BEFORE: It's a brand-new year, and I'm back with another block-rocking beat. I survived Thanksgiving, and Festivus, Christmas shopping and Christmas. Got to see friends and family over the holiday break, and I found lots of opportunities to overeat.
I wasn't completely idle while the blog was on hiatus - I watched a few films from the list that I thought I might have seen before, but clearly I needed to be sure. So I (re-)watched "Inherit the Wind", the original "Miracle on 34th St." (those two films have more in common than one might think), "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka", and "Panic Room". Turns out I was right, I had seen all of those before. Plus I took a refresher course on "L.A. Confidential", and "Pulp Fiction" while addressing Christmas cards. I think the 7th or 8th time you watch "Pulp Fiction" you really GET it, and you see how all the pieces truly fit together.
Plus, I hadn't seen a "Star Wars" film in four years, so I watched Episode IV: A New Hope (Revisited). This was an edited version made by a fan who re-worked all of the effects as he saw fit, to correct some long-standing "mistakes" and others supposedly made by the Special Edition cut. I could see the reasoning behind some of his "corrections", but I'm on the fence about others - that's a whole debate for another day.
So, here's where I stand - when I left off, I had 213 films left on the list, and in the last 2 months, that number has ballooned back up to 260, thanks to Christmas gifts and new films taped from cable. But the list now contains mostly films from 2010 and 2011, and over the next few months, I'm sure I'll be adding a ton of films from 2012, which seemed to be a banner year for movies. I'll never really catch up all the way, unless I start going to the theater more, and working the new films into the chain as best as I can. Lately I've gone to the theater only about twice a year - last year just for "The Avengers" and "Paranorman".
And surprisingly, when I made my first attempt to organize what's left on the list into a coherent chain, nearly every film fit into place thematically, with just a few stragglers. I was going to start off with "Bridesmaids" and then transition into animated films, but I started last year's chain with animated animals, and that's too much like repeating myself. Then my wife started asking if we could go see "Les Miserables" on Christmas Day, which wasn't possible, so I got her to hold off until New Year's.
So, since I ended last year on a literary note, with "Around the World in 80 Days", let's take care of a few other literary-based films, some that had to be cut from my World Tour. And let's dedicate this year's films to my wife (and not just because she demanded it), who puts up with my shenanigans and my late-night movie viewing and my late-night blog posting and coming to bed at weird hours. This film means a lot to her, the Broadway show changed her life, so in a way it's her "Star Wars".
I'm also introducing a new feature, the FOLLOW-UP - so that if the chain breaks down, or there's a thematic jump of any kind, I can just say a film is a follow-up to one I've seen last year, or whenever. I'll still try to work thematically, and link by actor when I can, but if I get the urge to call an audible and catch a current film, I'm covered. God knows I'll probably want to tear my planned chain apart halfway through the year and rebuild it anyway.
THE PLOT: In 19th-century France, Jean Valjean, who for decades has been hunted by the ruthless policeman Javert after he breaks parole, agrees to care for factory worker Fantine's daughter, Cosette. The fateful decision changes their lives forever.
FOLLOW-UP TO: Les Miserables (1998) (Movie #1,279)
AFTER: The 1998 film with Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush and Uma Thurman is my reference point here, having never seen the Broadway show. My wife, on the other hand, knows the Broadway show backwards and forwards, but didn't watch the other (non-musical) film version. So we came into it from two different directions, and I got to spend part of New Year's Day watching French people die in overly dramatic fashion.
Apparently you can learn to speak French, but you're not really doing it right unless 99% of what you say is sung, to music that comes from everywhere and nowhere. Oh, and it helps if everything you sing rhymes too. I can hear the composer now, running through all the words that rhyme with "Javert" - hey there, you with the hair, bring me that chair. This is part of the reason I've avoided films like "Moulin Rouge", with the unrealistic breaking into song. But you do get used to it, over the course of a 2 1/2 hour film.
Much has been made of the live singing-while-filming approach to making this film. I think we've all lived in a world of lip-synching for so long, we've forgotten that there's another way to do things. Once upon a time, live singing and live recording was all we had, so this technique of filming the actual song being sung by the actual actor at the actual moment feels like both a throwback and a clever innovation at the same time.
Now, as to the differences to the 1998 film, which wrote out the Thénadiers in Act 2, and failed to mention Eponine at all. In a way that made things easier, fewer characters to follow, one less love triangle to untangle, plus it kept the focus on Jean Valjean vs. Javert. But then it didn't really tell the whole story, now, did it? I read the plot summary for Hugo's novel, and they DO come back into the story, so why write them out? The Thénadiers also provide the only comic relief in a film that vastly needs some - without them, we're left with a bunch of characters who are essentially just circling the drain, each in their own fashion, and life itself starts to look pretty bleak and, well, miserable.
(NOTE: Victor Hugo's novel is about 1,500 pages long, divided into five volumes, with each volume divided into books, and then sub-divided into about 365 chapters. So any filmed or staged version HAS to decide what to include and what to drop. Otherwise the film would be 10 hours long. This film does seem to have gone back to the novel to supplement the Broadway musical with some elements)
That is the point of the story, right? That life in post-Revolutionary France is quite bleak and hopeless? You work and work, and at the end of the day you're no closer to improving your life. You push that rock up the hill, and then while you sleep it slides back down again. (Not that I'd know anything about that...) A man steals bread to feed his family, and then spends 19 years in prison - once he's out, no one will hire an ex-con, so he's forced to turn to crime again. Plus he's pursued by a relentless Inspector who doesn't believe in personal redemption, so what's a guy to do? He disappears, breaks parole, and re-invents himself as a man dedicated to helping others.
One recent online review called this the film where "Wolverine rescues Catwoman's baby from Borat's house, and goes on the run from Gladiator." (God help me, but if that were a comic-book plot, I'd buy it...) But that's a little overly simplistic - there are moral quandaries here, like when Valjean has to decide whether to let another man go to prison in his place. If he steps forward, he will be condemned, but if he remains silent, he's morally damned. Either way, the life that he's built for himself is about to come crashing down.
The choice is echoed late in the film by Javert's quandary - after many twists and turns, he's finally cornered Valjean, but he also owes him a personal debt for saving his life. So, does he arrest him and uphold the law, or let him go and repay the life-debt?
Valjean is the best character here, and it's (mostly) Jackman's movie presence and singing skills that shine. But he seeks refuge from churches and convents no less than three times, and that's not only repetitive, it's more than a bit of "Deus ex Machina" propelling the plot. Furthermore, there are a few too many times where people don't recognize each other after 20 years apart, and then suddenly do. (Is Valjean the ONLY person who can lift up a big weight? Seems unlikely, there were hundreds of them in prison...)
But there's more of an emphasis on the June Rebellion, the political uprising where a bunch of students felt they could overthrow the government, if they could just pile up broken furniture high enough (apparently). Although this is past history, somehow this feels quite current, what with the Occupy Wall Street movement and all the talk of the Fiscal Cliff. Do our representatives really have our best interests in mind while they jockey for position in Washington, all the time deciding how much of our paychecks we get to keep?
There's a point in the film where the French people are right on the brink of the Rebellion, and the film weaves together all of the main characters, singing about their hopes and dreams and such in a 7-part interwoven musical number (and God help me, all I could think about was the "Blame Canada" medley/montage from the "South Park" movie) and there's this momentous feeling that everyone's right on the cusp of accomplishing something, that tomorrow's going to be a turning point, good or bad. And that's a great tie-in with New Year's Day, when we look back on the year that just ended, and feel that maybe we're on the cusp of a momentous year.
Starring Hugh Jackman (last seen making a cameo in "X-Men: First Class"), Russell Crowe (last seen in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"), Anne Hathway (last heard in "Rio"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Chloe"), Sacha Baron Cohen (last seen in "Sweeney Todd"), Helena Bonham Carter (last seen in "A Room With a View"), Eddie Redmayne (last seen in "The Other Boleyn Girl"), Samantha Barks.
RATING: 8 out of 10 street urchins (who have British accents, for some strange reason)
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