WORLD TOUR Day 43 - Paris, France
BEFORE: This will be my last film in Paris, and in Europe for that matter - I didn't have anything on my list set in Spain, Germany, Russia, etc. With just three weeks left to go before my holiday break, I've got to get back on the road, I've stayed in France too long (can you blame me?) Linking from "The Musketeer", Tim Roth was notably in the film "Pulp Fiction" with Uma Thurman (last seen in "Robin Hood").
THE PLOT: Jean Valjean, a Frenchman imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a police officer named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives...
AFTER: I may be the last person on the planet to familiarize himself with this story, considering the success of the stage musical, which I've avoided. I never read the novel either, so as I did with "The Three Musketeers", I've just read the plot outline on Wikipedia, which is serving as a modern-day Cliff's Notes for me. Wow, the novel is really complicated. This film jettisoned major story points and several key characters, and still came in with a running time over two hours.
The film boils it all down to the conflict between Jean Valjean and Javert, who relentlessly pursues Valjean for breaking parole, after serving 19 years in jail for stealing food. (ASIDE: I thought this was the basic storyline for "Crime and Punishment", somewhere in my head the two novels got linked and cross-connected) (2nd ASIDE: I thought that the backdrop for this story was the French Revolution, but no, it's set after that, between 1815 and the June Rebellion of 1832. Wikipedia's also great with the quick history lessons...)
The basic premise of the story is, you can't win. At least you couldn't win if you were part of the French lower class in the 1800's. While Valjean manages to make something of himself and rise to become the mayor of a town and its chief industrialist, Fantine, one of his seamstress workers, is having a rough time, forced to send more and more money to pay for her daughter's care, and when her boss finds out about her illegitimate child, she's branded as an undesirable, and fired. This leads to her struggling to pay rent AND send money to her daughter, so she takes up the "world's oldest profession". Yeah, that'll help.
Once her storyline ends (spoiler alert: not well), the rest of the film is given over to Valjean and Javert, who are essentially polar opposites, and their conflict is filled with those great little literary ironies. Valjean is a decent, charitable soul, capable of doing great works for his adopted city - yet he is a fugitive and in conflict with the laws of society. Javert is all about the rules, he believes that upholding the law is the only decent course of action, but his ruthlessness and unwavering pursuit of justice is portrayed as doing more harm than good.
Valjean and his adopted daughter (Fantine's), hide out in a convent under new names, with Valjean working as a gardener. He doesn't leave the building for years, so in a sense, that's a form of prison, right? (The real irony in the novel is that he was sentenced to a 5 year sentence, which was extended to 19 years because of his many escape attempts. Dude, just STOP trying to escape!) Javert, despite being an officer of the law, is a prisoner himself - bound by the rules of the law. (Yet, after just one or two attempts to get in the convent, he just gives up? That's a bit hard to believe, after looking for his lost parolee for 10 years or so...)
Eventually the daughter becomes a young woman, and convinces Valjean to rejoin society, under yet another assumed name. They leave the convent (after making sure Javert is finally not looking), and end up running a soup kitchen right in the middle of a rebellion, one that's being investigated by a determined policeman (guess who? what are the odds...).
The ending, well, it's complicated, and without all of the intricacies present in the novel, it seems a little like it comes out of left field here. But that's just one man's opinion.
Also starring Liam Neeson (last seen in "The A-Team"), Geoffrey Rush (last seen in "The King's Speech"), Claire Danes (last seen in "Stage Beauty"), with a cameo from Toby Jones (last seen in "Your Highness").
RATING: 6 out of 10 informants
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