Sometimes it is better to know something about the context about a film before watching. Sometimes it is really exciting to have been caught up in the buzz surrounding a new release and sometimes it can be decades of enjoyment and interaction with a story before finally watching it in a new blockbuster format. And sometimes it is better to know nothing at all.
My
primary knowledge about Les Mis was
from caricatures of ‘80s London city life where yuppie bankers would take
clients to the theatre in order to secure multi-million pound contracts on
corporate benders. It was apparently the
musical of choice for the Square Mile city boys who knew nothing of high culture
but needed to spend money fast. For me
then, Les Mis was a signifier for
gratuitous excess shrouded in an already vastly ironic postmodern political
drama.
The
story (for those, like me, who are/were unaware) is split into two acts that
start in 1825 and follows Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a prisoner who stole
some bread who is being released on parole, and Javert (Russell Crowe) the
ruthless policeman who promises to chase him forever if he dares to break the
law again. Their lives intertwine over a
number of years and along the way we meet Fantine (Anne Hathaway), a factory
worker who has a daughter named Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) who Valjean promises
to look after. In Act II the film
culminates in the Paris uprising of 1832 where Cosette has eventually fallen in
love with one of the student radicals (Eddie Redmayne) who is helping to man
the barricade against the incoming army.
The
film is a breathtaking array of set pieces with every main character getting a
quiet solo performance that beautifully counteract the loud and energetic
ensemble songs that occur during action sequences. Rather than being a film with songs in it,
this is a full-blown musical that has been filmed with actors singing live to
increase the power of the delivery.
Where
Hooper in his last film managed to signal the beginning of the Second World War
with a gentle character comedy about a stuttering monarch, in Les Mis he has managed to represent a failed
student rebellion that is savagely beaten back by the military as an uplifting love
story about redemption and salvation. In
both films, explosions of large-scale violence are refocused to explore love
and friendship in irrefutably uplifting characters and narratives. Both films seem to remind their audiences
that against a backdrop of a crisis, militaristic or financial, it is the
actions of kindness and sincerity that are worthy of focus. It seems apt that as the world slowly pulls
itself out of a global crisis, a film should emerge that manages to explore
capitalism, radicalism, tragedy, abuse and heartache but fill the audience with
hope.
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