Disclaimer:
since English isn't my native language, I ask apologies for any mistake I could had done, translating from Portuguese this review. - Luiz Felipe Vasques
GANKUTSUOU - THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
Synopsis:
Year 5053 AD. Edmond Dantés was a promising young man, honest, yet from a humble origin. He acted always correctly and was in love with his promised one, a beautiful lady. He never refused helping his friends and performed his duties with dignity. But something went wrong. Embezzled, without any prior warning, in a complex political game, the young man was charged of treason and arrested, even considering he was innocent. Several years later, helped by the circumstances and an unexpected ally inside the prison – one of the most terrible and secure of his age – he managed to escape, as unlikely this could be. But then, he wasn't the same man. Who emerged from the dark years in prison was not Dantés, but the Count of Monte Cristo. And he went to Paris, seeking vengeance against those who locked him up and destroyed his happiness.
Review:
The story is a classic, and was written by Alexandre Dumas in the mid-XIXth Century. Considered one of his major works, The Count of Monte Cristo had generated several adaptations for movies and television. No one of them, though, had approached so much of the original spirit like Gankutusou/The Count of Monte Cristo. And this is a bit disturbing: generally, all feature versions, as fidel as they could get, in the end turned Dantés saga in more of a revenge story and less a love-wins-all story. Gankutsuou (literally, "The Lord of the Cave"), despite the fiery, decadent and insane science-fiction glass, intensified through a luminous and radical visual conception, bringing up the innate cruelty and ambiguity of Duma’s work, as if the life of young Albert Morcef was gradually thorn apart, dragged by a nightmare.
It’s important to talk about Morcerf, once, here, he is the protagonist – and this is the most clever trick in the story: the narrative p.o.v. doesn’t follow the Count/Edmond, but it is shown to us through a naïve character, whose innocence turns even darker all the running treason and revenge plots; Albert Morcerf feels attracted to the Count since their very first meeting, at the carnival in Luna, without suspecting that he will be an important piece in the plans of revenge – and here begins his disgrace.
By the way, the young noble, allured by the eccentricity of the unknown newcomer, wasn’t the only one to have more attention in the animated version. Generally, the secondary characters appear with more strenght and personality. The relations between them, "the sons of vengeance", become the most important part of the ploy, while in the book played only a subtext to the development of Monte Cristo’s machinations.
Some of the characters were strongly changed. There is a good reason in the Duma’s book, for example, to no one in his senses choose Eugénie Danglars, Albert’s fiancée, as a real pair for him: she is a lesbian, originally, running away with her lover and using a male name. For those who don’t know the original work, to change Eugénie and Edmond into a non-loving couple, or at least a couple that could love each other if there weren’t the circumstances of their pre-arranged marriage, sounds unnecessary – just something assure a romantic focus to the now-protagonist Albert. And just to remember, in her first appearances in this animation, Eugénie has an androgynous look, suggesting this option may had be considered in the first stages of character design. Other characters had they degree of importance raised (like Franz D’Epinay) or diminished (like the Max Morel and Valentine couple).
All this considered, the animated Monte Cristo doesn’t differ too much from the original book, especially in its main points. Initially, most of the alterations are made to adjust of some situations at the new futuristic scenario. The relation between the spaces is an example of this change, especially in the national-foreigner dichotomy. To Dumas, this relation was clear and delimitated, once the story is mainly in French territory, like Paris, Marseille and the Castle of If, the prison where Edmond Dantés suffers for years, with very few passages in other European territories.
In the animation, the dichotomy expands. Earth isn’t the single inhabited planet, war happens all the time. And at the adaptation, outer space was chosen to represent everything passed in non-French territory. So, the carnival scene, in which the Count of Monte Cristo meets by the first time Alfred Morcerf, occurs at Veneza in the book, but in the anime, the great festival is set in Luna, a city on Earth’s satellite. Edmond’s companion, Haydée, is not anymore a greek lady, but instead an exotic alien princess.
What doesn’t mean the scenes Dumas wrote on France are now passed in other points of the globe; while in Earth, the story is still told on France. But this is not only the difference. The original work tells the story linearly, showing each moment of Dantés’ transformation and revenge. In the anime, we are presented to his story a bit each time, once in the first episode he already appears as the Count of Monte Cristo, so presenting himself to Alfred Morcerf. As the plot goes, his objectives and motivations become clearer. But when the point of view is changed, we don’t have the same sympathy we feel for Dantés when reading the book. On contraire, the Count seems a manipulative monster – and his vampire-like visage almost suggests he, actually, is the villain. Dantés had been played by actors as talented as Gerárd Depardieu and Jim Caviezel, but few were the times we actually can see how Monte Cristo can be such a revenge-driven cruel perverse man as in this production, which turned the book inside out to achieve its true essence.
This Gonzo Studios anime has 24 episodes and was aired by the first time in October, 2004. It made a huge success in France and USA, with positive critics to both its visuals and fidelity to the original text – which is quite relative, by the way. Gankutusou is set on the LIst. Century, in a scenario of great voyages through the space, with cyberpunk touches mixed with retro elements, as the XIXth Century was a fashion of sorts in this distant future. Clothing, decoration, the way people speaks and expresses, even the entertainment are moving towards this past – a graphic way to show the connection with Alexandre Dumas romance. But under all radical lenses, it’s doesn’t cost to remember: Gankutsuou was one of the winners at the 10th Animation Kobe, event that promotes and awards animation technology uses. This is due by Gankutusou’s unusual visual conception, mixing Photoshop textures with renderized layers (clearly inspired in painter Gustave Klimt’s aesthetics), making clothing and hair resembling a psychedelic patchwork of sorts that flows continually. Watching the hypnotic closing of the series definitively proves if you are or not epileptic, due the finale’s such light and color overload.
Monte Cristo is more of a readapted ambientation, like Richard III (with Ian McKellen) and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, although it is closer to the later, due the space-time displacement, a more complex narrative experimentation and a strong visual charge. And, counting on this, it makes a far superior adaptation. What sometimes seemed artificial and forced in Romeo + Juliet, in Monte Cristo it found the correct dosage. Even the affected speaking and acting of the characters, evoking a upper class decadence tint, instead sounding anachronistic or exaggerated, reminds several other characterizations in Science-Fiction, like Dan Simmons in his Hyperion. It is like in this scenario of great space voyages, with cyberpunk touches, nostalgia elements appear as the XIXth Century dictates the fashion in this distant future. Clothing, decoration, and even the entertainment are connected to this past – another way to show Alexandre Duma’s romance connection, keeping the innovation.
No one of the modifications can diminish the relentless tour-de-force that is this new Monte Cristo, recommended to both the less purist fans of the original story as well the Science-Fiction fans who understand that, beyond anything, are the characters who truly hold a story, regardless the genre. By the way, some annoying purists may say that this is not Science-Fiction at all, once it is not based on scientific principles to tell a story – being a Science Fantasy at best, once it uses futuristic elements to tell a story that could be told in any scenario. But if Dumas himself didn’t care for historical purisms (he was the one who, having specialized in writing historical romances, declared that “it is legitimate to violate the story, if we have a son out of it”), why should we care with them to appreciate what will be perceived as Science-Fiction by who really matters?
A quick recall: everybody knows his homonymous son wrote a drama about social class separation named Lady of the Camellias. Well-established, with a literature with “moral purposes”, he achieved the respect of French literary intelligentsia and even became member of the French Literary Academy, and also won a Legion d’Honneur. But take a walk by the street and ask around who knows Armand Duval or Marguerite Gauthier.
In the other turn, his father wrote popular literature in the best meaning of the word, in cheap "dime novels", or its equivalent. He was heavily criticized in his life and even after his death was considered as a lesser writer, and to him was denied a burial in the Pantheon of Paris, where rest the great writers and philosophers of France. But, in the day of his death, Paris stopped. All the city people, to whom Dumas used to write, mourned dearly their favorite writer. Only in 2002 this true crime was made justice, and Dumas remains went to its rightful place, in a public ceremony leaded by French President Jacques Chirac, who said in his speech:
"With you, we were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo, or Balsamo, riding along the roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and castles—with you, we dream."
This honor recognized that no other great French writer had been so read as Dumas, senior: translated in almost 100 idioms, generating more than 200 movies inspired in his work.
Bringing Monte Cristo to Science-Fiction (more than making it a superficial inspiration, like Alfred Bester did in The Stars My Destination, treating the basic premise more like a character study) is a remind: like Chirac said, with Dumas we dream; and no other literature is more meaningful than the one that makes us dream with it.
And this should mean to Science-Fiction, too. Different of the so respected Dumas, fils, ask in the streets who are Athos, Portos, Aramis and D’Artagnan.
Originally Reviewed by Ana Cristina Rodrigues (anacriscr@yahoo.com.br) and Alexandre "Lancaster" Soares (lordlancaster@hotmail.com).
Translated by Luiz Felipe Vasques
