October Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: Andrew Davies' adaptation of LES MISERABLES (we are all miserable)

"It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I have been taught about myself and half-way believed before I could walk around this earth like I have the right to be here. I have the right. You have the right. We all have the right…"
--Billy Porter accepting his ground-breaking Emmy award for the lead in POSE, 9/22/19

"Equality, citizens, is not …a neighborhood of jealousies emasculating each other; it is...all aptitudes having equal opportunity; ...all votes having equal weight; ...all consciences having equal rights. Equality has an organ: … instruction. The right to the alphabet, we must begin [with] that."
-- from Les Miserables, Victor Hugo, vol 2, p 470

Marius: What could be greater than to serve under Napoleon?
Enjolras: To be free. I want to be a citizen of the Republic, not a subject of the king or an emperor. And one day we’ll all be fighting about that on one side or another….
-- from the new Andrew Davies' adaptation, chapter 4

Victor Hugo’s tale is such a potent parable that new versions arrive regularly. The latest of many (books, comics, manga, over 50 films, 23 tv productions; radio versions, musicals, concerts, games, animations, plays) now includes a derivative Les Miserables, the 2019 Cannes prize winner and France’s candidate for best International Feature Film in our next Academy Awards (optioned by Amazon for US distribution). Director Ladj Ly tells the story of 2005 riots by young blacks routinely harassed by police in Montfermeil, the Paris suburb where Hugo’s thieving duo, the Thenardiers, kept their inn.

Our subject here is a traditional and reportedly quite book-faithful version now streaming on PBS Passport (or through Amazon) — a 2018 BBC/PBS 6-part drama adapted from the novel by classics interpreter Andrew Davies, above (of Mr. Selfridge, House of Cards and Bridget Jones' Diary); it is nostalgically cinematic with a movingly quiet score. 

Hugo (1802-1885) began scoping out his greatest tome during the June rebellion of 1832 against royal Louis-Philippe, who had replaced Charles X in 1830, but whose moderation did not satisfy republicans.* Hugo was to publish 18 volumes of poetry during his lifetime, 7 novels, 21 plays, was an elected politician, and produced 4000 drawings. (Delacroix wrote that if Hugo had published his art, he would have outshone the artists of their century.) But English speakers know him best through two novels: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Miserables (1862), the latter being “...the crowning point of my work”.

It was a giant canvas for all his, now our, social views — a modern bible. Contemporary critics found fault (Flaubert saw “neither truth nor greatness”; Baudelaire called it “repulsive and inept”) but the public agreed with Hugo — he was their media genius. The French National Assembly took up the issues of social misery and injustice. (Below, Emile Bayard’s famous sketch of Cosette for original printing of the novel.)

Hugo’s adulthood included the second and third of France’s five republics (we are in the Fifth: 1958—). Politics was in his blood; his parents’ views clashed — his father was a high ranking republican officer serving Napoleon, his mother a Catholic Royalist. And after the French Revolution of 1789, the government rocked back and forth between Royalists and Republicans. Hugo’s passions were ignited by pervasive misery made worse by failed harvests, food shortages, cholera, inflation, recession.

He had been guided by his mother’s devotion to king and church before rebelling against her conservatism in his maturity (the trajectory of Marius in the novel is said to have been reconstructed from memories of his poor student days). Later as a member of the French assembly, he was so outspoken a republican he was forced into exile for decades, mostly on the channel island of Guernsey. He presciently called for a “United States of Europe”, a free press, universal suffrage, free education, and abolition of the death penalty. (He did not advocate for racial equality in which our Billy Porter can at last somewhat rejoice, and the issue now invoked by the 2019 black-directed French Les Miserables). But Hugo’s brilliance and literary output led to the French celebrating him as their poet of the common man, to his burial in the Pantheon, mausoleum for heroes, and to his influence on writers like Camus, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky.

Critics have decried the absence of depth in the main characters in the 2012 musical “Les Miz“. They are, however, Hugo’s poster-children of his political arguments against the power imbalance between the 1% and 99%, making ‘Les Miz’ an operatic parable, not a story driven by interpersonal relations.

Andrew Davies’s version is a much richer prose telling in which the characters lift off the poster boards, taking six episodes to humanize the stories of the have’s and have-not’s based on Hugo’s near 2000-page bible; its depth and detail increases one’s absorption in the lives of the trod upon, still unsettled by dictatorship but lurching toward democracy. It was the students who stood on the ramparts; in 1832 most of them died. (Below, Marius, l, and Enjolas, freedom fighters.)

But even this version is less interpersonal, more of a poignant dialectic based on Hugo’s social politics. Dominic West (The Wire, The Affair) is Jean Valjean, the wretched criminal, freed after 20 years brutal hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread (below).

David Oyelowo (Martin Luther King in Selma), the near-sex-obsessed policeman and single-minded antagonist, Javert, is hot on Valjean’s trail in a mortal struggle that ends only with the novel. Lily Collins (To the Bone) is angelic seamstress, Fantine, who fatally ignores warnings about rich young men who come to play; Ellie Bamber (Nocturnal Animals), her daughter, Cosette, for whom the abandoned Fantine toils, sells her hair and teeth (last image) to pay Cosette’s keep; Josh O’Connor (The Durrells in Corfu, upcoming as Charles in The Crown), is young nobleman, Marius, who loves Cosette (below).

Marius is ordered to leave home after defying his grandfather’s aristocratic views. David Bradley, below (Walder Frey in Game of Thrones), is the rouged, cosseted old man in his silks — magnificent, pathetic, spurned.

The scurrilous Thenardiers, Olivia Colman (below,  right, from The Favourite) and Adeel Ahktar (below, center, of Murdered by My Father), are petty thieves and droll scene-stealers (Coleman’s most irresistible role) who blithely scam and pilfer (no redemption there) and offer comic relief. Below they are smarming Fantine, promising to love Cosette as their own.

Derek Jacobi (Good Omens) is the goodly bishop whose kind forgiveness sets our hero Valjean on his slow road to redemption.

Javert, Valjean’s former jailer, now the new chief of police, meets up with Valjean who has become a prosperous factory owner whom Javert doesn’t recognize: Javert: ‘I’m told you have restored the prosperity of the town ... Consequently there is very little crime here.’ Valjean: ‘Yes I like to think that that is so.’ Javert: ‘But a thief does not steal because he is poor and desperate; He steals because he has a criminal mentality— because he is degenerate...wicked.’ Valjean: ‘...I have to tell you that there we disagree…I believe most of us are capable of good and evil, but how we turn out depends on our circumstances and how we are treated.’

Valjean does not believe his own words: ‘I am nothing’, he says, having been spat upon so long. It is Javert’s eventual recognition of the uselessness of cruelty and Valjean’s forgiveness of himself for crimes of society that give this parable its heart. But a system so favoring the rich 1 % is worth more didactic spelling out of Hugo’s views than Andrew Davies extracts from the novel even in 6 chapters. Perhaps double the episodes would prod us toward justice now, here. Even if you think you have been-there-done-that, do watch this version. You will still be moved by the contemporaneity of its message and beautiful telling.

*Note: this article sets the political scene for ‘Les Miserables’ in 1832, 43 years after the French Revolution.

The above post was written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman 

Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow's ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE offers some hot animation inspired by the cold war

Just the other day TrustMovies was wondering how many of us are all that familiar with British history, let alone with that of our own USA. And now here we are getting a good chunk of the history of the African country of Angola, which was, until winning its independence from Portugal in 1975, one of the many "colonized" African countries. That independence led to a decades-long struggle between the ruling party, the MPLA (supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba) and an insurgent group (UNITA) supported by the United States and South Africa. Yes, that ever-famous/infamous Cold War was full-swing in Angola, just as it was in so many other places around the globe.

The new combination-animated/live-action movie, ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, is based upon the eponymously titled book by Ryszard Kapuściński, a noted Polish journalist/ photographer/poet/author.

If the story of a hugely difficult independence, mass killings and yet another nasty product of that seemingly endless (and maybe starting up all over again) cold war would seem to be an odd choice for animation, think again.

The film's directors (and co-writers), Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow (pictured at left, with de la Fuente on the right), do full justice to Kapuściński's penchant for poetry and reportage.

The animation (above and below) is by turns beautiful, poetic, impressionistic and horrific -- as befits the story here told. Further, the animation and story are very well complemented by the use of live-action documentary footage in which a few of the true-life characters we meet are shown to us now, some forty years on, in old age.

The back and forth between animation and live-action is never jarring however; instead, it flows as easily as do the assorted moods, images and characters woven through the story. We meet everyone from our protagonist's fellow reporters and a gorgeous female rebel-in-chief (below)

to the famous hero-of-the-revolution, Farrusco (below), who oddly proves the film's most surprising and poignant creation, and some of the students Kapuściński teaches back home in Poland,

one of whom (below) poses a question to his instructor that lingers for good reason. The film is full of ideas, as well as visual appeal.

Given all we now know about our own country's involvement in the overthrow of numerous democratically elected foreign governments, as well as its happily propping up just about any bloody dictatorship, so long as that dictator says he's anti-Communist, what we see here will seem pretty much par for the course. (Except, of course, for the people of the foreign country in question.)

While the use of live-action in tandem with animation proves consistently compelling, Another Day of Life reaches its zenith at the end, as the credits roll and we learn more about Kapuściński, his life and work. The film is, deservedly, a paean meant to honor this man. It thoroughly does.

GKIDS will release the movie -- a Poland/Spain/Germany/Belgium/ Hungary/France co-production running 85 minutes, in English, Portuguese, Polish and Spanish (with English subtitles as needed) -- this Friday, September 13, in New York City (at the IFC Center) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Glendale).

DVD/streaming debut for João Moreira Salles' IN THE INTENSE NOW, a quiet yet rhapsodic look at revolution, politics, marketing, culture and home movies

It's hard to describe the spell cast by IN THE INTENSE NOW (No Intenso Agora), the 2017 documentary by João Moreira Salles that had its U.S theatrical debut a few months ago and hit DVD and streaming this week.

Although the film deals primarily with the students' and workers' revolution in France back in 1968, it also expands its view to the ill-fated Prague Spring of the same year, and other sort-of revolutions of similar hope, at the same time detailing bits and pieces of the filmmaker's own mother's trip to China and then to Japan -- and what these excursions meant to her.

If this sounds a bit all-over-the-place, the film actually coheres quite beautifully, thanks to Salles' visuals and narration -- the filmmaker, shown at right, who both wrote and directed the documentary, is brother of another noted Brazilian movie-maker, Walter Salles (of Central Station) --  which combine to create a kind of poetry, as well as yet another version of "people's history" (as opposed to what you'll find in most school textbooks).

Though often dealing with violence, trauma and intensity, the movie's overall tone is one of quiet intelligence and thoughtful conclusions, while offering some extraordinary (often actually conflicting) views about events that those of us old enough to remember may find troubling and/or surprising.

Salles is especially good at demonstrating the ways in which politicians, media and ad men can turn just about everything and anything into marketing. Yet he does this in such quiet tones and humble demeanor that, instead of becoming at all hostile to his words and pictures, you'll likely stop, think, and then agree.

The film is full of "home movies" taken at the time of the events that are not what most of us actually saw at the time. Early on Salles tells us that home movies often show us so much more than the filmmaker may have intended, and then proceeds to some fine examples of this, one after another.

My favorite scene in the film (perhaps Salles' too, since he comes back to a still shot of this at his finale) is of a young woman (above) working in the office of the demonstrators during the French upheaval. She is trying her best to allay the fears of the mother of one of the demonstrators who did not come home the preceding night. It's one of the loveliest and most different scenes of this sort I've ever viewed, showing the human side of a would-be revolution in all its glory.

There is so much to see, hear and experience in this 127-minute documentary that I hope you will available yourself of the opportunity. In the Intense Now, from Icarus Films, hit the street on DVD and streaming (via Amazon and iTunes) this past Tuesday, April 2.

¡LAS SANDINISTAS! -- Jenny Murray's stirring and informative documentary of Nicaraguan history, machismo and feminism

What an eye-opener is ¡LAS SANDINISTAS!, the first full-length documentary from actress-turned-director Jenny Murray. Those of us alive and aware of international politics/revolutions back in the 1970s would have known of the Sandinistas, the young revolutionaries set on deposing the corrupt and dictatorial tyrant Anastasio Somoza DeBayle (best-known as simply Somoza), who ruled the Central American country of Nicaragua from 1967 through 1979, whose family had been in power there since 1936. We might even have been aware, from the occasional photo or news story, that women were a part of that revolutionary group. But we could hardly have known just how important -- how utterly vital -- women were, at both that time and now, to the betterment of Nicaragua.

What Ms Murray, shown at right, gives us -- via a terrific interweaving of archival footage, photos and information with present-day interviews with some of the most important of those women -- combines to form a brief but compelling history of Nicaragua, as well as one of the strongest feminist movies you will have yet experienced. The documentary, without ever shouting or insisting, simply shows and tells us what these women accomplished at the time and how they have had to keep fighting ever since then for the justice and equality that ought to have long ago been granted.

The film begins (and returns again and again) to a woman named Dora María Téllez, who rose to the (unofficial) rank of top woman in the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), whom we see in her youth (above, center) as a resistance fighter and now, in her senior years (below), still fighting for Nicaragua and its citizens.

Ms Téllez and her ideas are so strong and right, and though the woman speaks quietly, what she has to say will stay with you. There are a half dozen other women we see and hear from, all worth our time and caring.

One of these is Daisy Zamora, shown at left in her younger days and below these days. Together, they paint a picture of the emerging Sandinistas that is a light year away from what our own despicable President Ronald Reagan would have had us believe about the group and what it was supposedly doing to its home country. We see that lying and demented sleazeball during the time he and his cohorts were illegally, treasonously funding the "Contras," and we finally hear, via these women, what this was like as experienced by "the other side."

In addition to Reagan, we also get a look at a much younger Bernie Sanders, who -- of course -- came out on the right side of justice, suggesting that more politicians should come to Nicaragua and simply see what the Sandinistas were achieving.

The documentary makes us aware of how these women did not simply bear arms and fight along with the men; they were also expected to perform the usual "women's chores" -- from cooking and laundry to all the rest. (One women explains the difficulties of having to give birth and tend to a her infant during the revolution.)

Most shocking of all comes as we learn how the women were betrayed, compromised and kept completely out of power, once the revolution had been won.

We've heard and seen over the years countless examples of Latin American "machismo." The extreme downside of this is on full display here. ("They're even prettier when they're fighting" explains one male soldier about his female counterparts.)

When we're finally told that many of these women left their husbands during or after the revolution was won, this may not come as much of a surprise.

The film is full of history that we seldom received word of up north (or may not readily remember): the 1972 earthquake that leveled much of the city of Managua (instead of helping his people cope, Somoza preferred to have his army shoot the looters); the Castle House Raid of 1974, after which the dictator cracked down with even more intense repression; the National Palace Raid of 1978 (Somoza billed the conflict as a fight between the usual "Communist Menace" and Democracy); and finally, July of 1979, as the dictator was ousted and the battle for freedom appeared to have finally been won.

The second half of the documentary covers the post-revolution period, right up to recent times, as we learn how women's place in Nicaragua has actually devolved. It's not pretty. Yet hearing and seeing how the woman continue to work so tirelessly in every possible manner to achieve whatever they can is uplifting rather than depressing. By the time we view the country's own Me2 movement -- with one woman actually taking a stand against revolutionary leader and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega by outing him as a rapist -- speaks volumes about entrenched male power and the difficulties of anything approaching real change.

In one of the film's penultimate scenes, above, we see a grandmother and her grandchild together, just sitting quietly and answering a question or two. This is oddly and remarkably moving. And then we're back to Ms Téllez (shown below with rifle, just left of center) and her quietly bracing, intelligent words. ¡Las Sandinistas! proves itself a major work. It is difficult to imagine any woman, or any man who actually cares about women, not embracing it with pleasure and gratitude. I hope it is shown in every Latin American country -- where it is most needed.

From Film Sales Co. and running 96 minutes, the documentary opens in its U.S theatrical premiere this Wednesday, November 21, at New York City's Film Forum for a two-week run. It is also scheduled to open in Chicago on November 30 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and then later in Santa Fe at the Jean Cocteau Cinema. To keep abreast of further screenings as they are scheduled, click here.

THE MISANDRISTS proves a step backward (or, rather, a return to form) for Bruce LaBruce

With Gerontophilia (back in 2013), GLBT director Bruce LaBruce (shown below) proved at last that he could make a movie and tell a story that resonated politically, philosophically, culturally, socially, and emotionally while holding it all together. Up until then, while he'd done each of those things at some point along the way via various films, he usually did this rather clunkily so that plot and politics, humor and emotion (very little of the latter, as I recall) stood apart from each other, never really melding fluently into the whole. Characters would often spout some philosophy before going back "into" character to further the plot.

This was often done humorously (at least I suspect that was B laB's reasoning) but it grew tiresome quickly. With his latest film (made in Germany), THE MISANDRISTS, he's back into this stand-apart format during which the audience is treated to political/gender philosophizing that, despite its being so important to the tale the filmmaker is telling, is still handled clunkily enough to keep getting in the way of his story and its very real and could-have-been-major entertainment value.

I had to look up the word misandrist, and the very idea that I had to do this intrigued me. We're much more familiar with the words misogynist (one who dislikes women) and misanthrope (one who dislikes the human race in general), yet we almost never see or hear misandrist written or spoken -- so unusual is its use in our society, culture and media for us to even be aware of the possibility of singling out the male as the dislikeable object. Mr. LaBruce, no doubt, is more than aware of this. Consequently the patriarchy takes quite a deserved drubbing in his film.

The tale the filmmaker tells takes place in 1999 (for whatever reason -- pre 9-11-2001? -- I'm not sure) in the German countryside in a supposed school for wayward girls, supposedly run by a group of nuns. In reality (or what passes for same in a B laB film), this school's actually a training ground for the Female Liberation Army, which is planning to take over the state, if not the world, by virtue of a secret scheme which we eventually learn at film's finale, and which seems about as goofy and and nonsensical as all else we've seen.

One day, as two of the girls from this school frolic sexually in a field nearby the woods, they encounter a young man -- an out-of-favor leftist -- injured and on-the-run from the authorities. One of the girls decides to rescue him, hiding him in the basement of the school. A few complications ensue. And that's pretty much the entire plot.

Along the way we're treated to the usual philosophizing (sort of), satire (sort of), humor (sort of) and very camp sensibility, the special combination of which is the hallmark of B laB. There are oddball moments of fun (a sudden Charleston done by one of the nuns), lots of sex (mostly lesbian but a little homo, via some gay pornography the girls are made to watch as one of the plot points here), and the filmmaker's penchant for overkill (a pillow fight among the girls that goes on ad infinitum).

LaBruce's goal, it seems, is to convince the world that boundaries -- sexual, gender, political, philosophical -- are all somehow nonsensical. While I can understand and somewhat identify with this idea, he is neither a witty enough writer nor a good enough filmmaker to make his case with any great success. Maybe B sees his role as mostly that of prankster, in which case, he succeeds. Somewhat, at least. Why introduce a "mystery" character peering out of the school's attic window early on and seen periodically along the way, and then never explain her existence in your film -- unless pranking -- and/or upending expectations -- is your main concern?

Performances by the oddball assemble cast are OK overall (they get the job done), but the actor who best exemplifies the B laB style is his semi-regular, Susanne Sachße (shown below), who plays the school's "commandant" with the proper style, subtlety and wit.

If you're already a major fan of B laB's work (outside of Gerontophilia, which is probably way too "mainstream" for his heavy-duty fans), you will probably embrace The Misandrists with much more zest and enjoyment than could I.

You'll get your chance when the movie -- from Cartilage Films and running 91 minutes -- opens this Friday, May 25, in New York City at the Village East Cinema, and the following Friday, June 1, in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt. 

Modern-day Corsica comes to life (and death) in Thierry de Peretti's dark A VIOLENT LIFE

A VIOLENT LIFE, the new film from actor-turned-director Thierry de Peretti (shown below, who also directed and co-wrote Apaches), is, as was M. de Peretti's previous movie, all about the Mediterranean island of Corsica (located just above Sardinia and pretty much midway between Italy and France) -- a very short history of which is given us via the film's opening title cards.

This history tells us that the island was purchased by France (but not from whom: the Republic of Genoa) in 1768.

While France still owns and "rules" the island today, as a territorial collectivity, Corsica supposedly enjoys greater autonomy than some other French-controlled regions. This remains colonialism nonetheless, and so the island has been plagued or (depending on one's viewpoint) enriched ever since by it own nationalist movements which rise to the surface every so often, encouraged, as the title cards also inform us, by Corsica's young people -- mostly, as we shall see, by its young male population. With a single exception, these young men are heavy-duty macho numbskulls who then grow, as adults, into even more violent and stupid versions of their younger selves.

That "exception" would be the film's hero and main character, a young man named Stéphane (Jean Michelangeli, above), who seems initially intelligent and thoughtful but also clearly in thrall to many of his friends and relatives, younger and older. The movie is filled with conversations, philosophical and political, and while this is interesting enough, it soon begins to seem that for all these Corsicans' efforts toward would-be independence, no one knows what the fuck he (or anybody else involved) is actually doing or achieving.

Part of the problem with the movie is that it will very difficult for most audiences, even as it is for the characters themselves, to know what is going on and why. For whatever reason, the main character seems to be OK with this. (Perhaps he is so used to this being the case that nothing any longer surprises him.)

We watch and listen as the film moves back and forth in time and characters kill and/or are murdered, bombs are planted (some go off, others -- intentionally -- do not), and nothing at all is achieved. One might be forgiven for thinking that perhaps French rule isn't so terrible after all. (And this, from someone who professes to hate colonialism!)

Along the way  subjects are raised that are always worth thinking about -- "moral limits," for instance. And the film's cast of (for TrustMovies, at least) unknown newcomers is, to a man and woman, talented and believable. Toward the end, there a wonderful scene between what my spouse called "The Real Housewives of Corsica," in which the women finally get their chance to spout ideas and beliefs. The result is eye-opening, funny, and almost as disturbing (but not quite) as what we've seen and heard from the men.

Early on, when one character notes, "They'll come down heavy on us!" you may ask yourself, Who the fuck are they? By the end, you are still asking this question because the groups and sub-groups involved in all this seem beyond understanding -- at least in any manner useful to the "cause."

As sad and depressing as A Violent Life is, I'm still glad I saw it -- if only to be able to try to understand (and then fail at it) just a bit more about the Corsican "situation." The movie ends with our hero finally talking to a journalist, insisting that his real name be used, and then accepting the inevitable, whatever might occur. Of course, he and we know very well what this will likely be.

From Distrib Films US and being released to DVD via Icarus Films Home Video, the movie -- in French (and maybe some Corsican dialect) with English subtitles and running 107 minutes, hits the street this coming Tuesday, April 24 -- for purchase or rental.