Tom Hooper’s lavish production of Les Misérables, the long-running West End musical, is as politically charged as it is sumptuously presented. The film tells the story of Jean Valjean, a convict sentenced to nineteen years of hard labour. His crime? Stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family.
Tom Hooper’s lavish production of Les Misérables, the long-running West End musical, is as politically charged as it is sumptuously presented. The film tells the story of Jean Valjean, a convict sentenced to nineteen years of hard labour. His crime? Stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family.
The film begins with Valjean, brilliantly portrayed by Hugh Jackman, earning his parole. “You know what this means?” asks hard-hearted policeman Javert (Russel Crowe), the principal antagonist of the story. “It means that I am free,” responds Valjean. “No,” responds Javert, “It means you get your yellow ticket-of-leave,” referring to the papers Valjean must carry with him, indicating he is a convict. Of course, no one will offer him work, meaning Valjean is soon reduced to vagrancy. Soon, we find Valjean huddled in the doorway of a church, whereupon a kindly priest takes him in.
Which brings us to one of the themes of the film – the role of the Church and religion. The film (and the original stage musical) portrays the Church in a favourable light, depicting it as a praiseworthy institution that supports the weak and hungry. In reality, the Church (or First Estate, as it had been in pre-revolutionary France) reflected the class antagonisms of society itself. During the revolutionary upheavals in 1789, many of the poor parish priests, essentially of the peasantry, supported the revolution. However, the cardinals and upper echelons of the Church, in effect a section of the nobility, were thoroughly counter-revolutionary. One of the most revolutionary demands of the French revolution was the separation of Church and state, thus breaking the organised power of the Church.
Despite the actions of this kindly priest, Valjean steals the Church’s silver, before being re-arrested. However, the priest defends Valjean, claiming the silver was a gift; he implores Valjean to use this newfound wealth to “become an honest man.” Valjean vows to do just that, breaking parole and starting a new life.
Many years later, Valjean is a successful businessman, the owner of a profitable factory and the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. The French revolution was a bourgeois-democratic revolution, which sought to sweep away the remnants of feudalism and establish the bourgeoisie as the new ruling class. Therefore, the “liberty” that was spoken of during the French revolution was bourgeois liberty – the liberty to make money by capitalist means. Les Misérables was based on the novel by Victor Hugo. A royalist in his youth, Hugo moved sharply to the left in later life to become a bourgeois republican. That Valjean has used his freedom to set up a business is in-keeping with Hugo’s ideals.
However, the bourgeois revolution in France was much more than this, for it roused to action the downtrodden masses, particularly in Paris, culminating ultimately in the Paris Commune of 1871, the world’s first workers’ state. That the original revolution had failed to solve the problems of the masses (many of whom were starving and reduced to beggary or prostitution) is one of the main themes of the rest of the film.
Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, Valjean’s true identity is discovered by Javert, and he is forced to flee. He adopts Cosette, the illegitimate daughter of a worker from his factory who was sacked and forced into prostitution. Here, we meet the crooked innkeeper and his wife, played to hilarious effect by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, who had been exploiting Cosette. This couple are a classic example of what Marx describes in the Communist Manifesto as “the lumpenproletariat, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, [who] may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”
Many years later, in 1832, Valjean and Cosette are living in hiding in Paris. Cosette falls in love with Marius, a fiery revolutionary and member of the ABC Club, an organisation of radical students. These young revolutionaries believe they can stir the masses by ‘giving them a sign’, similar to the anarchist conception of the ‘propaganda of the deed’. We are taken to the residences of Jean Maximilien Lamarque, a general popular with the masses who lies dying of a mysterious illness. We see the poverty-stricken masses, hammering against the carriages of the well-to-do bourgeois who drive through the streets. Gavroche, a local street urchin wonders aloud what the revolution has truly achieved: a king sits again on the throne, and the “fight for liberty” has been replaced by the “fight for bread”. The student radicals give fiery speeches to the angry masses, and hand out leaflets, before being chased off by the police.
Not long afterwards, we learn that Lamarque is dead. The students decide that this is the ‘sign’ that will rouse the masses, and use Lamarque’s funeral to launch an uprising. In many ways, the stirring rendition of Do you hear the people sing? plays the role of the Internationale, rousing the spirits of the revolutionaries and giving them courage. Barricades are improvised and the battle begins. Having learned of the love between Cosette and Marius, Valjean joints the barricade, to protect Marius if he can.
The support from the masses never comes, and the students are left isolated. All of history tells us that the masses cannot be roused into action as one would turn on a tap – they move only when they’re ready. To prepare for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, one must patiently build a revolutionary organisation over many years, so that when the masses do rise, the revolution has a chance of success. Many brave revolutionaries have gone to their deaths launching adventures that lacked the support of the masses, and the June rebellion of 1832 was another such tragic example. Of course, when the masses do move, there is no more powerful a force on Earth, as the Russian revolution of 1917 amply demonstrated.
The students are defeated, and butchered mercilessly. Even little Gavroche is gunned down, an act so brutal that a distraught Javert pins his police medal on the child’s corpse. The lesson here is simple: if the revolution fails, the revenge of the bourgeoisie will be merciless.
Amidst the chaos, Valjean has the opportunity to kill Javert, but decides to let him go. This confuses Javert, who cannot understand why this ex-convict should show compassion. In one of the most poignant scenes in the film, Javert sings his soliloquy. “And must I now begin to doubt, who never doubted all those years?” he asks. Then, “I’ll escape now, from that world, from the world of Jean Valjean. There is no way I can turn, there is no way to go on,” before plunging to his death. Javert reveals here the mentality of the petit bourgeoisie, for whom their ordered world is ordained by God; his fear of “the world of Jean Valjean” is the petit-bourgeois fear of the chaos of revolution. Unable to see a way out, a better world, he kills himself in despair.
Despite the defeat of the uprising, the film leaves us with a positive message. As the soldiers close in on the barricade, charismatic leader Enjolras vows that others shall rise up to take their place. With Marius and Cosette marrying, Valjean can die in peace, and we see the dead revolutionaries manning huge barricades, finally joined by the masses who seem to stretch out to the horizon amidst a sea of red flags.
And this is the real message: whilst revolutions may be defeated, whilst the rotten, oppressive system of capitalism exists, people will rise up to overthrow it; but one day, we will succeed.
