Les Miserables

I've always felt I didn't need to go and see les Miserables partly because I don't really like musicals that much, and chiefly because I've read the book so I don't need to see it song and danced through at a great rate.   However, it is about 30 years since I read the book - and I would probably start re-reading it now, if I weren't in the midst of Anna Karenina.

However, having seen the trailer, I thought I'd quite like to go and see it.  It is a long time since I saw quite so tear-jerking a film - although I cried at all the religious/noble/moral bits - rather than the love bits - which were soppy and unconvincing although Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne looked wimpishly well matched.  Any normal person would go for Javert or, of course, Jean Valjean...

What struck me about the film, and thus about the musical, is what an incredible conspiracy of silence there is about the religious/moral content.  The film reduces it to a straight fight between noble Valjean and vindictive Javert - but I suspect that in the context it was written, it was partly about the different ways people interpreted their moral duty.   I.e. the law vs. the spirit of the law.  The musical has been intensely popular - I don't know how long it's been on for, but I can't believe it is only popular because it's a musical - people must have loved it so because of the overwhelming transcendant ideas about love and goodness and conscience and doing the right thing... the Marius-Cosette love story is a flimsy scrap of stuff floating about in it.  Then again, reading the precis of the novel in Wikipedia, I realise so much has been left out and simplified, that perhaps one might feel more engaged with them in the novel - in fact, I seem to remember that I did.

It really is an intensely religious story - which has many positive roles for clergy and nuns, not usually popular topics in fiction nowadays.  Lots about God, grace, mercy etc. in it.  Javert to some extent dies because he cannot forgive - or rather finds his emotions in conflict with his belief about the supremacy of the law.  Possibly a good advert for the Catholic church in some ways?