The Miserable Ones

By Krista Thom
Contributing Writer

I love pleasant surprises. It’s hard not to. So I was quite happy the other day when I was browsing through the DVDs at Target, and came across the 1998 film adaptation of Les Miserables, starring Liam Neeson. I am a huge fan of Les Mis, and yet somehow I was unaware of this movie’s existence. I quickly remedied that situation by buying it and watching it immediately.

I’ve been devoted to the musical adaptation for years, so it’s perhaps no surprise that I was slightly disappointed by the film adaption. Not terribly disappointed, mind you, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it could have been handled better.

It is as though the film’s creators understood Hugo’s genius, but couldn’t quite recreate it. Many of the themes in the book seem softened to make them more digestible. The romantic attachment between Fantine and Valjean feels weirdly out of place compared to the more subtle love of the book. Many of the most interesting characters – the Thenardiers, Gavroche, Enjolras, etc. – have been almost or entirely cut out. Cosette’s (Claire Danes) whining makes you wish that Valjean would just ground her and be done with it.

The first half of the movie, before Cosette comes into the pictures, stays reasonably close to the book, and if it is not terribly imaginative, it is at least faithful, and I settled in to watch the familiar scenes play out on film. When Cosette grows up, things start to get a little out of control. There was still a lot of plot to get through, and the filmmakers cut corners to make it work. The love story between Cosette and Marius is told in the simplest possible terms. Major plot points are glossed over. The ending scene between Valjean and Javert is awkward, and leaves the story unresolved.

Despite my criticism, I have to say that a screen adaptation of Les Miserables is an ambitious undertaking, and I give its creators points for effort. The original text by Victor Hugo is a real doorstop of a book, running on for some 1,500 pages. A brief summary is all but impossible to write – the cast of characters is large and varied, the plot is complicated, and the themes are seemingly endless. Hugo wanders through almost every aspect of French society at one point or another, including prisons, convents, taverns and battlefields. There’s even a lengthy section devoted to Parisian sewers.

The thing about Les Miserables is that there’s really enough material in there for ten books. It’s a story of religion and salvation, crime and punishment, the education of a criminal, desperate poverty, naive political idealism, and a lovable street urchin. There’s a love story (several, in fact), and death and violence to boot. I must admit that while I was reading the book, and even now, I’ll be darned to explain how all this stuff ended up in the same novel together.

It is that complexity makes the book so great, and so difficult to adapt for stage or screen. (A mini series is really necessary to do the book justice, but as far as I can tell, it’s never been attempted in the United States.)

The most successful incarnation of Les Miserables is undoubtedly the musical. The show, which opened in 1985, is still playing today, making it one of the longest-running musicals in history. It takes a heroic stab at encompassing the whole novel, and does a heck of a job. It worked because the show’s creators were smart editors. They pulled out the novel’s best features to work with, and got rid of the rest. The musical departs in some small ways from the book, but each change feels like an improvement. As an added bonus, the soundtrack is amazing.

Of course, I have my own particular reasons for loving the musical. It got me interested in Les Mis, and kindled my interest in musicals generally. I went to the Trollwood production in 2003. I remember being dragged to that show against my will. At the time, I thought I hated musicals because there was too much music in them (I much preferred plays). Les Mis soon cured me of that. After watching the show, I was completely obsessed. I bought the complete recording, and listened to it over and over until I could sing virtually the whole thing by myself. I read the condensed version of the novel (the only copy available at our library) right away. I later bought the real novel and read that too.

The novel was a bestseller immediately after it was published in 1862. It managed to hold on to its popularity, and is now considered one of the best novels of the 19th century. Different adaptations show the story in different lights, but there’s no question that Hugo’s original still resonates today. It’s a story worth telling, and worth hearing.

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