Les Miserables: a non-review
Spoilers below, IDK I have a feeling all of you already have seen the film or the musical or know the story, though. Going in, I did not know anything about the story other than it involved bread, candlesticks, and a malnourished child.
1. Not sure why Javert felt so compelled to commit suicide. I feel like his problems are largely self-imposed. No one told you to spend 20 years chasing a bread thief, dude. It's not even like that's all you were doing - there was that revolution, the stint in that crappy town that starts with an "M" (you provide for your people, Hugh Jackman? Really? 'Cause I saw a lot of beggars). Jean Valjean is like an ex that comes back into town once every few year and you feel compelled to stir up drama in order to spice up an otherwise dull life. It's only a crisis because you made it a crisis, Javert!
2. I feel uneasy about casting the Javert character as a sympathetic villain, since so many real-life counterparts of him exist in real life in positions of authority (justice system, police, military, education, etc.), and the consequences of their dangerously narrow, small-minded exercises of power usually do not end with self-introspection and identification with their victims. I KNOW IT'S FICTION. I just think it's a good reminder that this type of persona is very much real, and thanks, partly, to people like Javert in power, we in America have elementary school children arrested, people sentenced to prison terms disproportionate to their (minor) crimes, students expelled from school for petty offenses, the school-to-prison pipeline, undocumented immigrants detained for years in deplorable conditions. As far as I'm concerned, every last Javert in the world can go jump off a bridge.
3. HOW ABOUT THAT FANTINE, THOUGH. For a poor woman in 19th century France, she has remarkably good teeth. Even after a couple of them got pulled, she still had a pretty decent set. I'm going to posit that that's the real reason her co-workers at the factory disliked her so much. When you're in constant agony from tooth pain due to living in an era that has not yet discovered routine dental hygiene, of course you're gonna hate on the girl with a perfect set of pearly whites.
4. Just saying, Hugh Jackman did not try very hard to clear that guy's name. After all that soul-searching, he shows up at the courthouse and declares himself to be the real Jean Valjean. The magistrate is all "Oh, Monsieur Mayor, you so cray," and Hugh Jackman basically is like, "WELL I TRIED" and then beats a hasty retreat back to his boxes of money. Weak, Hugh Jackman!
5. P calls this movie "Wolverine meets Cat Woman." Which in many ways would have been a better movie than all that deathbed singing.
6. Buzzfeed has a Les Miz character guide post, in which the author does not disguise her dislike of Cosette. I have no idea if Cosette vs. Eponine is a thing among the fandom, or if the author was just projecting, but I thought they were both pretty cool ladies? Eponine probably listens to a lot of Taylor Swift and identifies strongly with the Little Mermaid, but she gets the best song in the musical which IMO is a pretty good consolation prize for not getting the guy (though not, arguably, for dying with love still unrequited). Also I have a soft spot for Amanda Seyfried.
7. Girl should not have attempted those high notes, though.
1. Not sure why Javert felt so compelled to commit suicide. I feel like his problems are largely self-imposed. No one told you to spend 20 years chasing a bread thief, dude. It's not even like that's all you were doing - there was that revolution, the stint in that crappy town that starts with an "M" (you provide for your people, Hugh Jackman? Really? 'Cause I saw a lot of beggars). Jean Valjean is like an ex that comes back into town once every few year and you feel compelled to stir up drama in order to spice up an otherwise dull life. It's only a crisis because you made it a crisis, Javert!
2. I feel uneasy about casting the Javert character as a sympathetic villain, since so many real-life counterparts of him exist in real life in positions of authority (justice system, police, military, education, etc.), and the consequences of their dangerously narrow, small-minded exercises of power usually do not end with self-introspection and identification with their victims. I KNOW IT'S FICTION. I just think it's a good reminder that this type of persona is very much real, and thanks, partly, to people like Javert in power, we in America have elementary school children arrested, people sentenced to prison terms disproportionate to their (minor) crimes, students expelled from school for petty offenses, the school-to-prison pipeline, undocumented immigrants detained for years in deplorable conditions. As far as I'm concerned, every last Javert in the world can go jump off a bridge.
3. HOW ABOUT THAT FANTINE, THOUGH. For a poor woman in 19th century France, she has remarkably good teeth. Even after a couple of them got pulled, she still had a pretty decent set. I'm going to posit that that's the real reason her co-workers at the factory disliked her so much. When you're in constant agony from tooth pain due to living in an era that has not yet discovered routine dental hygiene, of course you're gonna hate on the girl with a perfect set of pearly whites.
4. Just saying, Hugh Jackman did not try very hard to clear that guy's name. After all that soul-searching, he shows up at the courthouse and declares himself to be the real Jean Valjean. The magistrate is all "Oh, Monsieur Mayor, you so cray," and Hugh Jackman basically is like, "WELL I TRIED" and then beats a hasty retreat back to his boxes of money. Weak, Hugh Jackman!
5. P calls this movie "Wolverine meets Cat Woman." Which in many ways would have been a better movie than all that deathbed singing.
6. Buzzfeed has a Les Miz character guide post, in which the author does not disguise her dislike of Cosette. I have no idea if Cosette vs. Eponine is a thing among the fandom, or if the author was just projecting, but I thought they were both pretty cool ladies? Eponine probably listens to a lot of Taylor Swift and identifies strongly with the Little Mermaid, but she gets the best song in the musical which IMO is a pretty good consolation prize for not getting the guy (though not, arguably, for dying with love still unrequited). Also I have a soft spot for Amanda Seyfried.
7. Girl should not have attempted those high notes, though.