Disclaimer: I’ve only seen the 1998 remake with Liam Neeson as Valjean.
I make no claim that this was the best rendition as I’ve simply never read the original or seen any other versions. Still, it doesn’t seem like a good story but perhaps you could comment as to why I’m wrong or ignorant of the true plot.
My sense of it is Valjean represents the French people suffering through a brutal regime yet looking for not only redemption but self-determined success. What is Hugo saying by having the priest let Valjean go? Yeah the ex-con avoided his parole officer in Paris (I believe) but why does Javert have such a bug in his ass to find him? Seems like Javert epitomizes the old regime where order trumps justice only later to find it/his heart.
In the end I was left wondering why the antagonist cared so much and why he ended up killing himself to let Valjean go. While I understood the drama behind the beginnings of The Revolution I was scratching my head as to why the story of the characters involved was compelling. Cosaette didn’t really know Marius so their obsession was unconvincing, is that hows its portrayed in the book?
I get that this is an epic novel that encompasses far more than a 2 1/2 hour movie can possibly handle. Still, I felt I knew and understood at least the basics of the story of The Last of the Mohicans and The Count of Monte Cristo after seeing the movies and found the raw story compelling.
What am I missing and what would I understand if I read the book?
*I’m 32 and long out of school, this isn’t homework or anything.
There is a ton of stuff that the movie left out. There’s no way one movie could have covered it all and what was in the movie wasn’t as well done as it should have been. Maybe an HBO style miniseries could really do it justice. I say give the book a try. Just know that when he starts describing the sewers it’s not a bad idea to skip ahead until he’s not describing sewers anymore.
As to Javert’s motives, the Wikipedia page on him is pretty well done. Particularly the ‘Part 5’ section.
I started to try to explain it but the volume of what not addressed in that (not very good) movie was exhausting. It’s not your fault you couldn’t make sense of it, but I’m not going to try and summarize the motivations of characters in 1200 page book that spans not only decades but generations, in a couple of paragraphs.
Well I think you are missing something in the story.
it is not only the story of Valjean and Javert, it is so much more
A romance, a thriller, a political tract, a story of redemtion in gods eyes, an adventure…and then so many people were introduced to the story as a musical, with the sweeping and soaring themes…
I love the story itself, mostly through the musical, but you couldn’t pay me to read the novel again (I slogged through the unabridged version (the one where Hugo spends 20 pages describing the priest who lies for Valjean, after 10 pages of describing the land surrounding his village).
ETA: And another 5 pages later on describing exactly how the special clasps for jet jewelry that Valjean invented work.
EATA: In short…love all the stuff that actually happens in the story, hate the prose itself.
Les Miserables is ridiculous, maudlin, long-winded, and interminable, but I still love it. All I can say is that the translation makes a huge difference–I recommend the Norman Denny.
The beauty lies not so much in the characters (although Javert is a memorable bureaucratic version of Captain Ahab) or the convoluted plot but in the setting of scenes–the convent, the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo, the sewers, the Paris street riots. The trick is to get past the asinine coincidence-laden plot and enjoy the scenes.
I was inspired to visit the Battle of Waterloo site by reading Hugo. Hougoumont (“the first know to resist Napoleon’s axe”) still looks much the same as in his prose and to follow in his footsteps was thrilling.
Hell, I’d recommend it. I’ve read the unabridged and there’s a lot of rambling stuff in there that frankly does nothing to move the story along. It’s just Hugo pontificating to his audience before getting on with the good stuff.
The 1998 adaptation wasn’t a very good treatment of the text.
I adored the book, despite the “dozens of pages about nothing important” part. It is fundamentally a book about morality- not a rules based “here is how you be moral” deal, but about what it means to actually be a good person.
And the book, unabridged, takes us through the minutia of life. The little things that abridgers drop, playwrights omit, and screenwriters cut. Things like Marius’s friend M Mabut who spent his life in scholarship and had a book written but ended up having to sell the printing plates one at a time to feed himself as Paris fell into the depression just before the revolution. The book is kind of like the Simpsons, with its enormous cast of secondary characters, all adding something to the story. The more you read it, the more little details you find, the more character you see, the more you grow to love it. Then when you see things like this quiet scholar being beaten down by life and finally taking arms in the revolution, and dying ignobly, it means something to you. This is not one of the grand romantic characters, but he was real to you because Hugo was such a great writer of the human condition.
The 1998 film is an absolutely dreadful peice of crap by any standard or measure. It really hasn’t anything to do with the book being good or bad; that movie is just a dreadful train wreck.
It’s certainly quite possible to turn a novel into a great movie. The novel itself doesn’t even need to be good. “Jaws” was a great movie made out of a forgettable novel. “The Godfather” is an okay book and one of the greatest films ever made. “Les Miserables,” quite the opposite, in terms of the 1998 version.