Director Martin Bouboulon and Actors Francois Civil, Vincent Cassel, Louis Garrel & Eva Green talk to The Inside Reel about approach, movement, intent and thematics in regards to their film (Part I of 2-part film series): “The Three Musketeers - D'Artagnan” from Pathe and Samuel Goldwyn Films.
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00:31 With Milady, you know, she has so much very specific strengths,
00:36 yet, you know, her weaknesses or maybe her ambition in certain ways
00:40 sort of counterbalances that. Can you look at the strengths that
00:43 you wanted to bring out within her psyche? Because you've always been
00:46 very good at finding these characters and these specific details.
00:51 Yeah, I mean, this Milady is quite interesting because we've seen
00:57 in other adaptations she is the femme fatale, very, you know, like,
01:01 kind of driven by revenge and she's quite, she's, yeah, 100% evil,
01:09 which is interesting. But I thought this was a new take on it and
01:14 I love the fact that they've kind of made up this interesting
01:17 back story and kind of added some humanity to her. So, yeah,
01:22 to this kind of wound is her spine and that's what kind of drives her
01:31 and I thought that was interesting.
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01:54 But the first thing, these two men, it's about their life experience,
01:58 one coming into his life as a musketeer, but one sort of understanding
02:03 the path that needs to be taken. Can you talk about sort of that
02:06 psyche of the men, you know, because one sort of is a mirror reflection
02:10 in certain ways of the other?
02:13 Yes, I mean, I personally totally agree with what you're saying,
02:17 but strangely enough, you know, something, there's something that happened
02:21 in this particular movie because, of course, the characters are written
02:25 that way a bit, but in the book, the age difference between them two
02:30 is not that big, you know? And very earlier on when they asked me
02:36 to do the movie, I realized that I was a bit old to do Atos.
02:39 And instead of hiding that reality, I decided to rather use it.
02:44 And so I really pushed it towards being like this older gray wolf
02:52 and to push that father figure, and that really changed the relationship
02:57 between D'Artagnan and Atos in a way. And yes, it becomes like, you know,
03:03 this father figure telling him what he should and should not do.
03:06 And at a certain point, D'Artagnan, of course, has to defend himself
03:10 and has to live his own life and to have his own experience.
03:16 And I mean, yeah, there's this dynamic between them two.
03:20 - Don't you think so, François? - I agree, Vincent, I agree.
03:23 I would say that in the first film, D'Artagnan comes up to Paris
03:27 wanting to be a musketeer more than everything in the world.
03:30 So he looks at this guy like father figures, of course,
03:35 and Atos in particular.
03:38 And I would say that in the first film, you can see through conversations
03:43 they have that probably D'Artagnan feels like he doesn't have the same
03:48 point of view about love, and he feels like this man has a troubled past.
03:54 And he deconstructs maybe the image he has of these guys,
03:59 and that brings him to his own life and the man he is.
04:05 And in the second film, I would say he's going through a darker path,
04:10 feeling drama for the first time and tragedy.
04:13 Who is this child?
04:14 D'Artagnan, Your Majesty.
04:16 Three duels in three hours with three musketeers.
04:18 Mr. Atos has the right to kill me first, Mr. Porto second, and Aramis last.
04:22 I find you very arrogant, young man.
04:26 It's my only wealth, and I put it all at the service of His Majesty.
04:29 You've always been very great with movement and how physicality
04:33 can affect emotionality and vice versa.
04:36 Can you sort of talk about that and finding sort of that feel of her?
04:40 Because it's very individual to her.
04:43 You know what? I feel like the costumes really, really, really helped me here.
04:50 Because, I mean, she works so much on what she looks like.
04:54 She's a chameleon.
04:56 So, you know, for instance, she will move differently when she plays
05:01 the character of Isabelle de Valcourt in the first film,
05:05 this kind of blonde, pre-Raphaelite young lady.
05:09 And it's all, you know, the voice gets affected as well.
05:12 It's more in the chest and more, you know, "Oh, I'm sweating."
05:17 And, you know, that was fun to do.
05:20 And then, you know, as Milady Milady, she is more contained.
05:26 She works in the darkness.
05:29 But I really feel she's like a cat.
05:35 You know, there's something kind of slow, slow, and then she sees something
05:40 and it's kind of quick.
05:42 But she, yeah, she's a cat.
05:47 We tried to work on the character's characteristics.
05:50 Indeed, Athos and D'Artagnan are perhaps different from what we saw
05:54 in the previous adaptations.
05:56 When you have four actors like that and four strong characters that exist,
06:00 but also, of course, female characters, it's very important to differentiate them
06:04 and to give them all a strong characterization that allows you to project yourself on them.
06:09 So, if your question is how we thought about that,
06:15 I tried to make sure that they were all very complementary,
06:18 but also very specific.
06:20 In fact, all these themes can appear as modern and current,
06:41 but we don't invent them when we adapt "Les Trois Mosquetaires".
06:45 They belong to the novel.
06:47 So, we tried to take the very DNA of the project,
06:52 the very DNA of the novel,
06:54 the loyalty, the ambition, the sense of effort, the karma,
06:58 the sense of strategy, as Milady said, as you just said.
07:02 We finally put them into the novel and tried to put them back in place
07:07 with as much relief as possible.
07:09 That's why the novel is so important, because it has a strong resonance with today.
07:12 I have nothing on my mind because I didn't know that king,
07:28 because his father was very well known,
07:31 and also his son is very well known, because this is Louis XIV.
07:34 So, he's a little bit trapped into two major personalities of French history, Louis XIII.
07:40 So, I didn't know.
07:41 So, I found a biography of this king,
07:44 and then I discovered that, I mean, also because of Alexandre Dumas,
07:48 it's a little bit ridiculous,
07:50 because most of the people think that he was completely stupid
07:53 and just connected to the cardinal, the Richelieu, and everything.
07:56 But in fact, the biographer of Louis XIII,
08:01 explained in the book that he had a tremendous life,
08:05 because at the age of eight, he was orphaned.
08:08 Then at the age of 15, he decided to kill the first minister,
08:13 an Italian minister of his mother,
08:15 and to kick off his mother of the kingdom,
08:18 because she was the regente, because he couldn't be king when he was small.
08:22 So, at the age of 15, he killed the first minister,
08:24 and he said, "Now I am the king."
08:26 So, he was much more powerful than I thought before.
08:31 So, he also had lots of conflicts with his own mother,
08:35 who preferred the young brother, I mean, Gaston and everything.
08:42 So, he was very tormented as a king and as a man.
08:49 So, obviously, the Three Musketeers doesn't tell all that story,
08:53 but it gave me a background to tell, to perform this king.
08:59 And I was very happy to discover that it was like in a Shakespeare story.
09:05 It was full of tragedies and violence and crimes,
09:09 and everything in his life. It's completely amazing.
09:12 He said, "You have difficulties."
09:16 "Born and buried."
09:18 You can't let him do that.
09:22 He's innocent.
09:24 So, you want me to declare war on the Protestants and on England.
09:30 The cardinal will do anything to bring down the queen.
09:34 No! No!
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