Les Mis

[garcia]

Les Mis

cosette really is that boring. she pretty much has no personality whatsoever. she's more of a plot device than a character.

in the novel she and marius fall in love after seeing each other in the jardin du luxembourg. basically they look at each other a few times and that's it. VH reckons that's how love happens.

[Reed John]

Les Mis

That's what I'm driving at. From the 21st century perspective, she ought to be a more interesting character given her upbringing or lack thereof and living in interesting times, but she is, as you say, mainly just a plot device - a MacGuffin like the Ark of the covenant or the Maltese Falcon.

I don't know why Victor Hugo thought love worked like that, but I gather that that was a pretty typical viewpoint among 19th century writers. At least the male ones. Jane Austen wouldn't have approved. Indeed, it seems like this was what the romantics thought love ought to be like.

I suppose it's odd that the writers of the musical decided to leave it more or less like that given that most modern audiences probably find it unsatisfying and are rooting for Eponine. At least she gets a hit song.

The filmmakers try to inject a bit of life into Cosette by casting Amanda Seyfried who is, at least, fairly likable, as well-known film actresses go, and can sing pretty well, so the audience may subconsciously fill in the gaps on the page. She also has "big eyes" so she matches up with the young version of herself, who needs to have big blue eyes to make the posters work.

[willie1foot]

Les Mis

Squarewheelbike wrote:

I've seen the Les Mis on stage; put on by an amateur dramatics group. I really enjoyed it.

Dear God, you have a very low quality threshhold!

They were a very good amateur dramatics group. We went as guests of one of the many corporate sponsors of their performance.

[garcia]

Les Mis

Jane Austen wouldn't have approved. Indeed, it seems like this was what the romantics thought love ought to be like.

apparently it's 200 years today since the publication of pride and prejudice. that means it was probably finished around the time that napoleon occupied moscow. jane austen never mentions anything about these events. victor hugo gives us a hundred pages on waterloo. i'm sure jane austen was aware of the napoleonic wars even if she didn't think it appropriate to mention them in her novels, and i guess that if you asked her who won the battle of waterloo, she would say wellington, or wellington and blucher, or the british, or the british and the prussians. victor hugo says the winner of the battle of waterloo is cambronne. cambronne is an officer in the imperial guard who is among the last troops still standing their ground as the army routs around them. cornered by the british artillery who demand his surrender, he shouts "merde!" and is immediately blown to pieces. to hugo that is the greatest possible victory and i suspect it is one more way in which his worldview differs from jane austen's.

[Reed John]

Les Mis

I gotta side with Jane on that one, I'm afraid.

[Squarewheelbike]

Les Mis

willie1foot wrote:

I've seen the Les Mis on stage; put on by an amateur dramatics group. I really enjoyed it.

Dear God, you have a very low quality threshhold!

They were a very good amateur dramatics group. We went as guests of one of the many corporate sponsors of their performance.

After 30 years as a theatre technician I have seen many Amdrams and the words "very good" could never be applied to any of them. OK or adequate mainly, and shocking and embarassing quite a bit too. Job hunting at the moment and hope I can get something that means I never have to work with Amdrams again! Or do Panto!

[imp]

Les Mis

That's not much to show after 30 years.

Edit: Ooh, your three-days-later edit renders my quip redundant.

[G-Man]

Les Mis

So, nobody has been bothered by the explicit Christian themes of the movie?

[Ray de Galles]

Les Mis

Not really, I saw it as a product of the era. I presume it's explicit in the book too?

[WOM]

Les Mis

G-Man wrote: So, nobody has been bothered by the explicit Christian themes of the movie?

Nah...what's the suspension of disbelief for a couple of hours cost me?

[G-Man]

Les Mis

Harry Truscott wrote: Not really, I saw it as a product of the era. I presume it's explicit in the book too?

But the conclusion of death as the ultimate victory in the resurrection of the righteous is an explicitly Christian concept, whatever the age.

Of course, the depiction is also political, which I presume was Hugo's intent, and in the political climate in France at the time it probably was a swipe at the Catholic Church. But I would guess that the Catholic Church sees the film as an excellent advertisement (a Catholic review of it I've read almost says as much).

I'm not really looking for a debate; I'm more interested in how people reacted to the overtly Christian message of the film, which could in many ways have been obscured or diluted.

[Ray de Galles]

Les Mis

SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT

Well, it cuts both ways. Javert's justification for his cruelty and persecution is his Christian faith and ultimately his inability to square his beliefs with the encounters with Valjean at and after the barricades lead him to commit suicide.

While it's certainly impossible to ignore the characters' Christian beliefs in the movie I can't say it bothered me any more than, say, the Jedi beliefs in the Star Wars trilogy or the "Repeat the same day until Andie MacDowell falls for you" belief in 'Groundhog Day'.

[garcia]

Les Mis

the novel is not explicitly religious, though it's certainly moralistic - one of the big contemporary criticisms was that it was a kind of moral-didactic puppet show rather than a portrayal of real people. the moral outlook is influenced by the new testament but it's not truly christian any more than "all you need is love" is a christian song.

on the one hand there is a lot of talk about "the infinite", on the other there is criticism of religious institutions: "The leprosy of monasticism has gnawed nearly to a skeleton two wonderful nations, Italy and Spain; the one the light, the other the splendor of Europe for centuries; and, at the present day, these two illustrious peoples are but just beginning to convalesce, thanks to the healthy and vigorous hygiene of 1789 alone."

referring to the revolution as "hygiene" doesn't mean VH is a revolutionary atheist: "We are equally far removed from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who wound up by anointing the executioner, and from the sneer of Voltaire, who even goes so far as to ridicule the cross."

victor hugo is not at all concerned with the afterlife, and doesn't appear to believe in it, even if the musical reunites most of the dead characters on stage for the climactic song. he is a progressivist who is concerned with how to improve human life in the here and now. his philosophy of how that might be achieved happens to be very similar to that of jesus christ - to love, to show mercy and forgiveness, to live for others.

there are several parallels between valjean and jesus: starts out as a carpenter; calls himself "madeleine" for a while; is apparently celibate but friends with a prostitute; collects cosette from the thenardiers at christmas, etc. at one point marius compares him directly to christ, and after his encounter with the bishop he becomes very holy. however, we're not invited to think of valjean as anything more than an ordinary human being who must struggle perpetually to live in a good way. the inner voice urging the selfish path never leaves him in peace.

the most devoutly religious character is javert, whose moral outlook is inhuman because it's unforgiving, it doesn't admit the possibility of redemption. javert is a tragic antagonist because he is misguided rather than evil.

the real bad guy of the novel is thenardier, because he believes in nothing and his relationship to others is purely predatory. at the end thenardier escapes the reckoning in that he is still alive, but his wife and children are dead and he has become a slave trader in america. VH tries to show that such a life is its own punishment.

[Ray de Galles]

Les Mis

One thing does bother me. Considering the pain, loss and grief Marius suffers at the barricades (illustrated in 'Empty Chairs at Empty Tables') he seems awfully quick to rejoin the privileged life with his grandfather once Valjean saves him.

I've read that, in the book, he and Cosette are living off money left to them by Valjean rather than Marius's family's wealth (as it appears in the film) but even so he seems to have buried all the beliefs that led him to revolt in the first place and now embraces the trappings of the bourgeoisie.

Are we to think that he's suppressed it all for love, or is it fear of being discovered and it's repercussions?

.

[G-Man]

Les Mis

Yeah, I thought that was a bit off. But then again, the revolt has been thoroughly smashed; to be a one-man resistance would be quixotic, so he thought he might as well become a pioneer of champagne socialism.

[G-Man]

Les Mis

Now, does anyone know how to get that insidious "Do You Hear The People Sing" tune out of my head? I think I'll put that on a CD with the Soviet national anthem and The Men They Couldn't Hang's "The Colours" and play that on a revolutionary loop.

[Ray de Galles]

Les Mis

Hah! I'm pretty much obsessed with the soundtrack at the moment and constantlyt wander round the house and office absent-mindedly singing selections from it. Even Crowe's vocals are growing on me.

I am going to have to be a sucker and buy the full 42 song OST next month to get songs like 'Do You Hear The People Sing' because the initial one was only a 'Highlights from...' 20 track version.

.

[G-Man]

Les Mis

I have the 20-track compilation and was disgusted at the omission of "Do You Hear The People Sing". I've downloaded the song -- no idea which soundtrack's version it is.

My son, who is also obsessed with "Do You Hear..." says his favourite track is the one in which Javert outlines why he must get Valjean. And he tells me the one track he knew before watching the movie was "Master Of The House", which he knew from Seinfeld (George is earwormed with it in one episode). I thought I was the big Seinfeld fan in the house...

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Les Mis

I tried to watch this but gave up half-way through the second song. Musicals where they sing all the bleedin' time bore me to death and there's something with how people move in such which makes me not take the story in. The somewhere between acting and dancing movements. Flapping and waving of arms, staring towards the sky as they sing, the rushing over the floor in a group like a shoal of mackerel being hunted by swordfish. I guess I find it exaggerated for my taste, like watching someone open an umbrella with a fork-lift.

[Ray de Galles]

Les Mis

Hofzinser wrote: I've seen the stage show about five times and absolutely love it - I'd happily see it dozens more times. For that reason, I'm simultaneously expecting to love and hate the film version. I'll probably find out which this weekend.

Did you ever see it, Hof?

I finally saw the London stage version last week and it was wonderful, though I don't think I think any the less of the film for the experience.

Following the discussion about it on page 1, we took my 11 & 9 year old daughters who loved it and it didn't seem too heavy for them. Will try them with the DVD soon too.

[Hofzinser]

Les Mis

For reasons I forget, although they were no doubt pregnancy-related, I never did end up getting to see it at the cinema, unfortunately. I'm 100% definite to see it sooner or later, but not as yet.

[Hofzinser]

Les Mis

I finally saw this at the weekend, having spent the last few months looking after a new baby and watching the entirety of the Sopranos, which didn't leave any spare time for films.

Anyway, I loved it. Overall, it wasn't as powerful or moving an experience as seeing it in the theatre, but that wasn't unexpected, and would be setting an unfair bar, especially as we were watching it on a TV screen rather than in the cinema.

But I love the story, and I really love nearly all the songs, so someone would have to really mess things up for me not to enjoy the film. And I thought the cast were excellent - Jackman, Barks and Hathaway were all great and, while Russell Crowe is obviously not an outstanding singer, I thought his performance had a charisma and a passion that carried him through so I thought he was great too.

The only one I really couldn't abide was Amanda Seyfried. Cosette has always been a fairly bland character anyway - far less interesting and appealing than Fantine or Eponine - but I thought her performance was really stage schooly and soulless, and her warbly voice was like fingers down a blackboard to me.

Everyone talked about it so much that I thought it might be a let-down when I saw it, but I thought Hathaway's rendition of I Dreamed A Dream was spellbinding - genuine shivers down the spine for all three minutes of it, and I'm afraid my eyes were a little undry by the end.

Not a let-down as such, but - having expected them to be brilliant - I thought Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen were fine but not as good as I expected. I think the point about them lacking that essential bit of menace is an excellent one. Even as a comic performance, however, they didn't steal the show in the way I thought they might.

Overall, though, I loved it because I adore the theatrical production and it didn't stray too far from that, and would happily watch it (the film) again. It made me want to go back and see it in the theatre again too.

[Gerontophile]

Les Mis

Nice one Hof.

I started a thread many moons ago about standout bad performances, and I think I mentioned Ms Seyfried.

She was certainly in the vicinity of the notes. But her performance and voice grated quite badly. Otherwise, I thought it an excellent film. Even Russell Crowe held his own in the onslaught that was Hugh Jackman.

[jason voorhees]

Les Mis

With my kid, I've become a jellyfish floating and waiting to see whatever catches her interest. Lately that's been ballets and musicals (because one night we were walking in New Orleans, and the moon was gigantic and looked as if it was at the end of the street, to which she said "I love the night," to which I started doing the Phantom singing "Music of the Night" with those Broadway hands - when you reach out and spread you fingers and reach farther with each word you sing. Yeah.)

So I spent the past week watching the Les Mis 25th anniversary concert at the O2. I'll skip how many gallons of salt water I produced between "Who Am I" and "Bring Him Home" with the 4 Valjeans.

I got to thinking about Javert and Valjean, and how they're both essentially good guys, but bad in other ways. Valjean is obviously a hero when it comes to saving defenseless girls, but he really, really sucks at being a boss and neglects poor Fontaine and essentially allows a rapist to be his foreman. As a boss, he's an absolute boob.

With modern medicine, it can be argued that Javert has Aspergers Syndrome. He has a tendency to be inflexible, he takes things way too literally, he has problems with understanding the emotions of other people, difficultly empathising with others, having trouble in reading emotional cues in other people's faces - thus being thought of as arrogant or detached, and prone to extreme anxiety or stress if a routine is broken. The poor guy needs help.

[Gerontophile]

Les Mis

Well, he certainly needed help just before he jumped.

Nice post, jv.