Les Miserables -- December 2012

SOLACE FOR THE WRETCHED, MISERABLE ONES


Time: 1815. Location: Digne, France. Situation: Peasant Jean Valjean has just been released from a 19-year prison term. His offense? He stole a loaf of bread to help feed his sister and her starving family. That crime got him five years; several attempts to escape from prison got him another 14. On his release, Valjean goes to a church where he is befriended by a kindly priest, given a meal, and allowed a place to spend the night. His response is to steal some of the priest's silver and abscond with it. The police capture Valjean rather quickly and bring him back to face the priest, but then a fortuitous event occurs: The priest tells the police that he had freely given the silver to Valjean and then informs Valjean that he had left behind the best silver of all. The police accept the priest's story and leave. Then the kindly priest talks with Valjean in earnest, invoking Romans 12:20: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." The priest encourages Valjean to take the silver but also says, "You must use this silver to become an honest man." As we will see, this lesson is not lost on Valjean.

Thus the scene is set for the events of Victor Hugo's 1862 colossal novel Les Miserables, called by author Upton Sinclair "one of the half-dozen greatest novels of all time." It is also one of the longest novels ever written. As to its theme, Hugo himself described it as showing a progression "from evil to good."  In the 1980s French dramatists Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schoenberg, and Jean-Marc Natal created a musical version of Les Miserables and opened it in Paris. It soon opened in London and then in New York, where it ran from 1987 to 2003; with its 6,680 performances it is the fourth-longest-running Broadway play of all time. Now film director Tom Hooper (helmsman of The King's Speech) has created a movie based on the musical stage play. Les Miserables opened on Christmas Day 2012, in time for consideration for the 2013 Academy Awards. The film is nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture.

If you aren't familiar with the story, let me add some additional details to clarify the action of the plot. Jean Valjean, having been sent on his way by the kindly priest, turns over an entirely new leaf, tearing up his parole papers and moving to the town of Montreuil, where he uses the money from the silver to start a new business that employs the poor – i.e., the miserable ones. He even takes on a new name, Monsieur Madeleine, and in time assumes the position of mayor of the town and becomes well off financially. One day as he is walking through the town, he sees a man who has been pinned under a cart on the street. No one is able to lift it, so Valjean picks it up himself and saves the man underneath. However, he just happens to be seen by Mr. Javert, the police inspector of the town, who had been at the prison where Valjean was incarcerated. Inspector Javert had never seen anyone capable of exerting such a great amount of strength – except for Jean Valjean. His suspicions are immediately aroused, and while there are numerous plot twists ahead, we see that a significant portion of the film's (and novel's) action will be occupied by antagonist Javert's pursuit of protagonist Valjean. 

Meanwhile, Valjean, aka Madeleine, befriends a former employee of his, a single woman named Fantine who has been forced into prostitution in order to care for her young daughter Cosette. Fantine is dying, but Valjean goes to the small town where her daughter is being abusively kept by an unscrupulous married couple and manages to wring Cosette from their clutches. He takes Cosette to Paris and manages to start a new life as he assumes the role of the girl's father – all the while evading the pursuit of Inspector Javert, who resembles nothing so much as a dog frantically worrying a bone. The action culminates in the events of the Paris Rebellion of 1832, in which Valjean, the grown-up Cosette, and Marius, Cosette's future husband, become intimately involved. Many other happenings of course occur, but these details should be sufficient to help you to understand the basic action of the story.

With its beautiful score and compelling storyline, Les Miserables is an impressive film overall; director Hooper does an admirable job of fashioning the stage play into a musical picture. Australian actor Hugh Jackman does a praiseworthy job of playing the lead role of Jean Valjean, both dramatically and musically. Anne Hathaway performs well in the role of the doomed Fantine. British actor Eddie Redmayne excels in the role of Marius. Perhaps most impressive of all are the ensemble singers and actors. I have only one rather small reservation, in regard to the singing. We have heard a good deal of commentary about director Hooper's decision to film all the singing live – with no studio recording and polishing as is customary with movie musicals. The result is that the level of vocal performance shows a rather wide range from highly accomplished on the parts of Jackman and Redmayne to just satisfactory on the part of Russell Crowe in the role of Inspector Javert. On the one hand the live singing gives spontaneity, but on the other we could wish for greater vocal accomplishment.

Les Miserables is characterized by its strong theme and its underlying Christian message. The film embodies the virtues of mercy, kind treatment of the poor, and forgiveness. The Lord's name and provision are invoked often, nowhere more poignantly than in the lyric of one of the final songs: "To love another person is to see the face of God."

Bottom line: Well worth your time, money, and effort. However, parts of the picture might offend some individuals. There are a few language issues, and there is rawness in the dramatization of prostitution among the poor. Some violence occurs in the rebellion scenes. Not for children.

Film Rating: PG-13
My Rating: 3 ½ stars

Jay Maurer Bio

Jay Maurer is a long-term film buff and former college teacher of The Film as Literature. He wrote movie reviews for The Good News, a publication of West Side Presbyterian Church in Seattle, WA, from 2002 to 2010 and has continued writing reviews on his website since then. 

Ratings are expressed in increments of ¼ star. A rating of 2 ½ stars or higher is generally meant to be a recommendation.
1 star=poor. 2 stars=average. 3 stars=quite good. 4 stars=superb. 

Criteria for determining the ratings: 
• Reflection, either explicit or implicit, of Christian values, including suitability of language and lack of gratuitous violence.
• Quality of the acting.
• Originality.
• Unity of the entire picture.
• Substance, or in the words of C.S. Lewis, weight.

To read his reviews, go to maurermoviereviews.blogspot.com. To comment on them, you will need to have a Google account, which is free. Other accounts that will allow you to comment are LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, AIM, and OpenID. Most of these are free as well. Add your comment in the "Post a Comment" box; then click "Publish."

2012 Retrospective: Movies Seen in 2012

2012 Retrospective
One Man's Opinion: Movies Seen in 2012

Silliest	Men in Black 3
Most Disturbing	Seven Pounds
Hardest to Follow	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Best Animal Movie	War Horse
Best Animal Actors	The horses in War Horse
Best Reflection of the Gospel	October Baby
Most Original	The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; Life of Pi
Best Characterizations	Pi in Life of Pi; Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln
Best Revisited Classic	A Christmas Story
Most Exciting	Argo; the Bourne Legacy
Best Sports Movie	Trouble with the Curve
Best Movie with Music	Les Miserables
Best Acting Performances	Suraj Sharma in Life of Pi; Meryl Streep in Iron Lady
Also Worthwhile	Hitchcock; The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey; The Hunger Games; Skyfall; Snow White and the Huntsman
Most Impressive Movies	Argo; Life of Pi; Lincoln; Les Miserables

The Hobbit -- An Unexpected Journey -- December 2012

HOBBITS AND THEIR FRIENDS
 

Bilbo Baggins, an inhabitant of the Shire, leads a comfortable, well-ordered life. He loves his food, his drink, and his garden. He's relatively well-off and, at least at the beginning of the story, well-respected. Imagine his surprise and chagrin, then, when one day a famous wizard named Gandalf knocks on his big round door and informs Bilbo that he's recruiting people for an adventure and would like him to join up. Bilbo is having none of it, though. He regards adventures as "nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner." He refuses Gandalf and shows him out, whereupon Gandalf carves a symbol on the door. Not long afterward, the dwarves begin to arrive. Soon there are 13 of them and, aided by Gandalf, they commandeer his house, eat up his food and drink, and stay up most of the night singing. They assume that Bilbo will accept their job offer of "burglar," but Bilbo continues to refuse. When he awakes the next morning, however, and discovers the wizard and the dwarves gone, Bilbo finds that he has undergone a change of heart. He runs out the door and soon catches up with them on the road, ready and willing to aid the dwarves in their quest to challenge the dragon Smaug and regain their lost power.

Thus the stage is set for director Peter Jackson's new picture, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. For a couple of weeks before seeing the movie I was wondering whether or not I'd really like it. I'd loved all three installments of his The Lord of the Rings trilogy (aka LOTR), and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is (along with LOTR) one of my absolute favorite books. The film review I read, however, wasn't all that positive, taking the view that the movie is much too long and not that compelling. Well, I needn't have worried. It held my attention throughout and turned out to be highly enjoyable. If you're any kind of Tolkien (or Peter Jackson) fan, you won't go wrong by seeing it.

Just to make sure that we're all on the same page, let me say a few words about how The Hobbit is related to The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as a "prequel" to LOTR, his great life work, and this introductory story introduces most of the main characters and sets in motion the events that are carried through in the trilogy. We might ask this question about Tolkien: Are The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy Christian works? The answer is yes, as evidenced by the existence of such books as Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware's Finding God in the Lord of the Rings. (In this connection, also see the reviews of The Two Towers and The Return of the King.) However, Tolkien's strategy for revealing Christian thought is much different from that of his close friend and colleague C. S. Lewis. Tolkien, a Catholic, was instrumental in Lewis's conversion to Christianity in the 1920s. But unlike Lewis, Tolkien felt that Christian thoughts and values should be rather well hidden in literary efforts, while Lewis's methods, once he came to faith, showed Christian ideals as much more obvious and transparent. The result is that in Tolkien's work we see a very strong focus on the struggle between good and evil, on the need for heroism, sacrifice, and loyalty, and these themes are well borne out in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. However, we don't see any obvious Christian symbols.

The film is certainly well acted, with Martin Freeman (Dr. Watson in PBS Masterpiece productions of Sherlock Holmes) as Bilbo Baggins, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Christopher Lee as chief wizard Saruman, Cate Blanchett as the elf-queen Galadriel, and Andy Serkis as (the prototype of) the quasi-animated Gollum. The actors who play the 13 dwarves are most impressive. The production is stunning overall, though purists will note that director Jackson has added two battle scenes not present in the novel, presumably in an attempt to make The Hobbit darker and more like The Lord of the Rings. The picture is rated PG-13; we don't see much blood, but we do see a lot of battle violence.

This one question remains: Why should adults see this film, particularly those who don't much care for fantasy?  The answer lies in the character of Bilbo Baggins, who is perhaps a type of everyman. Most of us don't like our comfortable lives or routines to be disturbed or, for that matter, for discomfort to play any part in our lives at all. Gandalf the wizard, in one of the quintessential statements in the film, says this about Bilbo's admirable character: "I've found it's the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay." Most of us, everyday folk like Bilbo, can rise to the occasion if we have to – and do potentially great things in the process.

My Rating: 3 ¼ stars

Invictus -- February 2010

TRULY AN INSPIRATION

I must admit I was puzzled by the title Invictus, a new movie about Nelson Mandela. What does this word mean, I wondered, and why was it chosen as the picture’s name? I did some research and learned that Invictus is the name of a short poem written by English poet William Earnest Henley in 1875 from his hospital bed. The word means “unconquerable.” Here are the poem’s concluding lines:


It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


So why this title? Nelson Mandela had copied the poem on a scrap of paper he referred to again and again during his 27 years of imprisonment in a South African jail for opposing apartheid. It fortified him and kept him from bitterness. Just as Mandela refused to be conquered while in prison, he refused to be conquered when he became president of South Africa.


As the film opens it is 1995, and Mandela has just taken control of the South African government. A newspaper headline says, “He can win an election, but can he govern a nation?” “A legitimate question,” Mandela responds. Realizing that he must be president of all South Africans and that both blacks and whites must let bygones be bygones, he takes a controversial step: he insists that the mostly white, ineffective (and disliked by blacks) national rugby team continue to represent the country. Not only that, South Africa must win the bid to host the 1995 World Cup of Rugby. Opposed by many in his own party, Mandela reaches out to Franҫois Pienaar, the captain of the South African team, developing a personal relationship with him. He takes Pienaar to visit the prison where he spent 27 years and gives him a copy of
the poem Invictus to use as his own inspiration in team leading. After that a minor miracle takes place: All of South Africa unites behind the rugby team, and the team becomes strong.

Invictus might sound like a sports movie, but rugby is only the backdrop. What the picture is really about is forgiveness. Jesus told us that if we do not forgive our debtors, our Heavenly Father will not forgive us. Mandela exemplifies this idea, asserting that black South Africans must forgive the whites who maintained the deplorable system of apartheid. Watching this film, we see what a truly inspirational figure Mandela is.


Invictus was directed by Clint Eastwood and is certainly one of Eastwood’s best efforts. It stars Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Franҫois Pienaar, both of whom play their rules to near perfection. Eastwood, describing himself as non-religious, is nonetheless impressed by Mandela, particularly his ability to forgive. One can only hope that Eastwood might come to understand salvation.


Film Rating: PG-13
My rating: 3 ¼ stars.

Caution: The film includes a few examples of unfortunate language and misuses of the Lord’s name. Not for younger children.

Life of Pi -- December 2012

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF PI?
OR: A STORY THAT WILL MAKE YOU BELIEVE IN GOD

Is there some sort of trend going on? A year ago we had Hugo, a 3D movie released late in the year for Academy Award consideration. The main character of Hugo was a nine-year-old boy. This year we have Life of Pi, a 3D movie again released late in the year for Academy Award consideration. This time the protagonist is a teenager. Are we going to have more and more films with child heroes? That might not be bad, actually, for just as last year's Hugo was a gem, this year's Life of Pi is also a high-quality picture.

The vast majority of us probably encountered the concept of pi in high school math classes. We may remember that pi expresses the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter and is a transcendental number: It has the value of 3.1415926 to seven decimal places, but the digits repeat ad infinitum. It could be said that, just as the value of pi is infinite, God is infinite and transcendent. And somewhere therein lies this story of first a boy, then a teenager, and then a man named Piscine Molitor Patel, or Pi for short.

As the story opens, the grown-up Pi is seated in his living room talking with a British writer who has come all the way to Canada because he has heard that Pi has a story that will make him believe in God. It seems that when Pi was quite young his family lived in France and Pi was given the name Piscine Molitor ("piscine" is French for "swimming pool"), a moniker which caused him considerable grief because his classmates deliberately mispronounced the word. This forced the boy to assert that his real and proper name was "pi," as in the mathematical concept. The family eventually returns to India, and when Pi is a teenager they decide to emigrate to Canada. Pi's father owns and administers a zoo and, wanting to sell the animals, engages ship passage across the Pacific. Shortly after the voyage is under way, however, a colossal storm destroys the ship, and everyone is lost except Pi and four of the zoo animals: a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and (most significantly) a tiger named Richard Parker. The hyena kills the zebra and the orangutan, and then Richard Parker dispatches the hyena. Only Pi and the tiger are left on a lifeboat to survive the Pacific Ocean.

Thus the stage is set for the meat of Life of Pi: Pi's voyage with Richard Parker across the vast ocean. And what a voyage it is. Pi the teenager must become constantly vigilant and resourceful. Discovering a manual that instructs him about survival in the lifeboat, he manages to cobble together all manner of devices to keep himself and the tiger alive. He constructs a raft that he attaches to the lifeboat since it is not safe for him to be in close proximity to the ferocious Richard Parker. He finds ways to collect fresh water and to capture flying fish that sustain both himself and his feline companion. As the days and nights wear on, Pi slowly begins to succeed in his quest to love and to tame the tiger, who would no doubt devour the boy if he got too close. Eventually, though, the available food supply dwindles, and Pi and Richard Parker become weakened by their desperate need for nourishment. In one near-heartbreaking scene, Pi sits with Richard Parker and lovingly caresses and comforts him. Miraculously, they run aground on an unknown but mysterious island populated by hundreds of meerkats and containing plenty of fresh water. They are saved, at least for the present.

But now we return to the central question of this film: how is it that this story will make the British writer (and by extension any nonbeliever) believe in God? Pi had begun his spiritual life as a practitioner of Hinduism. One day when he was a young child, however, his brother dared him to drink some holy water in a Catholic church. Pi did so and was immediately confronted by the priest of the church, who didn't punish him but instead told him of the love of Jesus Christ. Pi came to believe in Christianity and eventually to describe himself as a "Catholic Hindu." Later in his childhood he embraced Islam for a time. But here's a potential problem: Could we say that, since Pi's spirituality is "all over the place," the film really espouses the heretical idea that "in their different ways, all religions lead to God"? I don't think so. The story seems fundamentally Christian, as we see played out in Pi's personal relationship with God and his surrender to Him. In one quintessential scene, Pi, seemingly at the end of his rope, stands on the lifeboat and screams out to God, "What more do you want of me?"

Life of Pi, directed by Ang Lee and based on the novel of the same name by Yann Martel, cost about $120 million to make. Director Lee was involved in the project for almost four years. Much of the filming was done in Taiwan at an abandoned airport where a gigantic wave tank was constructed in which to film the ocean scenes. The majority of the scenes involving animals are computer-generated but nonetheless look completely real. The acting is superb, particularly the roles of the adult Pi, played by Irrfan Khan, and that of the 16-year-old Pi, played by newcomer Suraj Sharma, who was selected from about 3,000 applicants in India. Sharma had not acted professionally before and wasn't even going to try out but was only accompanying his brother to the audition. Nevertheless, he got the part.

Life of Pi is unlike any other movie and is a real credit to cinema. You owe it to yourself to see it.

Film Rating: PG-13
My Rating: 3 ½ stars    Highly Recommended

October Baby -- March 2012

FORGIVENESS IS THE KEY


October Baby, a new movie out in the theaters right now, is a must-see. It deals powerfully and substantively with the issues of abortion, honesty, truth, and forgiveness. The picture is impressive on the big screen, but if you can't make it to your local cinema anytime soon, it will be available on DVD and, no doubt eventually, on Netflix.

Here's the storyline of October Baby: As the movie opens, we see college freshman Hannah Lawson performing the female lead in the college's spring play. When she starts to give her initial lines, however, everything goes awry: she can't remember what to say and soon collapses on stage. We learn that Hannah has been suffering some severe psychological problems and is often depressed. We also learn that that Hannah has in the past suffered from epileptic seizures. She has had several hip surgeries and often uses an inhaler to get her through her frequent attacks of asthma. What caused her physical and psychological problems? Hannah is a survivor of a failed abortion. At the age of 24 weeks, her birth mother attempted to abort her, but Hannah defied the odds and survived. The trouble is, Hannah is adopted and doesn't know it. When she finds out, she is devastated by the news and is extremely angry to discover that her parents have been reading her private journal. Her adoptive mother softens her reserve and tells her daughter that she was born in Mobile, Alabama, whereupon Hannah resolves to embark on a quest to find her birth mother. But how will she get to Mobile? And will she have the courage to oppose her father, Dr. Jacob Lawson? Lawson is angry at Hannah for not buckling under to him but is also convicted of his and his wife's lack of honesty and forthrightness in dealing with their daughter.

Conveniently, it is spring break time, and Hannah decides to tag along with her long-term friend Jason, his girlfriend Alanna, and other buddies of theirs, all of whom are going to New Orleans to kick up their heels a bit. Alanna is quite cruel to Hannah on the trip, so Hannah leaves the group and goes off on her own to Mobile. Jason, who shows himself to be a friend par excellence, also leaves the group, rents a car, and finds Hannah walking disconsolately along the highway. They go to Mobile, where Hannah begins to devote herself in earnest to her quest to find her birth mother, an endeavor akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Hannah and Jason experience a number of challenging situations which I won't detail here, lest I spoil your viewing pleasure. Suffice it to say that Hannah locates the nurse who signed her birth certificate and, through her, learns the identity of her birth mother. In one of the movie's best scenes, we find that this nurse quit her job in an abortion clinic after Hannah's birth, having heard again and again that the fetuses being aborted "are just tissue that couldn't survive" and finally recognizing the lie within this statement. Hannah goes to law office of her birth mother and makes her identity known, but her birth mother rejects her. Extremely depressed, Hannah goes into a nearby cathedral to pray and ponder. It is late in the day, and a kind and gentle Catholic priest appears and tells her that he needs to close up the church. Hannah can't resist expressing her emotions and feelings, which begin to tumble out after her disclaimer to the priest that, "I need to tell you that I'm a Baptist." Hearing the story, the kindly priest doesn't pass judgment but tells her that forgiveness is the key to her equation. Invoking Colossians 3:13, he notes that the Apostle Paul exhorted the Colossians to "forgive each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you." Difficult though it may be, Hannah must forgive her birth mother. I'll leave it to you to find out what Hannah does in response to the priest's exhortation.

October Baby was directed by Alabama filmmaker brothers Jon and Andrew Erwin. The film is the first feature of this type that the brothers have worked on, much of their previous work having been done for ESPN. Plugged In Online has noted that the Erwins were encouraged to do the film by brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, members of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, and the producers / directors of such films as Facing the Giants, Flywheel, Fireproof, and Courageous.

The picture is well acted, mostly by relatively unknown actors: Rachel Hendrix as Hannah; Jason Burkey as Jason; Shari Rigby as Hannah's birth mother. The one famous actor is John Schneider, who plays Hannah's adoptive father, Dr. Jacob Lawson. Interestingly, Schneider, who is best known for performing the role of Bo Duke in the 1980s TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, became a born-again Christian a number of years ago when he stayed for a time with Johnny and June Carter Cash. It was mainly through talks with Johnny that Schneider came to faith.

So here's the bottom line: You owe it to yourself to see this picture. If you do, don't miss the riveting interview with Shari Rigby at the end of the film when the credits are rolling. Rigby accepted the role of the birth mother largely because she herself had gone through an experience much like the one recounted here.

Film Rating: PG-13
My Rating: 3 ¼ stars.