so I finally watched this movie, and here's my very jessie opinion of it

So I just spent the end of my weekend watching the 2012 movie of Les Miserables.  I had thought to see it in the theaters… but here we are seven months later when I can get the DVD with my Netflix subscription and watch it at my leisure in my tv room.

It was one of my absolute favorite musicals in high school.  And seriously, how miserable am I that I just pulled out my cassette to give it a listen as I type this… only to have the antiquated tape pull apart before the first two lines of the opening number completed?  I was trying to remember when I bought that cassette.  I’m thinking either freshman or sophomore year.  And how many times I listened to it… surprised it made it to twenty-some years later before that tape stopped working.  I also bought the LP (when they were still sold in major music stores, but at reduced price) of the original London cast recording.  I remember listening to that the first time and thinking how odd… and not right it was.  Because some of the lyrics weren’t correct.  The cast was different… and had that lady from Life Goes On playing Fantine.  But eventually, I liked it as much as the Broadway cast and sang my lungs out to it just as frequently.

I was thinking about that peevish annoyance as I watched this film and recollected all the absurd fervor on Facebook about how wrong the movie was.  Meh.  I kind of burnt out my Les Miz love by the time I graduated high school.  But only after buying the song book, seeing it, buying myself a t-shirt I wore regularly, plastering the poster on my wall, and forcing myself through the unabridged 1000+ pages of Victor Hugo’s text.  It’s funny, I found myself contemplating that text more than the soundtrack I can still pretty much sing from memory.  Finding it curious the things that were included and neglected in the interpretation of the story. Things I liked about the book (which I mostly really didn’t like because Hugo was a misogynist who liked words too much) weren’t included in the movie or the play.  Like the fact Valjean’s hair turns white when he admits his true identity to save the man under trial, the fact Thernardier stole off of Marius’ father’s dead body (the only point to a superfluous fifty page chapter about Waterloo), the fact the Thenardiers had another daughter – and my favorite detail, that the other daughter and Thenardier are the only survivors of the family at the end and go to America to become slave traders.  Funny those are the things that stick in my head now.  Much more than A Little Fall of Rain, the song to which I would sing and act out and muster tears over and over.  

Anyway, these are just my ramblings… that I felt I had to supply the internets with after reading so many vitriolic opinions of this movie six months ago.   I liked it.  I didn’t hate it for not living up to my expectations... which are as dusty as the cassette and LP.  It’s like any play, really.  Someone is going to direct it in not just the perfect way.  And then someone will have the amazing psychic ability to know exactly what I think and feel about a piece of art and cater to my whims and fancy… so it will be perfect.  I won’t say this movie was perfect.  But it was perfectly delightful.  Especially when I just paid for it with my Netflix account and could pause to go refill my wineglass.

But none of this is really what prompts me to write a blog.  

I remember seeing the preview for this movie – over a year ago.  It’s actually exquisitely edited.  My inner 16 year old was giddy.  My inner 30something took in a deep breath… and realized how my view of art has changed in twenty years.

The book (excessively verbose as it was) was written to highlight the plight of the poor in France.  I don’t think you can miss that point really… except… making a Broadway show about it kind of…well does.  Well, it’s 19^th century.  So it’s as much fantasy as Phantom of the Opera or Wicked, right?  When I was in high school I really didn’t get why Marius and his friends built a barricade.  I actually thought them kind of stupid.  Not as stupid as Cosette… but what was the point of doing that?  I also got them confused with the makers of the guillotine.  So I really didn’t care about that plot.  I was more interested in Eponine’s love song.  

Tonight I really did think about that protest.  I still am kind of annoyed with those boys.  Because it was more about picking a fight than actually trying to enact some reform to save people like Jean Valjean from going to prison… but that’s not as noble or sexy or romantic as dying for one’s cause.  Saving poor and hungry from prison, from being targeted by the police… well, it’s groovy if you have two men belt out songs about it.  But if we’re talking about hoodies in Florida… it’s not worth spending $15 to spend an evening watching that story or talking about it on Facebook.  Far easier to just hit the hide that annoying political comment, right?

So… wait?  Didn’t I just say I liked the movie?  Yes.  But… I am uncomfortable with how we make poverty entertainment.  We’ll pay for that overpriced ticket so an overpriced actress can starve herself to look like she’s destitute.  But give that $15 to a starving person standing on the street corner?  Hm.

Well, maybe this is less of an opinion of the cinematizing of my favorite musical/obsession of my teen years and more a realization that I really can’t just enjoy movies any more.  I seriously end up analyzing the escapist tendencies and implications of social justice. 

Or maybe a warning to anyone who reads this that if you ask my opinions of a film, be prepared to get a dissertation.