The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan, film, novel, plot

THEthe movie The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan brings Dumas’s novel back to the big screen but declines it in a modern key by outlining themes of universal importance and offering the portrait of three free, modern women who never submitted to the yoke of men.

The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan is the film that brings the masterpiece of Alexandre Dumas back to the cinema. The new colossal film adaptation starring Eva Green, Vincent Cassel and Louis Garrel will hit theaters thanks to Notorious pictures the next April 6thwaiting for the continuation to be completed, The Three Musketeers – Miladyshot in one shot by director Martin Bourboulon.

The plot of the movie

The story of the movie The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan it’s the one we all know and that doesn’t need much explanation. D’Artagnan (François Civil), a lively young Gascon, is left for dead after trying to save a girl from a kidnapping in Louis XIII’s (Louis Garrel) France. When he arrives in Paris, he tries in every way to track down the attackers but he doesn’t know that the search will lead him into the heart of a real war that puts the future of France at stake.

Allying himself with Athos (Vincent Cassel), Porthos (Pio Marmai) and Aramis (Romain Duris), three Musketeers of the King, D’Artagnan will face the machinations of Cardinal Richielieu (Eric Ruf). But, falling in love with Constance (Lyna Khoudri), the confidant of the Queen (Vicky Krieps), he will put himself in serious danger by earning the enmity of the one who will become his worst enemy: Milady (Eva Green).

A modern story

The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan it is what at one time would have been called a swashbuckling film. But why make one today and what does it have to tell the young people of Generation Z? These are some of the questions to which the director Martin Bourbolon he tried to answer. We have collected her words.

“Great adventure films draw personal stories against the backdrop of History with a capital ‘s’. We all remember the setting in which the story of the Three Musketeers takes place, the sense of honor and brotherhood it tells and the vast dimension of the battles. When I think back to what the novel meant to me as a child, its vastness comes to mind,” explained the director.

“The definition of swashbuckling film makes us think of a genre that between the 1960s and 1970s made us dream with its stories. It is not a genre that renews itself frequently and therefore a certain responsibility rested on my shoulders. However, some of the themes of The Three Musketeers, like camaraderie or betrayal, are totally timeless.”

“Dumas’ work also has three very important and weighty female characters. The fate of France is linked to that of the Queen, who lives in a terrible sentimental dilemma. Milady de Winter, whose background was worked on a lot in the writing phase, is an extraordinary spy, independent and elusive. And Constance is D’Artagnan’s beloved. The three portraits created by Dumas are among the most beautiful in literature,” concluded the director.

The main characters

The cast of the movie The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan it is one of the most populated in the recent history of cinema. There are many characters on stage and just as many changes in point of view. We have tried to present them to you through the words of the actors themselves.

• D’Artagnan (Francois Civil)

“Dumas has put a little of himself into all of his characters: his bon vivant side is in Porthos, ardor in D’Artagnan and seduction in Aramis. Their complementarity derives from the fact that they are the fruit of the same author,” he explained Francois Civil. “D’Artagnan is distinguished above all by his young age. He is a Gascon of noble origins but penniless: his only wealth is his name and his temperament ”.

“I find D’Artagnan’s loyalty, honesty, insolence, temerity, passion and ingenuity to be beautiful. In Paris, everything is new for him: the city, the body of the Musketeers he fantasized about, the love that suddenly strikes him, the mysteries and the gears of power… D’Artagnan is the hero of an initiatory tale of rare intensity: in less than 24 hours, he comes close to death, travels, provokes, falls in love, almost dies a second time, kills a man, meets a king and makes friends that he will keep forever. But, above all, it grows: becoming an adult also means questioning one’s own models and affirming oneself”.

“Athos is a tormented man who carries the weight of his past on his shoulders,” he highlighted Vincent Cassel. “He is tormented by remorse, shame and guilt – he is a carrier of many emotions. Athos says he wishes he could smile like D’Artagnan but he can’t be happy anymore. You believe you are also in control of what happens to him: for me he is like an old wolf whose experience is a point of reference for fellow adventurers ”.

“Aramis is many things at once. A great seducer, he is also a man of faith who constantly switches from one dimension to another, becoming almost comical,” he noted. Romain Duris. “We therefore imagined him as a dandy who cares about his appearance, a lover of jewels: for him, every cross is a conquest!”.

“We made him friendly and sincere and imagined him in love. He is not the one night stand seducer but a sincere lover, torn between God and women. Whenever he’s on a mission, I pictured him coming out of a romance.”

“Porthos is a pure and hard Epicurean,” he commented Pio Marmai. “He has an insatiable appetite but without this making him abandon his companions: he is always at the service of others. I really love his tenderness but also his modesty, aspects that will be revealed more as the story progresses ”.

“In the collective imagination, Milady is evil, mysterious, intrepid, diabolical and ready to do anything to satisfy her goals,” he explained Eve Green. “In the second film we will understand why she has become an unscrupulous woman. We will discover her Achilles heel and, therefore, a new Milady, who I find more human. It’s the inner journey we see in this new adaptation that made me say yes to the project.”

“Milady is also a warrior. She is virile and wields weapons like men. She is a free and independent modern heroine who takes the reins of her own destiny into her own hands. I like the marginal side of her and the fact that she makes fun of social conventions. And, like the other two female characters in the story, she is less submissive in the film than in the novel ”.

• Louis XIII (Louis Garrel)

“I read the biography of Louis XIII written by Jean-Christian Petitfils, who is very empathic with the sovereign and who debunks Dumas’ version according to which he had a docile character and was influenced by Cardinal Richelieu”, he immediately specified Louis Garrel. “I drew inspiration from it to build my interpretation”.

“Louis XIII was the son of Henry IV, who was assassinated and who had other illegitimate heirs. On his father’s death, his mother Marie de’ Medici was made regent of France and Louis XIII sent away to be educated with his brothers, including Gaston, Mama’s favourite. At fifteen, the future King of France staged a coup against his mother’s Prime Minister, eventually sending Maria and Gaston into exile. The events that followed led Louis XIII to forgive the two and to reopen the doors of the royal palace to them. His personal story is very reminiscent of a tragedy by Shakespeare!” continued the actor.

“So I imagined that he admired his father and that he harbored inferiority complexes towards him. He certainly wanted to be a good king but that’s not easy when you take power at fifteen and have no one to back you up. In the movie The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan, it will be up to him to decide whether to declare war on England or not and to understand if his wife is cheating on him or faithful to him. This double political and intimate connotation fascinated me ”.

• Anne of Austria (Vicky Krieps)

“Before accepting a role, I need to understand how to nuance the character. I saw Anne of Austria and Louis XIII as two teenagers who go from one party to another and float above reality. With Louis Garrel, we had fun thinking that the king and queen of France were more modern than us and that they had a free and universal vision of love,” he underlined Vicky Kripes.

“I thought of Anne of Austria as a modern woman, convinced that one can love several people at the same time: she loves both her husband and the Duke of Buckingham and is able to observe what is happening around her from a certain distance” .

“Constance is bubbly – I like her aplomb. Even though she is subjected to Queen Anne, she knows how important her role is to her: she is indispensable to the woman and she is not bound by social conventions. She has a lot of audacity and a completely independent spirit. Her highest aspirations are justice, equality and love!” she explained Lyna Khoudri.

“My Constance is sensitive, mischievous and playful. Between her and D’Artagnan there is a game of seduction that passes through sweetness, benevolence and continuous challenge!”.

“Richelieu is known to be an eminence grise, whose weapons are intelligence, duplicity, criticism, synthesis and deception. In the collective imagination, he has the ability to impress just with his word. My Richelieu, on the other hand, has impressive physical prowess,” he explained Eric Ruff.

“As often happened at the time, he found himself having to advise a king who was too small to handle his power and put on a brave face. However, he has always had a strategy to achieve the goal of power that he has set himself. With his cold demeanor, he watches, weighs and weighs everything, but also harbors jealousies and enormous frustrations. He doesn’t work for anyone and that makes him creepy. Furthermore, for Louis XIII he could also represent a father figure… but his fathers must be killed ”.