“Three Musketeers” and one props – Weekend – Kommersant

This spring, one of the main movie plots was the plot about the three musketeers and d’Artagnan: two films based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas are being released at once. In the French film adaptation there will be solid stars – from Vincent Cassel to Eva Green. There will be no famous faces in the British film, which is released in Russian cinemas this week. But there will be a dark forest and a black-skinned d’Artagnan. And no love.

Text: Xenia Rozhdestvenskaya

1628. France is in chaos. The reputation of the Musketeers is tarnished by rumors of scandals and corruption. The king is too young and not very smart (“feeble-minded and weak-willed,” as Louis XIII is commonly called), Cardinal Richelieu is too old, and he has his own plans. Young d’Artagnan, in a perfectly clean raincoat, walks from Gascony to Paris, getting into fights along the way, saving not the freshest beauties from non-existent dangers and making enemies for himself. But he also makes friends, one for all and all for one. The plot is well known – everyone has read The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, everyone has watched at least one of several hundred film adaptations.

“Three Musketeers” by Briton Bill Thomas is a rather unexpected interpretation of the story about a Gascon who wanted to become a musketeer and found himself three different role models at once – Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Critics are most interested in the fact that D’Artagnan is played by black actor Malachi Pullar-Latchman (“I’m going to look. Royal game”), and the insidious Milady is played by Priya Kalidas, a British actress of Indian origin (“Green Wing”, “Hotel Babylon”). “”, “Four lions”). But this is absolutely unimportant for the plot and atmosphere of the film: the skin color of the actors is as much a part of the conditional, theatrical, superhero world as the age of Mikhail Boyarsky in the classic Yungvald-Khilkevich film. Something else is important: the ardor and naivety of d’Artagnan, the predatory smile of Milady, deceit, in general, and love.

However, the director has little interest in love. He completely threw out the line with Constance Bonacieux. And Anna of Austria. And pendants. What’s left? Growing decrepit with every second, Richelieu, who so badly wants to set up de Treville, the captain of the musketeers, that for this he is ready to kill King Louis – on the hunt, as if by accident. One-eyed, according to Hollywood tradition, the villain Rochefort, repeating every now and then: “I am surrounded by idiots.” The musketeers who fight the cardinal’s guards – the old fashioned way, without rapidity, with clumsy montage – hit, drink or run if the enemy force is too great. Men’s toys – multi-barreled muskets, improvised explosive devices, family swords. The virgin forests of France, dark, impassable, you can hide at least a hundred conspirators in them, at least the entire film crew – no one will find.

Bill Thomas has worked as a prop and stage propeller on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, V for Vendetta, Guardians of the Galaxy, and despite directing more than thirty films and TV episodes (American Monster, “Legend of Nottingham”), in “The Three Musketeers” there are more props, clothes, things than directing. Here are four half-naked men – in the same shirts, but with muskets – in the middle of the forest talking with two ladies dressed in men’s dresses. Here are the same four, wearing some skins and rags, stage a robbery attack on Rochefort’s carriage. When they, in turn, are attacked by real robbers, Porthos exclaims indignantly: “Our costumes are much better!”

In a sense, these Three Musketeers are about that, about the costumes. In some ways, they resemble the full meter of Sex and the City, where things also turn out to be the main plot: dresses, capes, shoes, dreams of a comfortable dressing room for all this magnificence. For Musketeers, the dressing room is the whole forest. And in the finale, when the musketeers receive a specially tailored uniform for them and d’Artagnan presses the cherished bundle with a new, wrinkle-resistant cloak to his chest, it becomes clear: everything is not in vain. Actually, Bill Thomas and The Legend of Nottingham always had everything clean.

But you can look at these “Three Musketeers” in another way, as a cheerful camp, in which the rags and feigned cheerfulness of the characters are designed to distract from the main plot. This is a fundamentally political, not a romantic film, in which the four main characters are needed only to, quite by accident, save the king, de Treville and the state. Even beautiful ladies here are not an object of sighing, but either villains or robbers ready to torture harsh men. The Three Musketeers, and above all d’Artagnan, only distract the viewer from the real – political – plot, making noise, flickering, blowing something up, undressing, changing clothes. Bill Thomas’s previous film, The Legend of Nottingham, told the story of Robin Hood from a feminist perspective, like the adventures of Maid Marian. This time he tells the story of d’Artagnan from the point of view of politicians: the rulers are weak, the villains are cunning, those who have their own army are “surrounded by idiots”. But, according to Bill Thomas, it’s just the funny idiots who make history – firstly, they are lucky, and secondly, they have much better costumes.

At the box office from March 23

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