Opened the Kobo app, scrolled down and saw this.
You don’t say….
Tag: TODO: Les Mis
Who Are Les Miserables?
A response to @matthewjmandel asking my thoughts on A Comparative Book / Movie Review of LES MISÉRABLES
It’s interesting. I agree with a lot of the comments about losing complexity, but I don’t have as much of a problem with the character changes (partly because I’m used to the stage version, where Gavroche is less political & the the Thenardiers are funny, but still dangerous)
Eponine’s probably the biggest change that isn’t just a simplification, but I think her role in the story still works, even if the details have been changed.
I do have a problem with the finale, because it’s *not* Jean Valjean’s heaven by any stretch of the imagination. It works better on stage, where it’s more like a curtain call for all the characters who have died.
The main place I disagree with the post, though, is about the theme and title. Listening to @readlesmispod talking about how the word is perceived in French makes it clear that *all* of the main characters are “miserables” and Hugo is linking the sympathetic wretched like Valjean and Fantine with the clearly evil wretched like the Thenardiers because, as far as society is concerned, they’re the same. Society looks at Fantine and thinks she’s just as depraved as Thenardier.
And Hugo is arguing that they *all* deserve compassion, that they *all* should have a better life, that society should treat them *all* better, whether they turn to evil when they fall or not.
So the musical is less of a complete inversion of the theme and (once again) more of a simplification.
Les Mis, goose, dream
I dreamed that Jean Valjean convinced Javert to rescue an injured goose like he helps rescue Marius in the original. Javert took the goose to the station, issued it its own photo ID (it was a modern retelling), and the goose proceeded to follow Javert around everywhere for weeks until it got homesick and wanted him to take it back to the lagoon where Valjean had found it. Somehow it managed to convey this to him and he brought it back.
I was listening to the Broadway album…
Oddly related to the post I found earlier: I was listening to the Broadway album of #LesMiserables for the first time in ages.
1. I know this version of the show well enough that the gaps in the recording are as distracting as the changes in the current production & movie.
2. On My Own & A Little Fall of Rain still hit me.
3. Bring Him Home hits me now. I wasn’t expecting that. But now I associate it with the moment in the movie when Javert finds Gavroche’s body.
The secret of bread
After reading Catching Fire, I was amused to see that the criminals in Les Miserables pass messages in and out of prison, and across prison yards, encoded (or sometimes simply hidden) in bread. Eponine checks out the Rue Plumet house while everyone else is in jail, and reports back with a biscuit, indicating that it’s not worth the effort.
TODO: Look up when I read Catching Fire and add a note on it to Just a Lark