Having seen the stage production and now the film, I felt emboldened to read the book, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1862) I wonder how many venture to read the novels of the sanitised musicals like ‘Oliver’ and ‘Les Mis.?’ Given their era, they are indeed no quick read, with much social comment and moralising. Are we not poorer for not having read at least some of the classics. Les Miserables is brilliantly written, sometimes dense, nonetheless compelling and has some rivetting sections in it.
And after some time I have managed to finish it. Book 1, I mean. 448 pages in this particular classic copy in which the most commonly used word seems to be, ‘species’. And only now have I been introduced to Marius, whose father was a hero at Waterloo, was accidentally and unintentionally saved by Thenardier who was robbing him at the time, thinking he was dead on the battlefield and eventually died in poverty, flat out on the kitchen floor just as his estranged son literally walked in the door to see him for the first time in decades! Meanwhile Jean Valjean and Cossette are holed up in a strict convent for 10 years, in hiding lest Inspector Javert gets a hold of 24601 and retrurns him to the galleys.
How on earth did anyone think they could get a load of songs out of this? Nevertheless there are some great passages in the text.
One is spoken by the Bishop who, incredibly, occupies the first 10 chapters before we even meet Jean Valjean when – ‘About an hour before sunset on the evening of the day of the beginning of October 1815, a man travelling of foot entered the little town………..’
The Bishop, whom we hardly see in the film, is truly a central and significant figure of whom it is said, that he did not study God, he was dazzled by Him. and, who said on one occasion when criticised for taking risks in his ministry, ‘Never let us fear robbers or murderers. These are external and small dangers: let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers, vices the true murderers. The great dangers are within ourselves. Let us not trouble what threatens our head and purse and only think of what threatens our souls.’
And his is the supreme example of how acts of kindness and of mercy toward another can have profound reprecussions years, decades later. Left to himself Jean Valjean would have ‘effaced from his existence that word which God has nevertheless written on the brow of everyman. Hope!’ And so he begins a new life, becomes a millionaire and his benificence extends far into the community, including his own courageous act of giving himself up so that one innocent man, mistaken for him, is set free. The impact of the Bishop’s mercy has life-long effect. .
Intermission over.
Please return to your seats.
The second half of tonight’s feature is about to begin.
lifeintheshortstaycarpark 