![]() Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way. The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards Season The Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. And just as Dumas's works have served to introduce generations of readers to the pleasures of literature, whetting appetites for swift narration and vivid characters that will eventually be satisfied by greater authors, so will this stolid, unpretentious, thoroughly competent film remind jaded viewers of the sumptuous delight the movies can offer. In its forthright, sincere attempt to harness the narrative drive and emotional sweep of the Dumas novel, the film is close in spirit (though not in style) to the 1934 version, which featured Robert Donat in the title role. ![]() (Life in early-19th-century Marseilles was certainly dangerous, but would anyone at the time have described it as stressful?) The film's resolute indifference to fashion makes it, perhaps paradoxically, a refreshing piece of old-style entertainment, accompanied by a whooshing, trembling score by Edward Shearmur. The reasonably faithful script by Jay Wolpert is only occasionally anachronistic. Which may, in the end, be why ''The Count of Monte Cristo,'' directed by Kevin Reynolds, is so much fun. An old-fashioned saga of grand emotions and sweeping scenery, complete with the clatter of swords, the keening of orchestral strings and the glitter of buried treasure, risks looking, in a world dominated by computer-generated wizardry and boisterous kiddie-postmodernism, like a horse-drawn buggy on the Interstate. Movies, especially those that appeal to the early-adolescent sensibility that used to be nourished by Dumas and his ilk, tend to be driven more and more by special effects, canny product placements, bouncy soundtracks and allusive pop-cultural smirks. ![]() The natural home for such a project would seem to be on the small screen - in the footsteps of the French mini-series starring Gérard Depardieu that turned up not long ago on Bravo and the 1975 television movie with Richard Chamberlain and Tony Curtis - or in the crudely inked pages of a classic comic book. The arrival in theaters of the latest film adaptation of Alexandre Dumas père's durable tale of treachery and vengeance is a puzzling, somewhat anachronistic event.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |