Two Different States of Life

There’s a great book called ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ written by Alexandre Dumas in 1844 which has influenced men and women throughout the years. It’s about the striking story of a young man called Edmond Dantes who suffered from betrayal, broken hearts, and loss of hope at a very young age. A man to which people was so envious about his rich life in the matter of love and loyalty, that envious people caused the imprisonment of an innocent gentleman whose life was about to begin; turning him callous and cruel. He searches for revenge in the cruelest ways possible, not by killing or injuring anyone, but by torturing them and taking away what they love most in life, just so that he could make them feel like he once felt after not being able to see the sky for 14; consequently teaching us the readers that “There is neither happiness nor misery in life; there’s only a comparison of one state with the other”. –Edmond Dantes

            After reading such book and being a few minutes into the adaptation of ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ directed by Kevin Reynolds; I realize how drastically the story was changed while making the film’ starting with the fact that Edmond Dantes (the main character) and Fernand Mondego (the antagonist) are best friends and both are aboard ‘The Pharaoh’ as they seek for medical help for the captain of their ship in an Island guarded by a Bonapartist army.  Here as they row to shore, they are received with pistols, swords, and violence by the Bonapartists so they are forced to fight back and obviously kill some men until Napoleon Bonaparte himself agrees to help their captain. Later that night’ Bonaparte talks to Dantes privately and gives him a letter which has to be delivered, but in the book it was a different story. Alexander Dumas presents us a passionate, loving and hardworking young man who is deeply in love and eager to get to his beloved lady, Mercedes. As he gets down from ‘The Pharaoh’, Dumas tells the reader that their captain died from brain fever and that they had to seek for help. A man (whose name I can’t recall) gave Dantes a letter which had to be delivered. He arrives, Morrell, the ship owner, gives him captainship and he heads home to see his father and then the young, beautiful young lady Mercedes. Once he gets to her, he finds her with Fernand Mondego, a man who is envious of Edmond, not only because of his captainship, but also because he gets to have the girl he wants. Fernand, who also wants to marry her, is his enemy, but he treats him right since he is Mercedes half cousin. Here the director of the movie completely changes the relationship between these three characters to maybe make the story a bit more interesting for the audience.

            Then again, Reynolds kept himself true to the story with a few thigs. He shows us how Dantes was imprisoned at the Chateau d’If  for ‘betraying’ the government, as the letter was to be delivered  a member of the Bonapartist party, so he was sent to  jail, not because of the contents of the letter but because of who was it going to receive the letter. This means that even though he was engaged’ he never got to marry Mercedes who later on married Fernand. Now, as a result of his loneliness in a cell, Edmond tries different ways of committing suicide, like hanging himself and starving but fails miserably. One day, an old man called Abbe Faria (played by Richard Harris), comes into his cell not through the door, but through a tunnel. He teaches Dantes many things like history, science and sword fighting. In the movie, they are digging a tunnel to escape and one day the tunnel collapses on him and he dies, but in the book he died in a more interesting way as he has a seizure which sadly couldn’t be stopped by poison. Since he is now dead, a guard puts the body in a bag and heads out, so Dantes takes advantage of this moment and switches himself with the dead body of the priest and is taken away for “burial” giving him the chance to escape from the Chateau d’If .

            I won’t keep telling you details from the beginning of the story, so I’ll just jump right to the end. Here we see how Edmond Dantes, now known as the Count of Monte Cristo, finally gets what he wanted, revenge and live freely as Jacopo, his friend and servant, says to him “once again Zatarra, God sees you out of the corner of His eye” as he (the count) believes in God and that he has completed his will and marries Mercedes like he intended to do at the beginning of the story, but in the book he does not believe in God nor marries Mercedes.

            To sum up, after  watching the movie in agonizing pain because of how much it differed from the book, but in awe because of how great  the script, plot, acting and screenplay was made I really can’t complain. Both, book and movie are completely different, I found the movie way more interesting to the book as it kept the audience in suspense and asking for more while the book sometimes made you want to skip a few chapters. The way Jim Caviezel played Edmond Dantes was exceptional and I wouldn’t hesitate on recommending the movie to anyone as long as it’s not to study for a test from the book, because the one thing you would get right is the name of the characters; but the message is still the same. “Life is a storm my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered in the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into the storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, as for I will do mine!” –The Count of  Monte Cristo