'Les Miserables' 1998 goes back to roots of Hugo novel

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): Do not expect the characters in Les Misrables, the 1998 film from Columbia Pictures and Mandalay Entertainment, to break into song any time during its 135-minute duration.

You probably associate the title with the Tony-winning musical extravaganza that has rocked Broadway and the rest of the world for over a decade.

First and foremost, it's a book, a 136-year-old novel by the legendary French author Victor Hugo. And it's also been made into several movies in which people speak normally and not in song.

Hollywood alone has made two big-screen versions (1935 and 1952) and a TV movie in 1978. Cinematic interpretations have appeared in Japan, Russia, Mexico, Turkey and India. And the last time Les Misrables was made in its original language was when Claude Lelouch produced and directed his adaptation of the classic that went on to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1995.

And so the release of this latest remake -- most likely the last made in this century -- pretty much describes the film world's endless infatuation with Hugo's masterpiece. This time around, a huge international cast and crew were involved. Danish filmmaker Bille August, who has won an Oscar and two Palme d'Ors, was in the director's chair. Rafael Yglesias, the American screenwriter who scripted the Oscar-nominated Fearless (1993), adapted the century-old classic. And interpreting Hugo's characters are Irish actor Liam Neeson, Australian Geoffrey Rush and American actresses Uma Thurman and Claire Danes.

As in the previous films, this Les Misrables tells about the poor, the wretched and outcasts of society in 19th century France. Amid this dreary, depressing circumstance, however, stands Jean Valjean, Hugo's strong and heroic epitome of hope, who rises from the lower depth to the more respectable, upper rank of society. This story is mostly Valjean's, as he goes on a journey of redemption that will free him from ill will, from poverty, and later, from prejudice and persecution.

Neeson is aptly cast as Valjean, not only because he is Hollywood's most obvious choice to portray strong, towering figures. He makes Valjean here a dead ringer for Oskar Schindler, whom he essays in Schindler's List (1993).

Both Valjean and Schindler are criminals who undergo a change of heart and proceed to do extraordinary acts of humanity. We will never know if in real life Schindler was inspired by Valjean, but at least in this film Neeson implies, by his stalwart performance, that the two men are one and the same.

In this story, Valjean's kindness is affected by a bishop he meets at the beginning of his journey of redemption. Valjean, a convict who is released on probation after serving time for stealing food, spends a night at the house of the compassionate Bishop (Peter Vaughan), who gives him a meal and a clean bed to sleep in, yet he steals the Bishop's silverware, injuring the old man in the process, and flees.

It is only when he is captured by the police and brought back to the parson that he gets his first lesson of altruism: the Bishop tells the law enforcers that he has actually given Valjean the stolen silver, and that he is free to go.

"With these things I'm buying your soul, Valjean," said the Bishop to the confused felon. "So you can start a new life."

Valjean does have a new life. The film jumps to nine years later as we find him a rich owner of a small town factory as well as the town's mayor. And he continues to spread the seeds of kindness to those around him. One of his humanitarian projects is helping out Fantine (Uma Thurman), a former employee who is forced to work as a prostitute to be able to support herself and her six-year-old daughter.

When Fantine dies, Valjean goes the extra mile to save Fantine's child, Cosette, from being enslaved by the gold-digging Thenardier, the innkeeper whom the little girl is entrusted with. Valjean and the grown-up Cosette (Claire Danes) subsequently live a new, better life in Paris as father and daughter.

All this altruism, nevertheless, does not bring Valjean instant happiness. Hugo still supplies him with an ongoing test of character and resilience in the form of Inspector Javert (Geoffrey Rush). This is the police officer who recognizes Valjean as the convict who disappeared years ago when his probation expired. As Valjean managed to repeatedly elude him, Javert became obsessed in recapturing the former criminal.

This cat-and-mouse plot sets the story in motion while presenting the big question: isn't a man redeemed from his sins of the past when he repents and has done nothing but kindness?

Apparently not to Javert, whose character may have in a way inspired Tommy Lee Jones' relentless manhunter in The Fugitive (1993). This is a man whose whole life is about rules and regulations, a man whose expectation is that everybody on the face of the earth, including himself, should have faithful obedience to legality and order.

"You don't understand the importance of law," he insists to Valjean in one of the film's key scenes.

Indeed, Hugo has submitted profound lyricism and fascinating characters in his masterpiece. It's only up to the filmmakers to try to bring all that to the screen. Yglesias apparently chooses to focus on Valjean and Javert, while other characters are either pushed aside or eliminated. Which would send fans of Les Misrables searching for that rejected misfit Eponine (she's deleted) or that lovable, wisecracking street urchin Gavroche (he's barely onscreen to leave an impression).

August does an effective job in keeping the smooth flow of the story, taking us event by event, from a period of time to the next, as we follow the characters on their life journey. But he neglects injecting meaning to the entire structure, resulting in a sequence of events with no soul. Never once do we root for any one of the characters, much less feel for them.

The crucial segment about the students' revolution (which would have struck a chord with an Indonesian audience at this moment) goes by without our slightest bit of care. The only display of real misery here is of a pale, skeletal Thurman in a wet, scanty dress, coughing feverishly, which is a bit overplayed.

The rest of the film is like a high school production of a Dickensian play. Anyone expecting to see the latest adaptation of the legendary Les Misrables should be dismayed: it's just a half-baked attempt in that direction. It never even comes close.