#there are only like six people in the entirety of victor hugo's france

[ace-trainer-risu]

my favorite thing about les mis is that every couple of chapters Victor Hugo likes to go oh! who is that mysterious old man?? who could it be???? its a mystery! he's super buff btw, but who is it! Oh! sacre bleu! It's Jean Valjean! who would have ever guessed!

I did, Victor. I guessed.

[bbclesmis]

Town & Country: David Oyelowo on Javert's Tragic Suicide in Les Misérables

The Masterpiece PBS miniseries ends tonight—and Javert meets his familiar, unfortunate end.

For many fans of the Les Misérables musical, Masterpiece PBS's new adaptation fills in the gaps. Where previously, they'd only heard a song lyric or two about Fantine's first love, the miniseries offers the whole story; the audience watches Jean Valjean toil as a prison laborer, rather than just seeing him newly freed.

The same holds true for Javert, Valjean's dogged nemesis. Here, the actor behind him, David Oyelowo, explains why it's so important to experience Hugo's narrative in its entirety (or at least, in six full hours).

Why did you want to be a part of this series?

Because I feel it's revelatory... People love this story because of the musical, because of those songs. Some of them have read the book. Some of them have a vague notion of what it is and maybe are intrigued to know more. But the point being that most people have a sense of what Les Miserables, so [it's great] be able to give them six hours of context and depth, and also history.

Victor Hugo does an incredible job of showing you what happened in the wake of the French Revolution. How socio-economically, culturally, and in terms of societal hierarchy, there was a very specific dynamic in place that enabled revolution. Enabled someone like Fantine, as played by Lily Collins, to fall through the cracks. Enabled someone like Javert, who starts as a prison guard and then works his way up to the higher ranks of being in the police force. And Jean Valjean, who starts in prison and becomes a mayor.  

What was it like to play one of the most famous villains in literature?

Well, it was a privilege because I had more runway to bring context to him and why he is the way he is. Most people know that Javert obsessively purses Jean Valjean and that he meets a very sticky end at his own hand. But not necessarily why.

What kind of context did you hope to bring?

I wanted to analyze the juxtaposition of a kind of character who's very Old Testament, [against] Jean Valjean's character, who's very New Testament. [Valjean] feels very much like he is not worthy of redemption, and then goes on to accept redemption, and then goes further to be able to be generous towards other people. To take in Cosette. To be so human and fragile. He's very aware of his flaws, but he's also able to accept that he's worthy of being forgiven for any sins of his past.

Whereas Javert is very black and white. If you're a criminal you are a criminal, you are a criminal forever. That's born out of his own very complicated relationship with criminality; having been born in prison to criminal parents, resenting that fact, and so therefore wanting to push that side of himself away... Unbeknownst to him, [he is] even transposing that criminality that he feels is in himself onto Jean Valjean, and feeling the need to destroy it. It's not until he realizes that Jean Valjean is not still a criminal, is worthy of redemption, is a better person than he ever thought he was, that he realizes he is dedicated his life to something erroneous. So therefore he can't live with himself, which is why he ends himself.

When you were working on the show, did you think about how to draw allegories to today's political strife?

I think it was the tone of what we were trying to do. I'm a producer on it as well, and one of the things we consistently talked about was it feeling very raw and gritty and edgy; those smells and that dirt, to really feel that. There should be nothing chocolate box about it. There's a version of this that would be very presentational and very sedate... But it's a very real adaptation of it, which I think always makes something feel more relevant. But some of the themes that we pull out as well—Jean Valjean is in prison for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. You only have to look at the prison industrial complex here in America right now to know that there are a disproportionate amount of people of color and socio-economically deprived, or economically deprived I should say, people in prison for crimes that don't warrant the sentences. But it's because labor is needed to... it's also become a business, the prison industrial complex. It's not dissimilar to what was going on back then.

What was the vibe like on set?

It was a real privilege to do that because everyone was there for the right reasons and with the right attitude. We started, and it was incredibly cold. I mean, unbelievably cold in Belgium and northern France. By the time we were finishing it was brutally hot. So you needed a level of humor and dedication to not feel bogged down by six months of shooting it. It never felt old or tired. There was never any acrimony on the set because I think we all really believed in what we were doing and felt we were very lucky to be doing it.

How did you all tough through those conditions?

It was helpful. There were certain scenes that were very uncomfortable. I have a scene in particular where I shake Lily [Collins] off and she goes flying. She weighs about a bag of sugar. I threw her and she landed on her hip terribly, and I could tell within the take that she was really hurt. She kept going. It was a rainy night, it was cold. We were on slippery cobbled street. She kept going. I, of course, completely dropped out of character, thankfully the camera was not on me. But she got up and had the most enormous bruise on her hip. But we soldiered on.

These were all the things you had to endure but at the end of the day no one sees that at home. They just wonder whether you tell the truth or not.

Dominic West, who plays Valjean, said you two wanted to subtly suggest a sexual attraction between Javert and Valjean. How did you figure out how to do that, without making it too overt?

I think it's a testament to how attractive I am that Dominic thinks that and I didn't for one second. [Laughs.] I wasn't for one second to play any kind of sexual attraction towards him. I don't see any evidence of that in the narrative, but to me Javert is actually quite an asexual character. I think he is so dedicated himself to this singular thing, I don't think he has room to think of that kind of stuff. So I'm very happy that Dominic was playing that, and that we didn't discuss it.

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a27485075/david-oyelowo-javert-les-miserables-interview/

[chicagoindiecritics]

New from Robert Daniels on 812 Film Reviews: ‘Les Misérables:’ Is More Blue Lives Matter than a Careful Reflection

Rating: 2/4

France’s Academy Award resume during the 2010’s has mostly been abysmal. Over the last nine years, only Mustang (2015) has garnered a Best Foreign Language nomination. That’s a significant decline from the country’s average rate of five to six nominees per decade. Nevertheless, when it chose French West-African Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables over the perfectly composed Portrait of a Lady on Fire as its representative for the Oscars, the expectation became that Ly’s offering must have closely matched the latter’s brilliance. The shock lies far from those exceptional heights.

While Ly’s narrative of class and racial tensions between Black Muslim project dwellers and the abusive cops who patrol their streets offers stressfully stitched periods of suspense, the portrayal of the Black victims lack depth.

Ly, in his directorial debut, sketches Corporal Ruiz (Damien Bonnard), a new transfer. Ruiz reports to his assigned patrol with two fellow officers: Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djibril Zonga). They affectionately refer to him as Greaser. Chris and Gwada spend much of the first act hazing their relatively green teammate. To their surprise, Ruiz believes in some semblance of civility toward the Black Muslims he’s sworn to protect, a charge his fellow officers find naive at best.

Meanwhile, in the projects of Montfermeil (the film’s title refers to the town’s name, the place where Victor Hugo wrote his novel Les Misérables) lives a populace under the totalitarian rule of these same police. These projects once heavily trafficking drugs, now serve as a hub for prostitution. Here, Black children like Issa (Issa Perica) are hunted by the cops—abrasively thrown to the ground by prejudiced authorities without any regard for their safety. Sure, Issa routinely finds himself in trouble: his theft of a lion cub from a circus causes an initial crisis, but ultimately he’s just a kid. Nevertheless in these streets children are treated as though they’re cockerels, taken to fits of destruction like roosters crowing under a pitiless sun. When instead, they’re really idle hands left to rot by a system who disregards their existence.

Nevertheless, the lion cub Issa steals belongs to Romani performers. They threaten to start a war with the Black Muslims if the animal isn’t returned. Chris, Gwada, and Ruiz in their pursuit of recovering the lion make a horrible mistake that threatens to upend the delicate yet unruly environment they’ve stoked. To make matters worse, their actions are ironically surveillanced by a child’s drone, filmed by Buzz (Al-Hassan Ly). If the tape makes it to the public, the consequences will result in chaos. The officers spend the entirety of the second act searching for Buzz and the incriminating footage in a nerve-racking house of cards.

Throughout the film, Ly often constructs magnificent tracking shots, which serve as adrenaline needles into this character study of patrolling officers. However, the narrative’s empathy for the police serves as Les Misérables’ undoing. Told from the cops’ viewpoint, while using the 2005 French riots which occurred years prior as a reference point, Ly never arrives at the interiority of the opposing Black citizens. Instead, Les Misérables rarely ceases to recognize these tread upon people as any more than what the virulent Chris views them as: animals.

Conversely, we and Ruiz witness the multiple shady connections the police have with underworld figures. In fact, Chris and Gwada have spent years conquering through intimidation and blackmail. While France hasn’t lived through Black Lives Matter in the same way Black Americans have, the weariness of a film told from the police’s perspective—humanizing them by showing their home life, their families, and their children—when the same treatment isn’t employed for the respective Black Muslims, even when one of the cops depicted is Black, is a treacherous misstep. Moreover, these authoritative men never learn remorse, which wouldn’t be an issue if Ly didn’t make such pains to aggrandize Ruiz, who ultimately tries to help Issa. It makes the final confrontation between the two, the film’s culmination, into a misguided mob depiction that does more to dehumanize these Black characters than the cops could ever do.

While Les Misérables wills itself to depict a perilous period of racial and class warfare, even with his best intentions, finding humanity within these marginalized people would require more careful reflection than Ly commits to.

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[bbclesmis]

The Big Issue: 'Les Misérables' star David Oyelowo reveals an epic, sweeping drama

Victor Hugo's epic of love, loss and smashing the system is set to explode on to our screens as the first big event TV of 2019. David Oyelowo tells us why BBC's Les Misérables doesn't need to make a song and dance to be a hit

David Oyelowo is a proper movie star these days.

A power player in Hollywood who can make big film projects happen. A respected actor who now also produces around 80 per cent of the films and television series he stars in. And a changemaker with friends and collaborators in very high places, not least media giant Oprah Winfrey – “like a mother to me, but also a mentor” – who is actively reshaping the movie industry from within.

And he is starting off 2019 with a flourish. For the first time since 2009’s role in the stunning adaptation of Andrea Levy’s Small Island, Oyelowo is back on the BBC in a major drama, their non-singing, non-dancing adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

It offers a reminder of the 42-year-old’s immense talent: Oyelowo is quite brilliant as Javert, the tenacious jailer hot on the heels of Dominic West’s prisoner-turned-mayor Jean Valjean, finding something heroic in the antagonist of the piece during their epic 19th-century game of  cat-and-mouse.

“It is what the BBC does best, this kind of epic, sweeping period drama that feels very resonant to the times we are in because of how Hugo captured the politics, the revolution, the humanity, the sex, the religion, the notion of forgiveness and redemption and evil and good,” he says. “All that we are is in this piece.”

Javert in Andrew Davies’s six-part adaptation is a world from Russell Crowe’s depiction in the 2012 musical film. Oyelowo explains that whereas fitting this extraordinary story – and all the songs – into just over two-and-a-half-hours for the movie meant painting in “broad brushstrokes” and “primary colours”, the series allows more context, more nuance, more depth and dimension.

Screenwriter Davies has added a sexual frisson as well. “We really muddy it up. I wasn’t interested in playing a villain,” says Oyelowo. “It would get very dull if I was twirling my moustache and constantly doing something dastardly for six hours. I don’t think that would be paying homage to the levels of humanity that Victor Hugo manages to get into this novel.

“And Javert is always played posh, which is incredibly lazy. Because he is not. As Hugo clearly states, he was born in a prison, he is working class, he is a prison guard.”

The man is so alone we don’t see any level of human contact that even hints at an ability to connect

And the repressed sexuality that Davies teases us about at the screening? “It is in there, but not something we dwell on. The man is so alone we don’t see any level of human contact that even hints at an ability to connect. Javert can come across as asexual, because he is so consumed by his desire to combat what he deems to be criminality. It is what he has dedicated his life to.

“Javert doesn’t have the luxury to legislate what is right or wrong. You steal a loaf of bread, you go to jail.

“Now, should Jean Valjean be there for 19 years? I would argue not. But considering his upbringing, there is something admirable about a man who decides to fight for the law.

“My hope is that people will not necessarily empathise, but they may find just a few minutes within the six hours where they sympathise with who Javert is and what he does.”

In the intervening decade since Small Island, Oyelowo moved to LA, become a US citizen and appeared in films including Lincoln, The Paperboy, The Butler and Jack Reacher.

Then came his performance as Martin Luther King Jr in Ava DuVernay’s Selma for which he won plaudits galore but, mystifyingly, was snubbed at the Oscars. He expresses no bitterness about it, but he does admit that he finds it “very nice to be back on the Beeb, and with a show I am really proud of”.

The story is set two decades after the French Revolution, by which time the promise of liberté, égalité, fraternité was already turning to merde. The extremes of wealth and poverty had only become starker. Paris was burning. And people like Jean Valjean were criminalised simply for being poor.

“The revolution was born out of the haves and have nots being such extremes. But the unrest that caused the revolution continued to burn under the surface,” says Oyelowo. “And if you look at the protests and marches and disquiet we are seeing, both in America where I live and here, the women’s marches, marches for gun control, against terrorism, against war, against Brexit, against Trump, there are people on the streets of France as we speak. You can transpose a lot of the unrest now onto what was going on then.

“It is the criminalisation and marginalisation of the poor and of minorities. It is the abuse of power.”

What does it take to bring Oyelowo onto the street, protesting? “Racial inequalities and any kind of marginalisation of people on the basis of who and what they are. Although,” he adds, “I try to be a doer not a talker. So there are causes I fight for in ways I don’t need to beat the drum about. It is all about trying to effect real change. Especially as I have been afforded a certain platform that means I can do that.

My attitude is that I would rather put a little drop in the ocean of the problem than sit back and cry over how vast this ocean is.

Oyelowo is not, he says, an avid reader, but devoured Hugo’s mighty novel in its entirety. Given the times we are living through, the love and idealism, hope and redemption described could be pretty useful.

“They are not only useful, they are absolute necessities,” says Oyelowo. “They are the core of who we actually are. When you look at Jean Valjean, at Cosette, at Fantine, who have such a goodness about them, they are the pinprick of light in the darkness. I think that is why the story is so enduring.”

I wonder the degree to which his politics inform the roles he takes and the projects he produces. “My politics is very much informed by my morality, my spirituality,” he says. “So the way I live, the way I vote, the work I do is all born out of my faith as well. You know, love God, love one another. It is as simple as that. The gospel is boiled down to that.”

Or, as it says in Les Misérables, “To love another person is to see the face of God”?

“Exactly, And that really, is why I wanted to do it. The journey Jean Valjean goes on is so biblical, I think it is a deeply spiritual piece.”

Les Misérables starts on BBC One on 9pm on December 30 (x)