With a Christmas opening of $18.1 million and potential earnings
projected to top $200 million, Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables is undeniably touching
a nerve with moviegoers. In a way, it’s surprising. A movie filled with desperate
ex-cons, dying prostitutes, cruel policemen, pitiable orphans, misogyny, greed,
corruption, and untimely death opens on Christmas day, temporarily surpasses
The Hobbit in earnings, and continues to pull in crowds evidently weary enough of
joy and cheer to enter into the sorrows of Jean Valjean.
Watching the years-long struggle of the eminently decent Valjean to
create a better life for himself after a conviction for a minor crime, anyone
alert to mythic underpinnings might think of Sisyphus, pushing his eternal rock
uphill (although Sisyphus deserved his misfortune in a way Valjean does not). A
better prototype for Valjean, pursued beyond reason by the implacable Javert,
might be Prometheus, who bore his chains and a rapacious eagle with admirable
patience.
The central struggle in the film is between two men, but it’s played
out against a backdrop of intolerance of which Javert’s cold insistence on the
letter of the law is only one example. The persecution of Fantine by her
coworkers and foreman, which leads to her ruin, the callous treatment of the
orphan Cosette, the shooting of a young boy by a military officer—all echo a
larger indifference to the plight of the poor by French society. Javert himself
reveals the secret of his hatred for Valjean, which is rooted in his own
lower-class origins and inability to accept them.
The impression of grinding poverty, heartbreak, and calamity is
softened but not erased by Les Miserables’ soaring score, the comic villainy of
the greedily industrious Thénardiers, the valor of the young revolutionaries, and the appeal of
two beautiful young lovers. The film benefits from intelligent casting and
great performances and proves that an old-fashioned musical can still appeal to
a modern audience.
Still, we are left at the end with the death of Valjean, who has
sacrificed his own happiness for that of Cosette. It is kind of a happy ending,
though one is hard-pressed to imagine Cosette recovering from the death of her beloved
papa on the very day of her wedding. The young revolutionaries are all dead,
and the suicide of Javert seems merely the waste of a misdirected life.
Wouldn’t it have been more reasonable to reform his heart? We might think so,
but this proves to be the one thing he cannot do.
Valjean walks away from the scene of his own death to confront a
vision of heaven, where all the brave young people, and a smiling Fantine,
await him. While the swelling chorus of their singing ends things on a rousing
note, the fact is they are all dead and gone. It’s hard under any circumstances
to accept the death of the strapping Hugh Jackman as a happy ending. Would a
little remorse on someone’s part really be too much to ask?
