Les Miserables

To love another person is to see the face of God

---Les Miserables. 

After putting up with my roommate's obsession for months--she had  "Red and Black" as her ringtone until even she got fed up with it and put it on vibrate--I have finally watched the 2012 film adaptation.  And my opinion?

Well, I really liked the first half, with Valjean fleeing Jarvert (Do not forget his name!). I think I saw one of the old film adaptations, or at least the candlestick part--and I dimly remember reading it at the school library, though it must have been an abridged version. Anyway, I liked seeing Valjean's transformation and his care for Fantine. Especially since the opening of "Lovely Ladies" reminded me of nothing so much as maggots crawling from a corpse onto a fresh body and transferring infection. Ewww! Definitely not rated PG, especially since the bed at the end of the scene strongly resembles a coffin.  After that nightmare, his kindness must have been so surprising, especially since Fantine believed he'd consented to her canning.

The second half, on the other hand....I couldn't keep the barricade boys straight in the least. Their plan didn't make sense to me either. Okay, so you hijack the parade of a national hero and build barricades from everybody's furniture--and this is supposed to accomplish what, exactly? It's as odd as the Occupy Wall Street protests, except there's guns involved and almost everyone dies. Maybe it's because I like character development, but I couldn't really see any development in any character besides Jarvert , Valjean, and (more passively) Fantine. Cosette is Marius's blond sweetheart, while Eponine is the unlucky first girl and the guys are handsome canon fodder. Gavroche was cute, but given what happens to him...

I think I'd like the film better if I had the author's original backstories in mind, which means...a lot of reading