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Au Revoir, D'Artagnan (Episode 52)
So that's the end of the animated version... unexpected, but I think it works. And I appreciate the careful non-spoiler nature of the episode title -- even though theoretically we know that d'Artagnan is going to come out of this alive, because he is the Main Protagonist, and probably the others too, because nobody ever actually dies in a show like this one. Except the unfortunate François, who gets stabbed in full view, albeit in flashback... which is probably one reason why that is actually quite shocking.
Interestingly I actually found myself caring about the Aramis/François story the second time round, whereas the first time it just struck me as a piece of random retcon; I don't know if that was because we got more screen time on the adult Aramis actually remembering him, instead of a juvenile Aramis in flashback, or because of the more nuanced Aramis/d'Artagnan interactions as opposed to the "You killed him. Prepare to die!" vibe from the earlier episode. There's a moment after Manson's death when she sees the shattered pendant and cries out François' name, and it's genuinely moving, even though it's basically a close-up that's a few simplistic lines that don't move... and then she and d'Artagnan, who is the only other person even among her friends who knows anything about the story, exchange a glance, and it means something.
(It occurs to me that one reason why the interactions between the two of them in that episode spoke to me strongly was probably that it is, in effect, an implementation of the wished-for partnership I have mentioned before (although not necessarily here), in which you have a pair of friends of opposite sexes who completely trust and rely upon one another *without* the audience being constantly teased with Unresolved Sexual Tension, both having a committed external romantic interest with someone else which the friend appreciates and supports. Also, Aramis is arguably taking on the mantle of canon-Athos at this point, fighting one-handed and revealing a tragic past ;-p)
But all that was at the end of the previous episode :-D In this episode -- having concluded correctly that however defensible the central fortress, once the royal fleet has achieved a landing their survival time on Belle-Île is definitely limited -- the villains plan to take their loot, abandon their Legions of Evil to fight a losing battle (although there are still a number of unpleasant traps to be put in action) and flee in the Cardinal's prototype submarine which they stole at the beginning of the series.
Rochefort and Porthos fail to force the main door despite their best efforts (and I still actively enjoy watching the erstwhile enemies all working together, not least because it means Rochefort gets depicted as goofy less often -- we see him as an effective warrior here), so d'Artagnan gets himself loaded into one of the defensive catapults and launched up onto the roof of the main tower to duplicate his previous vertiginous adventures. Which is more amusing than it ought to be, given that Boyarsky as d'Artagnan does almost exactly the same thing at the start of Cardinal Mazarin's Treasure :-P
Almost certainly a coincidence, I think, although the Soviet film did come out ten years later... but the concept is a lot sillier in a live-action production than in a cartoon! I can swallow the fact that d'Artagnan can do this and survive, using a cloak as a makeshift parachute -- which nearly backfires and drags him off the roof altogether -- but had more difficulty with the idea that he then manages to fight his way single-handed through *the entire garrison* of the fortress, sweeping them aside six or ten at a time, in order to open the main door from the inside for the benefit of the invaders. I really don't get on with sequences where the opposition are depicted as totally ineffectual (see Rochefort above), and the Legions of Evil here are just completely and unbelievably useless, even allowing for the surprise factor of an attack from the rear. Couldn't d'Artagnan have been seen to *sneak* his way past the defenders thanks to his quick wits and small size?
Milady makes her escape down a sort of helter-skelter chute to rejoin the Iron Mask in the cellars, and d'Artagnan throws himself likewise down it in pursuit... still holding a drawn sword, which looks extremely rash! He manages to challenge the Iron Mask to a duel yet again, and, as has already been established, he can't beat him -- but Milady intervenes, covering the disarmed d'Artagnan with a pistol and telling the Iron Mask that she wants the pleasure of killing him herself, and that she wants to say a few words to him first. And just as we are rolling our eyes and screaming at the screen to Just Kill Him, Don't Waste Time Gloating, and awaiting the hero's inevitable turning of the tables once they are left alone together... Milady pulls a Jean Valjean, fires into the ground to fake her enemy's death, and tells the disbelieving d'Artagnan to run for it if he wants to save his life. The fuse has been lit, and the whole castle is going to blow up when the magazine explodes.
He did, after all, spare her instead of putting her to death at the end of the previous series. And now she is returning the favour: one time only, and then they are quits.
She tells him the way out, watches him go, and then tells the impatient Iron Mask, who has returned to find her (and apparently doesn't question the lack of a body!), that she doesn't plan to go with him after all. She is tired of this life of constantly scheming and being hunted, and just wants a simple existence. And since this leaves him in sole possession of all the treasure that has been loaded into the submarine, he doesn't question this too much :-p
Only once the submarine has left, she does nothing at all. She simply sends her last familiar away to save himself, and begins to pray, waiting while the final few seconds of the fuse burn towards the gunpowder. D'Artagnan, who has managed to evacuate everyone on the island down onto the beaches at the base of the cliff at the last minute, watches as explosion after explosion rips through the fortress from deep below, and everything begins to crumble.
And the submarine, still making its way along the escape passage through the caves, is seen to be bombarded by rock and fire, so I think we are intended to conclude that the Iron Mask fails to get away with his ill-gotten loot and likewise perishes to his own booby-trap -- the mask itself is apparently found amidst the ruins afterwards, but of course we already know that there were multiple copies of the mask in existence, and multiple simultaneous appearances of the 'Iron Mask' in Paris, so it's not necessarily proof. There is also an odd moment when Pepé, the familiar, comes running back towards Milady at the last instant, and she gasps and goes towards him -- either out of horror at the knowledge that he will not be saved after all, or else for some undisclosed reason. My guess would be that the film-makers were hedging their bets so that they could, if necessary, bring back their villains for a third series, but since so far as I know no further episodes were ever commissioned we can take the outcome to be that both of them are indeed dead ;-)
As I said, it's definitely unexpected, but it does work. She is *tired* of plotting and being chased, and putting all her efforts into schemes only to see them frustrated by some unworthy opponent or fluke of fate. She wants peace, and rest, and she wants to keep her pride, and there is only one place for those. She pays her last debt to the world in choosing to spare d'Artagnan in repayment for his choice to do the same, and then she has no further desire to survive.
The rest of the episode is a winding-down, with, well, not very much happening. The most notable thing is that d'Artagnan decides to go home to Gascony with the elephant, which is a nod all the way back to the very first episode, À Paris sur les traces de l'éléphant, where he initially sets off for Paris in search of it -- and no, I have no idea why they decided to put an elephant into Dumas' story! The street-urchin Jean decides to go off in search of his missing mother, and we don't really find out what is going to happen to anyone else (there is no sign of Prince Philippe at the court despite the King's promise that he will be treated as a brother...) Athos, Porthos, Aramis and Rochefort will presumably simply go back to their duties in Paris; Constance and her father return to their old household. There is a slightly strange moment when little Jean, sitting at the camp-fire with d'Artagnan on the night before their roads diverge, says "I wonder what the others are doing now" and we expect the film to take this as a cue to show us how they are all getting on, but it doesn't.
It's probably unique in 'Musketeers' adaptations in that it concludes not with a celebration of unity but with d'Artagnan going off on his own, and eventually parting from his last companion on the road "pour commencer une vie nouvelle", as the narration tells us. Even if the assumption is that he will probably come back and marry Constance at some point in an unknown future...
Definitely unusual -- and at its best when it is at its least cartoonish, at least to my taste, although I am definitely not the target audience! But like most good children's media it is possible to enjoy on an adult level, albeit perhaps by reading more in than the producers intended to imply :-)
Interestingly I actually found myself caring about the Aramis/François story the second time round, whereas the first time it just struck me as a piece of random retcon; I don't know if that was because we got more screen time on the adult Aramis actually remembering him, instead of a juvenile Aramis in flashback, or because of the more nuanced Aramis/d'Artagnan interactions as opposed to the "You killed him. Prepare to die!" vibe from the earlier episode. There's a moment after Manson's death when she sees the shattered pendant and cries out François' name, and it's genuinely moving, even though it's basically a close-up that's a few simplistic lines that don't move... and then she and d'Artagnan, who is the only other person even among her friends who knows anything about the story, exchange a glance, and it means something.
(It occurs to me that one reason why the interactions between the two of them in that episode spoke to me strongly was probably that it is, in effect, an implementation of the wished-for partnership I have mentioned before (although not necessarily here), in which you have a pair of friends of opposite sexes who completely trust and rely upon one another *without* the audience being constantly teased with Unresolved Sexual Tension, both having a committed external romantic interest with someone else which the friend appreciates and supports. Also, Aramis is arguably taking on the mantle of canon-Athos at this point, fighting one-handed and revealing a tragic past ;-p)
But all that was at the end of the previous episode :-D In this episode -- having concluded correctly that however defensible the central fortress, once the royal fleet has achieved a landing their survival time on Belle-Île is definitely limited -- the villains plan to take their loot, abandon their Legions of Evil to fight a losing battle (although there are still a number of unpleasant traps to be put in action) and flee in the Cardinal's prototype submarine which they stole at the beginning of the series.
Rochefort and Porthos fail to force the main door despite their best efforts (and I still actively enjoy watching the erstwhile enemies all working together, not least because it means Rochefort gets depicted as goofy less often -- we see him as an effective warrior here), so d'Artagnan gets himself loaded into one of the defensive catapults and launched up onto the roof of the main tower to duplicate his previous vertiginous adventures. Which is more amusing than it ought to be, given that Boyarsky as d'Artagnan does almost exactly the same thing at the start of Cardinal Mazarin's Treasure :-P
Almost certainly a coincidence, I think, although the Soviet film did come out ten years later... but the concept is a lot sillier in a live-action production than in a cartoon! I can swallow the fact that d'Artagnan can do this and survive, using a cloak as a makeshift parachute -- which nearly backfires and drags him off the roof altogether -- but had more difficulty with the idea that he then manages to fight his way single-handed through *the entire garrison* of the fortress, sweeping them aside six or ten at a time, in order to open the main door from the inside for the benefit of the invaders. I really don't get on with sequences where the opposition are depicted as totally ineffectual (see Rochefort above), and the Legions of Evil here are just completely and unbelievably useless, even allowing for the surprise factor of an attack from the rear. Couldn't d'Artagnan have been seen to *sneak* his way past the defenders thanks to his quick wits and small size?
Milady makes her escape down a sort of helter-skelter chute to rejoin the Iron Mask in the cellars, and d'Artagnan throws himself likewise down it in pursuit... still holding a drawn sword, which looks extremely rash! He manages to challenge the Iron Mask to a duel yet again, and, as has already been established, he can't beat him -- but Milady intervenes, covering the disarmed d'Artagnan with a pistol and telling the Iron Mask that she wants the pleasure of killing him herself, and that she wants to say a few words to him first. And just as we are rolling our eyes and screaming at the screen to Just Kill Him, Don't Waste Time Gloating, and awaiting the hero's inevitable turning of the tables once they are left alone together... Milady pulls a Jean Valjean, fires into the ground to fake her enemy's death, and tells the disbelieving d'Artagnan to run for it if he wants to save his life. The fuse has been lit, and the whole castle is going to blow up when the magazine explodes.
He did, after all, spare her instead of putting her to death at the end of the previous series. And now she is returning the favour: one time only, and then they are quits.
She tells him the way out, watches him go, and then tells the impatient Iron Mask, who has returned to find her (and apparently doesn't question the lack of a body!), that she doesn't plan to go with him after all. She is tired of this life of constantly scheming and being hunted, and just wants a simple existence. And since this leaves him in sole possession of all the treasure that has been loaded into the submarine, he doesn't question this too much :-p
Only once the submarine has left, she does nothing at all. She simply sends her last familiar away to save himself, and begins to pray, waiting while the final few seconds of the fuse burn towards the gunpowder. D'Artagnan, who has managed to evacuate everyone on the island down onto the beaches at the base of the cliff at the last minute, watches as explosion after explosion rips through the fortress from deep below, and everything begins to crumble.
And the submarine, still making its way along the escape passage through the caves, is seen to be bombarded by rock and fire, so I think we are intended to conclude that the Iron Mask fails to get away with his ill-gotten loot and likewise perishes to his own booby-trap -- the mask itself is apparently found amidst the ruins afterwards, but of course we already know that there were multiple copies of the mask in existence, and multiple simultaneous appearances of the 'Iron Mask' in Paris, so it's not necessarily proof. There is also an odd moment when Pepé, the familiar, comes running back towards Milady at the last instant, and she gasps and goes towards him -- either out of horror at the knowledge that he will not be saved after all, or else for some undisclosed reason. My guess would be that the film-makers were hedging their bets so that they could, if necessary, bring back their villains for a third series, but since so far as I know no further episodes were ever commissioned we can take the outcome to be that both of them are indeed dead ;-)
As I said, it's definitely unexpected, but it does work. She is *tired* of plotting and being chased, and putting all her efforts into schemes only to see them frustrated by some unworthy opponent or fluke of fate. She wants peace, and rest, and she wants to keep her pride, and there is only one place for those. She pays her last debt to the world in choosing to spare d'Artagnan in repayment for his choice to do the same, and then she has no further desire to survive.
The rest of the episode is a winding-down, with, well, not very much happening. The most notable thing is that d'Artagnan decides to go home to Gascony with the elephant, which is a nod all the way back to the very first episode, À Paris sur les traces de l'éléphant, where he initially sets off for Paris in search of it -- and no, I have no idea why they decided to put an elephant into Dumas' story! The street-urchin Jean decides to go off in search of his missing mother, and we don't really find out what is going to happen to anyone else (there is no sign of Prince Philippe at the court despite the King's promise that he will be treated as a brother...) Athos, Porthos, Aramis and Rochefort will presumably simply go back to their duties in Paris; Constance and her father return to their old household. There is a slightly strange moment when little Jean, sitting at the camp-fire with d'Artagnan on the night before their roads diverge, says "I wonder what the others are doing now" and we expect the film to take this as a cue to show us how they are all getting on, but it doesn't.
It's probably unique in 'Musketeers' adaptations in that it concludes not with a celebration of unity but with d'Artagnan going off on his own, and eventually parting from his last companion on the road "pour commencer une vie nouvelle", as the narration tells us. Even if the assumption is that he will probably come back and marry Constance at some point in an unknown future...
Definitely unusual -- and at its best when it is at its least cartoonish, at least to my taste, although I am definitely not the target audience! But like most good children's media it is possible to enjoy on an adult level, albeit perhaps by reading more in than the producers intended to imply :-)