Film Review - The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan
Images courtesy of Palace Films.
On the surface it’s no wonder Martin Bourboulon’s The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan was the second most expensive French production of the past year. It’s a film so demonstrably made by the collaborative effort of thousands, it’s just a shame the direction does so little of it justice. Filmed back-to-back as part one of a two-part adaptation, this is the latest of many adaptations that have tried their hand at honouring Alexandre Dumas’ sprawling novel, and has all the ostensible ingredients for a successful blockbuster. Revered source material, lavish costumes, thousands of extras shot on location, practical stunt work, an excellent cast–the promise appears endless. Unfortunately, beyond ambition, everything seems to stop.
Set in early 17th century France, The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan is underpinned by royal conflict. Protestants and Catholics stand opposed in a religious war, and conspiracy creeps through the affairs of a state that is anxious for the insurrection of their king. The film situates itself between adventure, romance and deception, following the titular D’Artagnan (François Civil) along with the central trio of Musketeers, Athos (Vincent Cassel), Aramis (Romain Duris) and Porthos (Pio Marmaï) who become entangled in the political web of French nobility.
As a novel that spans nearly 400 pages, a standard 2 hour adaptation likely wouldn’t have covered the breadth of the narrative in a logistical sense - but this decision has some unintended consequences. For one, breaking a singular narrative into two parts drastically alters the framework through which the narrative takes place. Adhering to a conventional three-act structure in each part, the fact that the chief political conflict that underpins the film is between the Catholics and the Protestants is more negligible than it should be, with neither side granted much personality or political opinion that would otherwise ground the audience to care about the conflict. Instead the film circles the core of its plot development on a diamond necklace belonging to the Queen of France, a device important to the entirety of the film, but only to the first third of the novel. This means the narrative weight of the necklace feels of paramount importance, which ironically makes the conflict of the first part feel more trivial, as it neglects much of the narrative’s political intrigue. In fairness, this is a hard notion to tackle. Should a two-part film be evaluated as one film, or two? Should each part tell a succinct story of its own or should each part be beholden to the cohesiveness of the pair? Perhaps its sequel The Three Musketeers: Milady will justify the first film’s narrative structure when watched in succession, but a film–regardless of its position in a broader narrative–should stand on its own terms. This depends on the film of course, Dune’s recent two-part adaptation of its respective book is a high-profile example of this aforementioned subservience to the whole, but it’s hard to see The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan as a good film singularly, even if its sequel improves its stature in the series.
What’s most pressingly disappointing about the film is its visual language. In a frighteningly prophetic turn, producer Dimitri Rassam’s intention to produce a film that would be “a response to American franchises” sets the tone for the somewhat low bar it seems to aim for,whilst madly successful, recent American productions–from the MCU’s Spider-Man: No Way Home to the live-action remakes of Disney classics–have been criticised for their lack of formal aptitude when it pertains to composition. The Three Musketeers seems to adopt this ever-present trend of low-key, unmotivated lighting and blocking that washes out texture and fails to create much tension through its visuals. The product of this is a film where every character is covered in grime and dirt, but none of them actually feel dirty. It’s an annoying visual quirk that breaks the immersion of its 17th century setting and makes the film feel discordantly modern at times, often looking as if it’s shot like a Netflix original. This Netflix sheen renders the undeniably impressive production design of the film to never feel substantially captured through the camera.
The movement of the camera creates issues, too. There is very deliberate direction to employ frequent use of long tracking shots during action sequences, where the camera rarely, if ever, cuts throughout the course of the scene. Long takes are certainly not a new technique, and are often revered as masterful visual flourishes, carefully weaving through environments and immersing the audience in the scene through their unbroken nature. It’s a trend that’s become ever-present in the action landscape; the iconic long take in Game of Thrones’ Battle of the Bastards comes to mind as a turning point–the showrunners would go on to replicate it twice in later seasons–and the technique has also been recently observed in films such as John Wick: Chapter 4 or Mission Impossible: Fallout. Unfortunately, The Three Musketeers executes the long take with far less class, and far too often. Sword hits never feel quite impactful, the camera is often too far away to sell the gravity of a stab or punch, the geography and staging of the scene becomes lost, and the abuse of the technique speaks to a lack of care or attention to the power of the cut. Relegating its use to only whenever a fight begins also creates a hilarious Pavlovian effect - once the camera has stopped cutting, it means an action scene is about to begin. There is thankfully one major exception to its use, a fight scene taking place in a church towards the end of the film is cut, blocked and choreographed remarkably well and is genuinely thrilling, staging the setting uniquely and finally creating the chaos that was attempted with the long takes.
Hiding behind the flat camera work are some very sturdy performances across the board. Each Musketeer brings their own personality and idiosyncrasies even when the narrative doesn’t give them focus. There’s a tension between the camaraderie of D’Artagnan and the Musketeers, and Bourboulon’s sensibility to treat the source material with grit; whilst it can be jarring to watch, it does show that there’s at least the DNA of a swashbuckling romantic adventure somewhere within the film. Most of the issues lie within the capturing and posturing of its subjects, rather than the subjects themselves. As the film progresses, it feels like it keeps threatening to be good.
In aiming for its own take of the modern action film, The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan’s visual style does not do much justice to these elements, favouring ever-increasing trends towards a post-MCU world of washed out visual design and uninspired cinematography that never feels especially textured. At its best, it’s a film flashed with great performances, involved, expensive production design and a serviceable retelling of Dumas’ famous novel. There is a glimmer of hope with the upcoming Australian release of its sequel in June, The Three Musketeers: Milady, which may shed some light on the lacklustre narrative decisions in Part One, but as it stands D’Artagnan’s best is too fleeting,and settles itself far into the saturated market of generic blockbusters.
Follow Luka on Letterboxd and Instagram.
Follow Malachy on Letterboxd and Instagram.
The Three Musketeers D’Artagnan is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.