Joey Wright
IB Lit and Performance SL
Ms Guarino
10/13/17
Les Miserables Movie Review
Les Miserables was a very interesting movie to watch. I thought that there was some life changing points throughout the movie. I really liked the themes that were presented throughout the movie. Throughout the movie, the main character Valjean went through a transformation. It showed the importance of kindness and love for somebody else. This film also showed how important it is to have mercy on your enemies.
In the movie, Valjean went through a transformation. In the beginning of the movie, he was shown in a prison camp and was viewed as a horrible person in prison. He was in a prison camp pulling in ships that had wrecked out at sea. It was a very hard punishment for somebody who stole bread to feed his sisters children in a time of depression. Once he was let out of the prison camp after 19 years, he starts to go back to his old ways of stealing. He was trying to find a place to sleep for the night and was being denied by almost everybody because they all of the people knew that he was a criminal. He finally was let in by a priest who fed him and gave him a place to sleep. Instead of being great full for what he was given, Valjean decided to steal silver from the priest and left in the middle of the night. He was caught with the silver that he stole by two soldiers and was taken back to the priests house. I believe that this is the turning point in the story. The priest protects Valjean from going back to the prison camp. Afterwards, Valjean realizes his wrong ways and changes his identity and commits himself to god and tries to live a good life.The only problem with this is that he did not go to parole everyday which was also a crime. The prison camp leader named Javert hunted him for 8 years at this point who was committed to finding him. By this time, Valjean is the mayor of the town and is a good and fair leader. Javert find out that Valjean is the pisoner and starts to hunt him. Before he was hunted by Javert, Valjean makes a promise to this woman that he would take care of her daughter after she dies. After she dies, Valjean goes and finds the young girl and takes her under his wing. The girls name was Cosette. They live on the road for most of Cosette's life because Javert is still hunting Valjean. This is where Valjean learns what love is.
Valjean learns what love really is when he raises Cosette like she is his own daughter. This is where Valjean really changes because he developed such a good relationship with Cosette. He felt the need to take care of her as best as he could. This is a big part of his transformation throughout the movie. Valjean comes a long way from only worrying about himself and stealing to now caring a loving a girl that he raised on his own. He really shows his love and how much he cares for Casette, when she meets Marius Pontmercy. Valjean has an internal war with himself because he cares so much about her and doesn't want her to fall in love with him and her leave him, but he also says many times to himself that she wasn't his to give away and that she should love whoever she wants to. This shows how much Valjean loves her because he wants her to be happy and wants what is best for her at the same time. He really learns what it means to love somebody else and to sacrifice himself for another person. Another point is that he really relies on god to be in control of his life, Cosette's life, and Marius' life.
Valjean displays selflessness and kindness also in this movie. He displays kindness when Javert is captured by the rebellion.Valjean was given the responsibility to kill Javert after he proved his loyalty to the rebellion after he killed soldiers who were trying to attack. Valjean goes to where Javert is and takes him to an alleyway. He pulls out a knife in front of Javert. This is where Valjean shows how kind he really was. Here he was, looking his enemy strait in the eye, who tortured him for 19 years, and had him in a spot where he could kill him, and instead he let Javert go. The old Valjean would have probably killed Javert in two seconds, but Valjean knew that the right thing to do was to let him go even though Javert said to him as he was letting him go, that he would still hunt him down. This really taught me a good lesson for life. And that is that no matter how badly somebody treats you, that you still need to show them kindness like everyone else. This scene made me realize a lot about how to treat my enemy's. Valjean also displayed massive amounts of selflessness shortly after this scene. He prays to god that Marius is able to survive the war. In the fight, Marius is injured and Valjean saves him. He takes Marius down the sewer where he walks through the city manure to save Marius. As they get out of the sewer, Javert is waiting for them on the other side. Valjean tells Javert that he has to take Marius to the hospital but Javert does not care. Valjean starts to walk by him and Javert tells him that if he takes another step that he will shoot him. Instead of being scared of getting shot, Valjean continues to walk. Javert does not shoot and realizes that Valjean has changed and that he has been wrong the whole time. Javert feels so bad for what he has done that he kills himself. After all of this happens, Valjean leaves Cosette and Marius to get married and live on their own. Valjean tells the truth about himself to Marius because he wants him to know his life story. Valjean instructs for Marius to tell Cosette that he is leaving on an adventure. Cosette was very upset and ends up finding Valjean at the same church that he went to the night that he was let out of the prison camp. When Cosette finds Valjean they have their last moments together. At this time, Valjean has completely changed his life around and Marius calls him a saint. In this scene Cosette finds out that Valjean saved Marius' life. As Valjean is about to die, he gives her a letter that tells her everything about his life. How he was a prisoner and how he changed over time to his present self. Valjean was now able to die at peace because he knew that his life was complete.
One aspect of the movie that helped to show how kind, honest and loving Valjean was, is when they showed that couple that would steal everything from everyone that came into their bar. This was a good opposite to the way Valjean lived his life. Valjean was honest, kind, fair and courageous. He displayed his courage when he saved Marious and when he went in front of the court and admitted that he was the missing prisoner when he could have stayed hidden. The couple that was running the bar were liars who stole and were generally disgusting people. All they cared about was money and being rich, whereas Valjean was all about righting his wrongs that occurred earlier in his life. This was one of the things that I noticed that helped to highlight Valjeans character. I also noticed that Javert was so convinced for nearly the whole movie that it was the right thing to continue to hunt Valjean even though he had changed tremendously. This is why Javert jumped off the edge of the bridge because he felt that he deserved to be killed by Valjean because of how bad he treated him in the prison camp and afterwards when he was hunting him. Before he jumped, Javert said that Valjean was killing him when he jumped. I think that Javert said this because he felt like Valjean was justified in killing him. Even when he was captured, Javert told Valjean that he would be fine with him getting his revenge by killing him because he knew that he deserved it.
I found this movie very powerful because it contained many themes that are important in life. Valjean showed that anyone can change at anytime, they just have to make the decision to change. Another theme was that character is very important. Another theme is that kindness and love are very powerful and always win. Valjean won in his life. He won because he was shown the path to love and kindness when he was let out of prison. The last theme was that no matter how badly your enemies treat you, you should never do the same back to them. The only thing that I disliked in this movie was that almost every line was in song. If there would have been a mix of both singing and talking, then I would have liked the movie more. All in all, this movie was very educational. It had a lot of important themes that can be followed in everyday life.
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