Off to the Movies: Les Miserables

[valarltd]

My girlfriend took me to see this. She loves it, knows the whole score, etc. Thinks it's a dramatic tale, a love story and so on.

I got a two and a half hour Christian propaganda film, the last quarter of which was watched with aching bladder and claustrophobia. I hate sitting in the middle of an occupied row.

The music was stirring enough, but the song lyrics were utterly predictable. Crowe and Jackman do quite well for actors who can sing instead of singers trying to act.

At base the story remains Christian propaganda, better than anything any evangelical studio will ever turn out. A bad man, determined to get his revenge on the society that wronged him, is transformed through the power of God's forgiveness and a child's love. But the good man, who is mired in the law, cannot accept even human mercy when it is given to him.

That is a more powerful message than Left Behind or Fireproof will ever send.

And of course, being me, there were untoward thoughts. I know someone has written the kid&curtain fic with the men raising Cosette together. I expect someone has done the Gladiator crossover and given Javert a pretty, scarred Scottish houseboy.

Not a bad movie. One I'm please to have seen, if only to be culturally more literate. But not one I'll see again.

Comments

[revdorothyl.livejournal.com]

That is a more powerful message than Left Behind or Fireproof will ever send

Amen, sister! :)

Though I didn't love this movie (mainly because none of the songs really stuck in my head -- with the single exception of Valjean's 'hear my prayer' aria and its reprises, where the relative simplicity of the tune seemed to nicely reflect and amplify the heart-felt lyrics -- and in a film where all the dialogue is sung, that's kind of a let-down), I was thankful for the message of grace and forgiveness that triumphed in the end (even if the very last scene seemed to bury it, or perhaps merge it, into the undeniably stirring and catchy 'revolution' song and the 'barricades-manned-by-the-blessed-dead' production number, which felt almost equal parts distracting and theologically interesting).

Otherwise, I generally go out of my way to avoid 'Christian' movies that are advertised as such, and where the ideological message is of a much less gracious and all-embracing bent, such as the ones you mentioned here and in your comments on my movie post..