A New Spin on the Count of Monte Cristo

When this new take on the Alexandre Dumas classic premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, it received a 12-minute ovation.

When you walk into a 3-hour-long period film at 8:30 am on one of the last days of the Cannes Film Festival, one wonders: Am I going to make it through this film? A sprawling film of this length leaves one wondering if it’ll hold the mind’s attention until the film’s end, and I’m happy to report Le Comte de Monte-Cristo did. 

A new take on an old tale is often a gamble, but this 2024 iteration of the classic 1844 novel from French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas, written and directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, was executed well. Of note, it’s unusual – though not unprecedented – for a film to have two directors (films like The Matrix, Casino Royale, and Fargo pulled it off with success). For a film like Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, with a size and scale that feels on par with Lord of the Rings, it’s clear why multiple creative minds were needed. This is a period drama/action/adventure movie that spans 21 years, and the film’s costuming and makeup departments alone surely required a team large enough to fill a small yacht along the Croisette.

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At the start of the film, we meet Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney), a 22-year-old upstart who is quickly promoted to captain after a valiant performance on a ship. There, in the cold seawater, he saves a woman named Angèle. Edmond is engaged to the beautiful Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier), and on the day of their church wedding, guards storm in and seize Edmond as he’s accused of being a supporter of Napoléon in a suspicious letter. This is wartime France in 1815 with Napoléon looming large (he fought the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815); in a way, everyone is at war with each other, and people are fighting for their survival.

Edmond is thrown into prison, where he stays for 14 years. He grows a long beard, loses a tremendous amount of weight, and every day, his sole human interaction is when a prison guard yells down into his cell and asks him, “Vivant?” To which Edmond replies, “Vivant.” He is alive, but barely. His spirit has dimmed; his soul is blunted.

One day, four years into his time in the prison, a block from his cell rumbles, and he meets the prisoner in the cell next to him. They gaze at each other through the tiny hole in between their cells. The pair form a fast friendship and decide to plot their escape together. The old man, Abbé Faria, is an intellectual and an Italian priest. He was sentenced to prison for his political views.

Abbé tells him of a treasure that exists and promises half of the treasure will be Edmond’s when they make their escape. Abbé asks Edmond, in French, if he speaks Greek or Latin or English. He asks Edmond if he knows about history and mathematics. He tells the young man that he’ll teach him everything he knows. Knowledge, Abbé says, “is more powerful than a weapon. [Knowledge] is freedom.” At that, they commence a 10-year-long project to escape the prison.

Meanwhile, Edmond is presumed dead by his love, Mercédès, as well as his beloved father. Mercédès has married another. And Edmond is later told that his father died of starvation. He refused to eat after he was told his son, Edmond, was dead. So, he wanted to die, too, to join him in death. After Edmond makes an escape from prison alone, swimming away in the ocean, he assumes a new identity: Le Comte de Monte Cristo. It’s an homage to his late friend Abbé from the prison who died while they were digging a hole in the prison and rubble landed on him. Edmond finds the treasure, and with his newfound riches, he’s unstoppable. But there’s only two things he has in mind: Finding Mercédès, and enacting revenge on those who accused him of a crime he didn’t commit.

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Edmond didn’t forget about Angèle, the young woman he saved. She rescued her infant nephew after her terrible brother left the baby for dead. Now, that baby has grown into a 20-year-old man who wants to avenge the aunt who saved him. Angèle tells Edmond (Le Comte) that she went one night to seek revenge on her brother, but when she heard the cries of the baby abandoned in a chest outside, “I chose life, not revenge.”

Edmond, on the other hand, still seeks his revenge and does so in a calculating, exacting way. He doesn’t want to kill those who wronged him. He reasons that killing them is too easy an out for those people; it’s too gentle. “Those who die are forgiven; I don’t want you to be forgiven,” Edmond tells one of his enemies in a bloody sword fight.

A 21-year-long story set against the backdrop of Napoléon’s France almost necessitates such a sprawling length. However, while it held this viewer’s attention throughout, it could have been trimmed by an hour to create a tighter story. This said, fans of the classic Dumas novel will appreciate the length and the exceptional level of detail in this story. It’s a story that sticks with you after the credits have rolled, and while it tells a tale from over 200 years ago, the story feels as alive as ever.