Perhaps you, too, have joined the hordes that filed into “Les Miserables” in recent weeks, watching human tragedy in a theater with stadium seats. The French street urchins are giving those hobbits a run for their box office money — no surprise, since pain has always had a lot of entertainment value. Victor Hugo published the original book in 1862: a 1,200-page epic of love, crime, and punishment, skewered by most critics but devoured by the public. The musical, long and luscious, was a staple of the ’80s.
A film version was inevitable, and it washes over you nicely; the songs, much to my children’s dismay, are impossible to get out of your head. But there’s a quality to this particular movie, this modern spin on an old wallow, that feels a little uncomfortable. At some point, it turns from suffering-as-entertainment into something more obscene: Suffering porn.
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For goodness sake - it's the film version of a Broadway musical that's been running for more than 25 years in many countries. The movie is faithful to the stage production in terms of story and action, but the settings are more vivid and everyone gets to see the players up close. The music is the same, and the performances are done "live" on camera.
I've seen the stage production 4 times, and saw the movie the other day. I loved it, as I have loved the stage production.
I appreciated that Colm Wilkinson (the original stage Valjean) was in the film, but would have cast the role of Javert differently.
It's become chic to crticize this story as if it just fell off a passing asteroid and has not been around for 125 years. This sounds like a shortened version of David Denby's foolish pseudo intellectual diatribe from the New Yorker last week. Me thinks I smell 'deadline pressure'.
"But Hollywood sometimes has a way of reveling in pain that makes it look like a fetish..."
So didn't Giacomo Puccini. It's called art, and only becomes 'porn' if it fails to increase one's sensitivity to the plight of others. If you find such art unsettling, then I suggest you stick to documentaries, or perhaps you'd feel better if you skipped the cinema, and spent all your free time at a homeless shelter instead.
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"Puccini's music is better."
I've never agreed with you more.
Sadness, turmoil, people dying, etc., sells? And you just figured this out? Where have you been during your own life? Tragedy, grief, anxiety, depression, treason, and so many other emotionally downer hooks have been a staple of story telling in all mediums for millenniums. Tolstoy said it best, "All happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Creative story tellers consciously or unconsciously knew that well before Tolstoy. It's a given that some are better story tellers than others. Also, what's this obsession with several local media critics zoning in on the the movie close-up in their curiously similar reviews? That's one of the advantages of film vs stage, duh! I've seen both stage and film versions. I think that both are very good in their own presentations. In my opinion, this technique plays well in the film "version" of "Les Miserables." Joanna, you and all the other observers of the two versions have left out the most important difference. Warning, spoiler alert, negative comment ahead. You can't have popcorn while enjoying the stage version.
I guess you have to cross Shakespeare off your reading list. Too much loss.