This past weekend, my sister, her hubby, and daughter, and I all went to see Les Miserables. Now, being a great lover of literature both happy and sad, and a lover of musicals, I knew what I was getting into. I’ve been listening to my cd of Les Mis for years. I even have the T-shirt!
But my poor sister had no idea what she was getting herself into. She’s been complaining ever since. So I asked her to write down her thoughts so that I could use them as a jumping off point for this post. Be warned, she’s as mad as a WET CAT, but here goes:
Nobody ever tells me what is going on. Let’s go to Le Mis, they say, it will be great, they say, best Broadway musical EVAR, they say. Just call me an uncultured cretin, I had no idea.
They is wrong. What a horrible, awful, no good, very bad movie. And Vic Hugo is a psycho by the way. There is suffering, much suffering, people are hungry and cold and scared and looking like Auschwitz victims. They are in the rain, covered with poo and at the mercy of Pawn Dentists.
Now admittedly, I have a super low threshold of belief, but I felt pretty traumatized coming out of this one. I had never seen any stage production, had only heard Susan Boyle’s rendition of I dreamed a dream. I had no idea it was going to be this dark.
The power of uber close-ups of pain and rage and sorrow and loss…sheesh. Enough already, three freaking hours of enough already. Apparently, according to Vic, the only good in the world is thru the same kind of struggle it takes to pull huge ships into dock by hand. The only good is obtained by constant vigilance and suffering. There is nothing clean and good and kind and beautiful. All is poo. The miserable ones were the ones in the audience.
So I’ll confess I’m the one who called her an uncultured cretin. But she went along with this whole movie idea as calmly as you please and I thought she knew! Her idea of a good time is watching Jersey Shore or Project Runway and I think she longs to have some brat kids running around so that she can shout at them to “bring Mama the remote, she wants to watch her stories!”
Problem is, my sister has a brain, a gigantic brain that is always searching for ways to distract it. And while she probably thinks Jersey Shore is a good idea (at least at the time), I always figure it’s my job to drag her out into the world once in a while and show her those miserable suckers who don’t have hot and cold running water or electricity and all that jazz.
It’s not like she doesn’t know, you see. It’s just that she’d rather check out LOL Cats, and then MOCKS me for my desire to read historical fiction and to bury myself in those lives that are lived in drudgery and pain. Nicely, she never mocks my interest in orphans or workhouses, or why I sometimes have this desire to freshen up using a washbasin, complete with a bowl and pitcher. But that’s because she loves me.
We’re different, my sister and I, so while I thought she knew what she was getting into, I have to wonder. How many folks went to the movie expecting something else simply because Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Russell Crowe (Gladiator), and Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada) were in it? Did they anticipate that they were going to be watching a very in-depth, romantic, costume-fantastic historical film where the lovers fall in love and the bad guy gets his comeuppance at the very end? Oh my GOD, are they in for a shock.
I have the same feeling about Anna Kareniana, that people are very mistaken about what they’re getting into. Granted, the trailers make it look a whole lot live a love story done in costumes, and that the aforementioned plot (with the lovers and the bad guy), pretty much the standard these days, will happen as a matter of course. Have they even read the book? Have I? Well, no, I snuck out and read the Cliff Notes, because I couldn’t stand that much misery, personally. My niece is hot to see it on account of Mathew Macfadyen, and who can blame her there, and also Keira Knightly.
I couldn’t dissuade my niece, as hard as I tried, but I wish her well.
P.S. I loved Les Miserables. It was exactly what it ought to have been, with people dying and blood in the streets, and those very brave French lads standing up to the bullets and the disaster that their little revolution was bringing them. I stayed away from the hype as much as I could, even as I questioned Russell Crowe having such a major role, and yet still I manged to find out that all the actors did not lip sync to a track, but instead sang directly for the camera for each take. The intense personal suffering (or brief happiness, as might have occurred from time to time), was right there, vibrant and real, in each and every song. It was amazing.