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ihave24601problems · 4 years

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How Costume Design Can Change Everything About a Character: starring Inspector Javert!

SO.

Javert’s costume in the scene where he commits suicide is radically different in Les Mis 2012 vs the usual Broadway productions.

In Les Mis 2012, Javert returns to the barricades wearing a fancy Important-looking uniform. His clothes are perfectly neat and tidy. He also has a big Important LEGION OF HONOR medal! I googled it and the Legion of Honor is “the highest French order of merit for civil and military merits!” This medal gets a whole scene to itself, Tom Hooper really likes this medal and wants you to know that Javert has it

But in the Broadway stage musical the costume is radically different. Yes it varies depending on the production, but usually it looks something like this:

It’s the ordinary black coat Javert usually wears– except it’s not fastidiously Neat the way it usually is. The coat is unbuttoned and loose, the collar is open, the cravat is untied. You can actually -see- that Javert is trying to be his old self, but is incapable of doing that because he’s falling apart.

In the book Javert Falling Apart was conveyed through subtle and actually really sad bits of characterization. In his final confrontation with Valjean Javert is dazed/distracted “as if in a dream,”” Valjean says things and Javert does’t seem to process them; Javert asks questions but doesn’t seem to care when his questions aren’t answered; etc. In the musical Javert’s dazed/distracted state is conveyed through the costume design instead.

In the 2012 film it looks like Javert is mentally Stable– like he took some rest, thought through some stuff, then came back in a neat fancy uniform with a Medal.

But Stage!Javert looks like he didn’t rest at all after leaving the barricade– like he just immediately threw his old clothes back on and went back to work without a moment’s pause.

And that’s what happened in the book!!

Javert, after his unlooked-for escape from the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police, had rendered a verbal account to the Prefect in person in a brief audience, had then immediately gone on duty again, which implied—the note, the reader will recollect, which had been captured on his person—a certain surveillance of the shore on the right bank of the Seine……

Crowe Javert is the kind of Important guy who gets awarded a Legion of Honor……but OG Javert stumbles backs from the barricade and his boos is like “you spent all last night tied to a post awaiting execution? ok whatever. your next shift starts in five seconds.”

Crowe Javert’s costume is designed to make him look IMPORTANT. He’s dressed like a high-ranking military officer rather than a low-ranking police inspector. So much emphasis is put on the big fancy Legion of Honor medal. The costume design conveys that he’s a super-respected Important person.

But OG Javert is not important!

The point of book/musical Javert is that he’s one of Les Miserables even as he cruelly oppresses other people like him, and his life is utterly unimportant to the society he guards. I could go on a tangent about how police inspectors at the time did not have anywhere near the level of insane power and prestige that police officers have today; the type of low-ranking work that Javert did was looked down on for being ugly menial labor, and low-ranking people like Javert lived in utter poverty……and how Javert’s whole Thing is that he’s “outside the pale of society and sees with despair that he can never enter it”– that his origins have made him a scorned permanent outcast who only guards “normal society” because he’s so far beneath it that he can never belong to it. When he’s held hostage, the National Guard makes no effort to save his life/refuses to do a hostage exchange, because he doesn’t really matter to them.

But the point is that like: the 2012 film implies Javert is someone who society at large actually cares about, which radically changes his character.

So here’s how I think this changes the way we view Javert’s Moral Crisis™:

(Keep in mind that the costume designs are a symbol of the wider characterizations, I’m not saying I’m getting all of this from the costumes alone)

In the 2012 film Javert’s crisis comes across as: “Javert has Everything, but it isn’t enough.” Javert is accepted by society, he’s praised and respected, he’s wearing a big Important Uniform, he’s given the Most Important Medal society can give, he has a giant support system at his back…….but it’s just not enough anymore because it Feels Morally Wrong.

But in the book and stage show it’s like– Javert has nothing. Javert has no support system, Javert is alone, Javert is utterly unimportant and expendable, and he’s aware of that. When he loses his sense of purpose, there really is “nowhere (he) can turn.”

It’s not “Javert has everything but he still feels wrong,” it’s “the only thing Javert had was his Moral Certainty™, and now that certainty is gone.”

Idk if this is coherent but what what I’m trying to say is: a lot of Les Mis adaptations portray Javert as being more Powerful/Important than he was in the book (Les Mis 2012, BBC LES MIS, any version that brings Les Mis into a modern setting) and like……………………I think that radically changes his character in a way that makes his story far less coherent, or at least far less sympathetic and tragic.

#les miserables #javert

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