Metroactive Movies | Les Misérables

Lelouch Change

Hey, Aren't You ...? Jean-Paul Belmondo as the reincarnation of Jean Valjean in "Les Misérables."
Victor Hugo's 'Les Misérables' is dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century
By Allen Barra
History doesn't change, Voltaire once noted, but what we want from it does, which explains why every generation retells classic stories for new audiences. One might question whether Victor Hugo's Les Misérables actually fits into the category of "classic"; the novel has already faded into the twilight realm of books that are praised without actually having been read. Or at any rate, it would have if not for the success of the stage musical (though I'd be curious to know how many people are actually driven by the show to the Penguin Classics section at their local bookstores).
Director Claude Lelouch's new film version of Les Misérables could actually use a few songs, but only if Lelouch cut some narrative to fit them in. It is three hours long, and that must be the perfect length, because you wouldn't want it to be a minute longer. Leaving it you may feel like the man in The New Yorker cartoon who, upon leaving The Great Age of Chinese Bronze exhibit, exclaims to his wife, "I need a cheap thrill."
What Lelouch has done is to studiously avoid a remake of Les Misérables in favor of a film about Les Misérables. The story--the stories, actually--revolve around a barely articulate French boxer named Fortin (Jean-Paul Belmondo) whom people are always saying is like Hugo's Jean Valjean.
Exactly why isn't apparent, but that doesn't stop people from reading Hugo to Fortin at the drop of a hat. It also doesn't stop Lelouch from drawing parallels between Fortin's bravery in saving a Jewish family during World War II and Valjean's own renowned bravery.
This gimmick gives Lelouch a chance to work in some fairly interesting scenes from Hugo's novel, but your reaction might be, well, both Fortin and Valjean are Frenchmen and they're both brave, but what is all this stuff about Nazis and Jews doing in a movie called Les Misérables?
Since that was my reaction, I'm going to take a stab at an answer. About an hour into the film, a character tells us that there are only two or three basic stories to tell and that they keep recurring in different guises throughout history. Some classical scholars like Joseph Campbell believe this truism and so do a lot of Hollywood scriptwriters, but apparently what Lelouch wants to prove is that Valjean's story is not unique--it's "universal" and applicable to heroes everywhere. In other words, it's contemporary.
Lelouch is well-meaning, I suppose, but as dreadfully wrong-headed as only a Frenchman armed with a theory can be. The parallel stories in Les Misérables don't make you think about how contemporary Jean Valjean's story is, they make you think about how dated it must be if it needs stories like Fortin's to drag it into the 20th century. For that matter, why not simply skip the parallel motif, skip WWII, and bring Valjean into the 1990s? There are certainly enough Les Misérables to go around in our own times.
There's another problem. Lelouch's concept is novel, but his approach is depressingly heavy-handed. The retelling of the story isn't allowed to develop its own compelling logic. It's constantly being forced into Hugo's framework in ways that don't seem natural to the material. We're left with a lot of characters who really wouldn't be in the movie if they weren't supposed to be "updated" characters from Hugo. We're also left with a blithe equation of Inspector Javert with Nazism that's simply too facile to convey any significance.
Belmondo, too little seen on American screens, is one of the few actors who could make this conceit so convincing for so long, but ultimately, he's playing an icon--in fact, a reflection of an icon--and the script (also by Lelouch) runs out of surprises for him very early. For such a long film, there are curiously few vivid performances. Ironically, only the acclaimed dancer Alessandra Martines, who plays a farmer's wife, leaves a lasting impression among the supporting cast. The production is large and handsome and can't really be called a complete failure in any way, but it comes off as a Masterpiece Theater miniseries directed by a deconstructionist.

Les Misérables (R; 174 min.), directed and written by Claude Lelouch, inspired by Victor Hugo's novel.
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