Misc.

bad les mis 1998

So, i've seen a lot of people do analyses of the music in Les Miserables, and while i would love to do my own interpretation of it, I think I would just draw the same conclusions as a lot of other people, so instead of sounding like a broken record, I wanted to focus on something else.

Obviously, there are problems with the 1998 rendition of Les Miserables starring Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean and Uma Thurman as Fantine. This can be seen by the reception it got and has from the active fandom community. It's rejected in the same way Hugh Jackman is rejected with his portrayal of Jean Valjean. They're not wrong, but the majority of interpretations garnered after watching the play or reading the book dont match up with that of the 98 film. I want to take a look at the instances in the film that are often seen as problematic, why that's a bad thing and why that matters to the outcome of the story.

Before I continue with anything, I just wanna disclaim that I have nothing against you if you like the movie or Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, I don't care what interpretation you like best, it's fine. I just think it's interesting to observe the things that are typically disliked by the fandom and to talk about why that might be. Cool? Cool.

Immediately off the bat I wanna talk about the first scenes with the Bishop. The thing with the 98 Les Mis is that it's very book accurate. Or at least, it's based off the book. It walks a very fine line of a movie version of the book and a movie based off of the book. This throws us for a loop later when everything goes off the rails, because, right off the bat, the movie is book accurate down to the very details.

It starts with the Bishop of Digne and the two nuns that accompany him everywhere and then Jean Valjean shows up. They accommodate him and they all go to bed. We cut to this weird flashback thing of Jean Valjean lifting a rock and Javert beating him but difference in mediums, you need to give context somehow and this theoretically works, so whatever. It's supposed to refer to the whole "What had happened inside that soul?" chapter, kind of shedding light on why Jean Valjean's actually there in the first place. When Jean Valjean wakes up it's identical to the book. Down to the descriptive lines. The blue of the moon on his bed, him not being able to sleep. Personally I think it was done perfectly. THEN HOWEVER, when Jean Valjean goes to steal the silver, the Bishop wakes up and catches Jean Valjean in the act, who in turn CLOCKS the Bishop in the face and makes a run for it. Then the next morning, he's caught, they bring him to the Bishop who lets him go.

All in all, this is best it's gonna get. It's all downhill from here. Having Jean Valjean do this adds to the contrast between his actions and the response to what he does. It makes it even more surprising when the Bishop forgives him. However, in doing this, while it does add a bit more weight to the situation, it completely misinterprets Jean Valjean's character. Whether you love or hate Hugo's writing style, you're probably aware of the tangents he goes on out of nowhere. I think this is because this is how he incorporates the themes and messages he wants to put in. For example, when we learn about Jean Valjean, we also learn about the nature of the prisons he was in and what he did to get there in the first place. To be absolutely clear, Jean Valjean broke a window pane to steal a loaf of bread to save his family who were poor and dying as a result of the class system that was in place. For this, he was given five years in prison. As a result of him being in prison, he became a hardened criminal. Not because he was initially a bad person. He's a good person who becomes a bad person who must then relearn to become a good person and he does this through giving himself up to God.

They do a good job of showing that he's a good dude now with the whole factory thing and yadada we get it and how Fantine gets sick and prostitute etc. that's not the worst part. There's a really abrupt scene where they rip a blanket off her and Uma Thurman is laying naked on a mattress, dying of tuberculosis, which is morbidly funny, but I digress. Valjean saves her and brings her to the doctor where she gets all fixed up and there's a montage of this.