Grand Adventure- Les Trois Mousquetaires: D’Artagnan [2023]

We got one screening as part of a “French Film Festival” at one cinema over here. The second movie is making the rounds in other states and there’s no scheduled screening over here – as yet. Some kind of ‘film festival’, isn’t it? Still, these are the rare occasions when certain movies do come to our screen, even if at slightly elevated pricing and difficult screening times.

Not that I was going to avoid what was to be a grand time for the musketeers on screen.

Almost every generation of cinephiles have their version of The Three Musketeers to turn to, intertwined with the history of film itself. For some, it may be as far back as the one with Douglas Fairbanks in 1921, or with Gene Kelly in 1948. My first exposure were the Richard Lester films, The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974) which had the grand cast of Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Frank Finlay, Raquel Welch, and Faye Dunaway. It also spawned a much belated follow up Return of The Musketeers (based on Twenty Years Later) with its core cast returning in 1989 to cap off its trilogy.

In the 90s, there was the Disney adaptation with Chris O’Donnell as D’Artangan and Keifer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen and Oliver Platt as the musketeers. Peter Hyams took a stab at The Musketeer in 2001 with Justin Chambers, Paul WS Anderson threw his hat in the ring with his 2011 adaptation with Logan Lerman joining the ranks made up of Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans, with Orlando Bloom on bad guy duties.

And that’s not including various versions of The Man in The Iron Mask which also feature The Musketeers. The last prominent one being the adaptation in 1998 directed by Randall Wallace featuring Gabriel Byrne, John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons, and Gerard Depardieu as the musketeers, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the dual role.

This new French adaptation is quite alike the Richard Lester version in that the first movie adapts the first half of the book, the conspiracy involving the Queen’s necklace. In that, the plot is familiar with key points of the story being where they are.

D’Artagnan (François Civil) is on his way to Paris to become a Musketeer, encounters trouble on the way, reaches Paris and gets into three duels with each of the musketeers. Their fight is interrupted by the Cardinal guards (an impressively choreographed single take) after which D’Artangnan endears himself to his new friends, Athos (Vincent Cassel), Prothos (Pio Marmaï), and Aramis (Romain Duris). Then things vary and the story goes into something a little different.

While the ‘romance’ between Queen Anne (Vicky Krieps) and the Duke of Buckingham (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) is maintained, the political and religious situation is elevated as war between the Catholic Europe and the Protestant England simmers below the surface. The Cardinal Richelieu (Eric Ruf) conspires with several nobles to inflame that war while using Milady (Eva Green) to dishonour the Queen by exposing her affair with Buckingham.

Constance (Lyna Khoudri), one of the Queen’s ladies who is also running a boarding house where D’Artagnan is staying, gets him to help out (the necklace affair), even as Athos is framed for a murder of a noble woman. In a way, the key characters are at the centre of the story with some significant reductions. Primarily, Rochefort, the one-eyed Captain who is sometimes seen as D’Artagnan’s main nemesis, barely registers.

While the stars do very well indeed to carry the movie with Civil and Cassel leading the way, this version relies on its spectacle. This is a very grand and lavish production with amazing designs from the sets, to the costumes, to the cinematography, and all the small details in between. We do have a very practical sense of grand adventure worthy of a cinematic adaptation and big screen presentation. It makes me wonder how much of the grand sets were built and what was possibly CGI enhanced (something effects company BUF is very good at).

Added to that are the amazing action set-pieces, two of which are done in elaborate ‘oners’ among other long shots. Civil reportedly did much of his own fighting stunts, allowing the camera to follow him close during at least one of the fights. Still, kudos to the stunt choreographers, stunt designers and the stunt team.

The grandeur of the production is suitably served by a classic story nicely updated. It is an amazing visual feast, and I can’t wait to set my eyes on the next part. While Eva Green didn’t quite have as much screen time as you’d expect, dazzling as she was, she’ll quite likely have more to do in Les Trois Mousquetaires: Milady.