bigR
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Was this really the long one?I mean. It must be. It was nearly six hours. French. No subtitles (I�m talking about the Depardieu film of course). But I still got the sensation that the version I watched had some kind of cuts.
Like, we never get to see what happens at the barricade. Depardieu and fugly marius leave the place among a crowd of sappers (with no guns) and revolutionaries (with guns) running from them (I rewinded this scene 3 times trying to understand what was going on, but failed), and then we don�t know anymore about the revolution.
We never get to know that marius friends died. And it�s not like it is given since later on we see several revolutionaries arrested at the police station. There is no reason why they should be dead.
So, the question is: did I get a shorter/cutted version in spite of the six hours? Or it is just that the director though nobody would care to know what happened with marius bestest friends? Because this is not the only weird jump. Toussaint, for example, seems to appear from nowhere. Because unless I missed something nobody cares to explain how the hell did that ugly huge guy appear one morning in valjean�s garden�
The weirdest thing is the movie did not start that badly. But it became crazier and crazier with every episode!
In any case, I�m glad LML youtube video had spared me the biggest surprises. (although I did not actually realize how ageless was ageless gavroche until yesterday) Because I had more than enough with:
-learning that javert comes from a wealthy family with whom he used to go hunting with hounds and everything.
-th�nardier went to jail accused of selling children. Yet somehow, even though valjean got 19 years for stealing a bread, selling children only earned him a few years in prison. And not even in the �bagne�.
-the th�nardier girls owned shoes, fade out but nice dresses, coats and even bottles of good wine.
-marius goes to javert to tell him about the jondrettes plan, but he refuses to help the police. So, javert has to threaten him with arresting all his friends if he does not help him arrest the Jondrettes
-�ponine does not only says to marius: �I want you�. She explicitely asks for A NIGHT WITH HIM as payment for finding cosette and MARIUS AGREES!! Really, Cap locks aren�t big enough to express my shock.
-the police breaks into the university to identify the students (couldn�t they just go to the register office?), although even nowadays the police has not the right to enter into a faculty without the �recteur� (I don�t know the equivalent in English) explicit permission. So, we have Javert breaking the law. Neat.
-Javert gives love advice to Marius. (and it is not because he is trying to learn something about Valjean. Marius does not say the girl�s name until midway in the conversation) They actually discuss how many children marius is going to have. That�s when he feels forced to say �That�s up to cosette to decide�.
-Enjolras constantly talks about love. More that about revolution. And he doesn�t just talk. He understands it. He perfectly understands marius absence from the barricade because �love is also a beautiful cause�. Literally. Also, when Marius finally appears at the barricade, enjolras first question is not �are the other barricades holding�, �is people joining us�, or something equally unimportant in the middle of a revolution, but something like: �did something go wrong with cosette?�. He even feels the need to talk with javert about the �girls we sleep with�. Somehow everybody feels the need to talk with javert about his sex live in this movie.
-When �ponine gives marius cosette�s letter, marius decides he is leaving the barricade.
At this point it is pretty obvious that the barricade is lost. His friends are probably going to die. Yet he approaches them and he tells them WITH A SMILE that he is leaving because he�s discovered he still has a girlfriend (leaving that particular barricade without been noticed by the soldiers does not seem a problem for anyone at all in this movie. I�m still wondering why did valjean took the sewers as a way out when everybody else just walks away and comes back whenever he feels like it). And then, Enjolras smiles back at him and answers: �good, save your life and your love�!! Marius smiles even more, does not seem to care whether his best friend enjolras is going to live or die, yet, for the sake of my sanity does not have time to leave the barricade before the final attack.
-M. Gillenormand lives in the biggest palace in Paris. Really. There is the Louvre, the Tuilleries, and the M. Gillenormand�s house.
-Valjean misses javert. A lot. All the time. He has the slashier obsession with him. First he is worried because javert was the only one who knew who he was and now that he is dead he feels lonely. Then he worries because, oh, heavens! maybe javert died without really getting to know the real valjean. In any case he seems to miss him more than cosette.
-Paris is Prague. Yes, you need an old town to shoot a 19th century movie, but do you really need to pick the streets everyone who�s been in Prague would instantly recognize?
-I usually like gavroche. But I really disliked this one. He was so stiff and sounded so fake. Since half the cast is foreign and dubbed (javert, marius, �ponine, enjolras, courfeyrac�) I though maybe that was the case with gavroche too. So, I scanned the final credits looking for the name of the actor (he seems French so he is probably just a bad actor). And that�s when I discovered that grantaire was in the movie. So far, I had only noticed enjolras, courfeyrac, prouvaire and bahorel (another weird thing. For such an �alternative� movie the actors playing the barricade boys really looked their parts. It�s really strange that they cared about that). I went back to the barricade, looked for him and I discovered a revolutionary with untidy hair whose only words are �me too� uttered with a drunken voice and who spends his time at the barricade melting lead to make bullets and shooting from the barricade front row. I mean. Since you have 5 barricades boys missing, how on earth do you decide to have a grantaire actively fighting on top of the barricade instead of giving that random revolutionary any other name?
This seemed so pointless that now I kind of feel that there was a betting going on among the scriptwriters. �who can get more things wrong without the director noticing� or something like that.
Good points:
-absolutely hot Courfeyrac.
-on the pervert side: small crush on Christian clavier�s Th�nardier!
But really. If someone has not seen this movie, you HAVE to do it. Once you get over the shock you start to enjoy it. Serioulsy. The only thing that beats it is the mega illegal school production with the one thousand cosettes.
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