Les Miserables

Years ago I went to the musical Les Miserables because I got a free ticket through my work. I really loved the show and now that there’s a new film version I obviously went with high expectations. I think that almost everybody knows to story, so I won’t discuss that in detail. The first half hour sets the stage for the main part of the film. Anne Hathaway has a child without being married, loses her job, cuts off her hair for money, lets her teeth pulled for money and sells her body for money. She is miserable and sings a song about it. The song is sung with much emotion and sobbing and feeling. This really is an actor’s musical, not a singers musical. People love watching other people suffer and up till then it almost feels like watching a movie just to feel pleasure in the suffering of others. They could have toned it down a bit.

The reformed ‘criminal’ (who served a long time for stealing a loaf of bread) feels responsible for the child that’s left behind and takes her into his care. Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) plays the stealing bar owner of whom Jean Valjean has to buy the child. Sacha provides the necessary comic relief and he is great. Terribly funny, there couldn’t have been anybody better for that role. From time to time he comes back and made me laugh. From that point in the movie on the balance between suffering, tragedy, excitement and comedy is found.

The very end of the movie I like especially. After everything has been resolved and the people are married who are supposed to get married and the people have died who have been expected to die there’s a kind of musical in the theatre ending. Everyone stands on the barricades together with the entire French nation. It is as if every actor takes a bow. The good and the bad stand together, the living and the dead.

Definitely a movie you have to see. 5 stars