspicion is on his daughter by his first wife, until it is revealed it's actually his SECOND WIFE because ... reasons? It's never actually explained.
Either way, she and the boy die, and Villefort, after the scandal of Benedetto, goes completely ga-ga.
The third part of the trifecta, Fernand, seems untouchable since he has Mercedez, and in this version Albert is NOT the son of Edmond Dantes. But Fernand does have a secret, which is that during his years in the army, he sold out a pasha in what is today named Turkey, who happened to be Haidee's father, and Haidee recognises the man who took everything from her. So, Fernand commits suicide.
Albert is hell-bent on duelling Monte Cristo, and the Count himself is quite content to die in said duel regardless that any fool and his chicken can see Haidee is head over heels for the man.
But luckily, Mercedez doesn't lose her cool and tells Albert about their shared past, which then results in no duel, Albert enlisting in the army, and Mercedez retreating into solitude.
And for the remaining players?
Monte Cristo repays the debt to the Morrels by first making sure the patriarch didn't blow his brains out years ago, and then secondly he helps Max marry Valentine (after Franz backs out of this arrangement as the grandfather did some scheming of his own).
And the Count himself?
He sails into the sunset with Haidee, thinking how lucky some men are to find great love not once, but twice in their lives.
THE END.
That was a mouthful, wasn't it?
Suffice to say, it's an intriguing and detailed read, but it also keeps you on your toes because there are just SO many details you need to be conscious of and need to pay attention to. The movie is quite the simplified version, I can tell you that!
But the book has a charm of its own and I'm thinking of getting my hands on a physical copy as opposed to just an electronic one.
And I'm sure everyone can agree with me that there is probably no better beginning to the saying:
Vengeance is a dish best served cold.
xx
*image not mine
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