„The man in the iron mask” – A review

By Christiane Märker

July, 1st 2007

“The man in the iron mask” is a movie which I really love and I always give it the best votes at polls. But this is subjective. It’s more about which feelings I get when I watch MITIM. The thing is that I can absolutely love a movie while I’m still thinking that from an objective point of view it has some flaws. So it is with MITIM. I love this movie but I would never say that it is perfect. In this review I’m going to explain what I think about it.

First I think we can say that MITIM is a nice movie all in all. It has not so much action-scenes like one would maybe expect from this type of film. So I must say someone who just watches such movies mainly because he wants to see good fights and stunts, will be disappointed. There are no pursuits, no climbing about chandeliers. And when the musketeers are fighting in this movie, it is not like “Look what a great fencer I am” but a serious fight. There’s no time for tricks, acrobatic or posing. The aesthetic of fencing which is celebrated in other musketeer-movies doesn’t play a part in this one.

But this has not to be negative. Actually I like it that MITIM doesn’t follow the usual clichés. The fights are not so important in this movie, but the characters are. Dialogues are very important in this movie. The best dialogues are maybe the ones between Louis and D’Artagnan. However some of the dialogues are also not so good. There’s for example the dialogue between Raoul and Christine where they confess their love to each other. The lines are so flat and it is also acted quite wooden. You actually don’t believe these two youngsters that they are in love. However most of the time the actors did the best with the dialogues.

This brings us to the evaluation of the performances. I think all main actors did at least a solid job. I would name Leonardo DiCaprio, Gabriel Byrne and Jeremy Irons as the ones who stand out among the others. Gabriel Byrne is great in playing a melancholy D’Artagnan who is inwardly torn between loyalty and friendship and Jeremy Irons plays Aramis in a virtuoso way and always with a wink. But Leo is the one who has impressed me the most. He does a great job playing the twins. He manages to play them so different that you forget that this is the same actor two times when you see them together in a scene. You don’t see Leo1 and Leo2 but two different persons. On the other hand Leo didn’t just play them as the good twin and the evil twin. While Philippe is in fact an absolute good guy, Louis is not the heartless villain who you would maybe expect. It is true that he does and says cruel things and actually he does nothing in the movie for which you could like him. But still Leo gave Louis something human and vulnerable, so that it is possible to possibly have compassion for him. It is not because of the script. Louis has no lines which could make him more likeable. If we only look at the script, Louis is presented as the classic evil guy. But just with his eyes, his facial expressions and his voice Leo has managed it to make Louis more human. This makes it even possible to see Louis as a tragic character, as someone who hasn’t understood life and who does cruel things also because of his own insecurity.

I have always admired Leo for his performance as Louis. On the other hand I wasn’t so impressed by him as Philippe for a long time. I thought that the only thing what he was doing in this movie concerning this role was to stand around and to look nice and sheepish. Later I realized that he had done a great job here, too. Philippe is intimidated and frail. The years in prison have left traces in his soul. I’m also thankful that Leo didn’t play Philippe as the vindictive brother. This makes the whole story even more tragic because there are moments in this movie where they have a chance to reconcile and just because of Louis’ angriness they don’t do so (see also my article "A lost Chance?").

All in all one can say that the actors are the ones who gave this movie its quality. But it is also good entertainment. It is not perfect. The directing is maybe sometimes a bit simplistic and the plot is maybe a bit too simple and could have more depth. Actually there’s many depth in the story, but the film doesn’t make full use of it. But somehow this is also positive. Because so as a fan you have the chance to speculate and to spin thoughts like: “What would have happened, if…” So its imperfection actually also makes up the charm of this movie. So I would give it eight of ten points.

Chrissi

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