Like all truly immortal literary characters, Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers — and their dashing buddy D’Artagnan — keep coming back, era after era, always altered yet always essential. I first met them 40 years ago, waving their swords, swirling their capes and yelling “All for one! And one for all!” in the pages of the Classics Illustrated comic book versions of “The Three Musketeers” and the two sequels “Twenty Years After” and “The Man in the Iron Mask.” Later I gobbled up English-language translations of the novels in fancy Heritage Club editions and encountered them in numerous movies. And now, in their most expensive and lavish reincarnation ever, they’re back — in a big-budget period movie of the Musketeers’ last adventure, “The Man in the Iron Mask.”
Each generation tends to reinvent old myths in its own image, and the new “Man in the Iron Mask” is a strange, fitfully entertaining example. Lushly appointed, sexy and violent, this movie retells Dumas’ tale of scandal and intrigue in the court of Louis XIV from a viewpoint that blends the moody darkness of a psychological drama cum historical expose with the outlandish high jinks of a Saturday matinee serial.
It’s hard to reconcile those extremes, but writer-director Randall Wallace (who wrote the Oscar-winning “Braveheart” for Mel Gibson) obviously loves this stuff, and he gives it a try. His script shows much more confidence than his direction. But he has a fine, brawling, brainy group of musketeers — John Malkovich as Athos, Gerard Depardieu as Porthos and Jeremy Irons as Aramis — along with Gabriel Byrne as D’Artagnan and Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh from “Titanic’s” waters, in the title role: the dual part of cruel sybarite Louis XIV and his masked and imprisoned brother, Philippe. By the end, when the Musketeers and D’Artagnan go striding down a castle dungeon corridor straight into a fusillade of bullets and emerge through clouds of gunsmoke like four indestructible compadres, it’s hard not to see them as The Wild Bunch of 17th Century France.
This “Man in the Iron Mask” is an adventure movie about the death of adventure, a swashbuckling tale without ebullience, a romance awash in regret. The look of the film is both sumptuous and sad, and if the style reminds us of anything, it’s not the Doug Fairbanks Sr. or Erroll Flynn costumers (including Fairbanks’ own version of this story, 1929’s “The Iron Mask”) but the brutal revisionist mud-and-guts epics like “Braveheart.”
Dumas’ own “The Man in the Iron Mask” was the last section of a very long novel called “Le Vicomte de Bragellone” — the second sequel to the original “The Three Musketeers” — in which Dumas showed his four heroes coming together after a long separation that saw them pursue widely different paths: Aramis the church; D’Artagnan the Kings’ Guards; Athos the nobility; and Porthos the life of Riley. There have been at least four other notable movie “Masks”: the Fairbanks film, James Whale’s stylish low-budget 1939 version, a lush-looking 1977 TV film by Britisher Mike Newell with Richard Chamberlain as the twins, and a bizarre 1979 knock-off with Beau and the late Lloyd Bridges. If the first version was the most delightful and the third the most intelligently written, this new one is the most physically ambitious and star-studded. And the most pretentious as well.
Speaking as an old Musketeer devotee, much of this new film seems overly dolorous, wildly erratic and sometimes madly out-of-whack. And, though it doesn’t really matter, few of DiCaprio’s teenage “Titanic” fans are likely to be satisfied with his cruel fop/anguished prisoner double role here (unless they yearned to see him play both his own part and Billy Zane’s in “Titanic.”)
Yet, in its very gravity, ambition and melancholy mood, there’s something poignant about this “Mask.” Wallace presents the heroic trio plus one as four aging, discontented warriors who have outlived their time, embarking on one last dangerous mission together. The guys are old now, but they’re still able to break into a creaky chorus of “All for one,” and they can still cut and thrust their way through a mob of flailing swordsman, like Michael Jordan driving the lane.
When they rejoin, it’s less from high spirits than duty, a lust to hurl themselves against the silken corruption of their times. Louis, the false monarch (minutes younger than his imprisoned brother) is a voluptuary king who ravishes even the girlfriend (Judith Godreche) of Athos’ son Raoul (Peter Sarsgaard), after sending Raoul off to the wars to be killed. So the trio reunites (sans D’Artagnan, who stays loyal to Louis) to replace bad King Louis with good twin Philippe and save France from a continuous royal orgy.
It’s a good thing Depardieu is in the picture. Irons, Malkovich and Byrne can be three of the gloomiest gusses in movies, and it’s a hint of how anguished things get that Irons (an actor whose dark-ringed eyes seem to be constantly staring into the abyss) may actually be the jolliest of the three.
As for DiCaprio, he has some fun. His Philippe is shining-eyed and pure-hearted, but he plays Louis as an effete bully, seducing without conscience and condemning without mercy. He’s the quintessential mean preppie type, transplanted to a court where he flaunts his naughtiness. This Louis probably does believe in the divine right of kings and figures he’s the living proof: He can do anything he wants.
Despite the movie’s flaws and lapses, it’s fun to watch DiCaprio’s little snot get his comeuppance, see him crumble when he learns of his alter-ego or sees the Versailles Wild Bunch strolling his way. Aches, pains, regrets and all, swords high and eyes blazing, these guys can make you believe again, fleetingly, in “All for one! One for all!” That’s worth something.
”THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed and written by Randall Wallace; photographed by Peter Suschitzky; edited by William Hoy; production designed by Anthony Pratt; music by Nick Glennie-Smith; produced by Wallace, Russell Smith. A United Artists release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:57. MPAA rating: PG-13.
THE CAST
King Louis/Philippe …… Leonardo DiCaprio
Aramis ………………. Jeremy Irons
Athos ……………….. John Malkovich
Porthos ……………… Gerard Depardieu
D’Artagnan …………… Gabriel Byrne
Queen Anne …………… Anne Parillaud
———-
– Chat with Wilmington 7 p.m. Thursday at Digital City Chicago on America Online (keyword: chicagochat).
