Thursday, February 7, 2013

LES MISERABLES: LOVE IN THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION


LES MISERABLES: LOVE IN THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION
Wilhelmina S. Orozco

Did Victor Hugo change the idea of love in his book, Les Miserables? When you watch the film you will find various meanings of love, based on Christian tenets of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I watched the film more than four times, the first, only half of it. I had to repeat watching it because of its musicality. I could not feel the time passing while viewing scene by scene revolutionary singers, singing in tune and hearing their with meaningful lyrics. Yes, I would recommend the film as must-watch especially for Christians who are at a loss as to what Christian love means.

Mother’s love
Fantine (Anna Hathaway) exemplifies the adoring, devoted mother who sacrifices her life and honor just to be able to give sustenance to her daughter, Cosette taken care of by debauched innkeepers (played by Sacha Baron and Helena Bonham Carter). After being disemployed and thrown out of the factory of rosary beads owned by La Mere (played by Hugh Jackman), she enters prostitution, but after selling her daughter’s locket, her hair and then her teeth, for ten, twenty francs? So cheap at that time. She catches illness and just as she was getting worse, Mr. La Mere springs up to save her from the clutches of a brusque customer and the police, headed by Javert.

Fantine lyrics: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

- “Take my hand and lead me to salvation.”

Love of work
Javert, the police who hunts down Jean Valjean, the prisoner sent on parole and then who escapes, not reporting anymore as he has been ordered to do, is a prime example of the rightist – the individual who upholds the law no matter the costs. He likens those who flaunt the law like Lucifer who must descend to hell. For Javert, the law is like the commandments of God, and so he seeks God’s intercession so that he can catch Jean Valjean. Here we see that Victor Hugo has placed the idea of God as one who looks after the good and bad guys in the world, as Javert belongs to the latter in the story.

Javert’s lyrics: ‘Can this man’s sins be forgiven, Is he from heaven or hell?”

Romantic love
The love of Eponine, daughter of corrupted couple-innkeepers, for Marius is typically unrequited love She romantically hankers for him but his sights after all are for Cosette. And so Eponine sings, “On my own” with lyrics that say that “I love him but only on my own.” Eponine we might say belongs to the poor class while Marius, the bourgeoisie in French society. And so her love maybe characterized as slavish. When Marius requests her to seek the address of Cosette, Eponine agrees to do so. When Marius was about to be attacked by the soldiers, she brought herself between them and got killed in the process. Her song with Marius speaks only of his being with her and not loving her, whereas Marius offers words of love to make her live.

A child’s love of country
However, Javert has a redeeming grace. He is set free by Jean as he was about to executed by the rebels who had found him acting as an impostor-rebel but giving the wrong information about the time of attack of the King’s soldiers. It was the little child who exposes him as the head of the police. As the child himself dies in the film, upon seeing his corpse, Javert pins his own medal of honor on him.

Why did the child die? At that time when the people had deserted the rebels, knowing the heavy equipment that the State could use against them, the rebel leaders were wavering whether to continue or not. But a child’s love of country knows no bounds. It is just pure and simple love without any idea of death at all. And so he sang the rebels song, “Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry (ones). It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again.” As the child sang that, the adult rebels take heart and sing with him. Unfortunately, a King’s soldier shoots him down.

Rebels’ love of country

The way the rebels taunted Marius for his romantic love for Cosette shows that this is really a universal phenomenon. The rebels told him that to be patriotic is a higher cause than falling in love with one person, and that Marius cannot possibly succumb to his vulnerable emotions but should rather use reason.

Thus in the song about red and black, lyrics go this way, contrapuntally:

MARIUS: Red the color of desire
Black the color of despair

REBELS: Red, the blood of angry men
Black: the night that leads to dawn
Red: the world about to dawbn
Black, the dark that ends at last.

During the seventies here in our country, this dilemma of whether to serve the aims of the revolution against Marcos or remain dedicated to domestic concerns was very much felt. Many people became afraid to confront the dictatorship, but not until the 80’s when Ninoy had died and Cory led the movement to restore democracy in our country.

Thus, I recommend that every NGO (non-government organization) member learn the lyrics and sing the song. It helps to know that in the time of the revolution, even personal desires could rankle anyone.

Love of a surrogate father
Jean Valjean takes over as the father and mother of Cosette. His love for her is fraught with danger as Javert hounds him at every corner. But his will to live, to be free cannot be broken. Towards the end, when he feels that his age is catching up with him, he stumbles upon Marius courting Cosette secretly. But Marius belongs to the rebel groups.

Jean Valjean’s love for Cosette makes him sacrifice himself – going to the ranks of the rebels just so he could find out who this Marius is and make him be with Cosette. Marius is hurt and lost consciousness during the massacre and confrontation between the rebels and the State police. Valjean carries him away from the scene so that he will live and be with Cosette.

Valjean’s lyrics: “I can die in peace for my life is blessed.
n  “Take this children Lord in thy embrace and give them grace.”

Cupid-style

Love at first sight sparked between Marius and Cosette, to the despair of Eponine. This might have been a compromise of Hugo to the general notion that Cupid could play tricks to anyone at anytime. The love between the two is blessed by Valjean who was feeling his age catching up on him. However, with regard to his true background as a prisoner-parole escapee, Valjean keeps from Cosette, for fear that she will be disgraced.

Valjean’s lyrics: “Truth is given by God in our time, in our term.”


Debauched Love 
The love between the Thenardiers, the innkeepers is one of "You use me, I use you" type. The man uses the woman to run the inn and at the same time freely liaises with others he may fancy, while the woman, pretends to like a customer but steals money from him. One of her customers is that soldier who heads the group that attacks the rebels at the barricade. Actually the life at the inn is like hell -- where you have sex, violence, lying, stealing, child abuse, and all kinds of  Luciferic activities committed by people from all walks of life including the clergy. 

Love of life
Not only did Valjean save the lives of a worker pinned down by a pillar, Cosette, of and Marius, he also saves the life of Javert. In the process of executing Javert, the rebels meet Valjean who because of his alert reaction killed a traitorous pro-royalty standing atop one of the towers. In exchange for his valiant act, the rebels asked him what he wanted, and he asked for the life of Javert. However, instead of killing him, Jean Valjean sets him free. True to form, Javert did not consider it an act worthwhile for he warned Valjean that he would still hunt him down later on. Valjean gave him his address where he could be found.

In this instance, friends’ and enemies’ lives are both important to Valjean as he himself has been the recipient of the unconditional love of that priest in the convent who gave him shelter.

By the way, after his release from prison, Jean Valjean could not find work, was ostracized by society, which denied him a room at the inn. (Here Hugo seems to liken Valjean’s search for an inn to the travels of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, in search of a place to stay.) Finally he settles down in a space by a convent where the priest finds him and opens the doors of charity to him – food, shelter, a warm bed and peace of mind.

So that priest’s belief in his capacity to change, transformed Valjean himself into a new man and became a very rich businessman owning a rosary factory.

The priest’s Christian love – undiscriminating – became a model for Valjean to become a good citizen even to the point of setting free his nemesis, Javert.

French belief in Christianity

I am completely surprised by the very Christian outlook of Hugo here, and which was given justice by the filmmakers, maybe by director Tom Hooper or maybe as ideated by Cameron Mackintosh, the producer. In the dialogue, there is frequent mention of Jesus, of God. Fantine says: “if God knew me now, he would let me die instead.” Javert prays to God to be able to catch Valjean. Valjean prays to God to let him bring home Marius to Cosette. In that scene where Fantine is hallucinating over Cosette, she sees the image of her child approaching her through a gauzy curtain but with the cross to her right.

The cross
Actually the cross is very visible all throughout the film. From the factory where the rosary is being strung, the rosary which Jean Valjean gives to Javert who visits him in his office, the room of Jean Valjean at the end of the film where a cross hangs by the wall.

God as savior and friend
But God is not some kind of an entity that is too high and omnipotent to be reached. Valjean and the other characters speak, mention or even talk to God as a friend just standing by or sitting down with them everyday. Even the rebels reveal their theistic upbringing.

I think that the film is very good material for the youth of our country, supposedly the only Catholic country in Asia, so that they may understand the real meaning of having faith.

The film shows us that amid poverty and struggles for transformation, we do not lose our faith in God and in fact it inspires us to live and be humane to fellow human beings.

 As a last note, I scanned the pages of Les Miserables the book and found some scenes of which the filmmakers have taken liberty, meaning they had changed some of the actions. For example when Valjean gets Cosette, in the book, he stays overnight at the inn and gets her in the morning. But in the film, the deed is done right away, perhaps to show that urgency of the situation, whereby Javert could surface at any time and catch Valjean. 

In the book also, Fantine dies because she hits her head on something, but in the film she just loses consciousness. That scene is very moving and dramatic and perhaps there is reason to change the writings of Hugo. Then,  there is an extensive portrayal of Marius as the son of the nobility in the book whereas in the film, the treatment of him centers on being a suitor to Cosette and a hesitant comrade to the rebels. 

I think that the film should have been titled "The Miserables" with a caption, based on Hugo's book. When great liberties are taken of the contents of a book, then that film because an entity of its own, albeit adapted from the original. Most of all, the film is musical, which the book did not have, and hence the filmmakers -- director, composer, lyricist, scriptwriter, and everybody elses, have produced a semi-original film. By having a title of its own, then the people involved  credited  for  their visually and aurally satisfying portrayal of the plot in the book. 


May there be more of this film, historical, touching and musical.