#2000 les mis

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

Finally getting around to watching 2000 Les Mis.

[cometomecosette]

Once again, the three classic production photos of Enjolras comforting a crying Marius after Éponine's death.

Because every now and then, they need to be shared.

*John Herrera and Hugh Panaro (US 1st National Tour, 1987)

*Greg Blanchard and Reece Holland (US 2nd National Tour, 1988)

*Jason McCann and Niklas Andersson (London, 2000)

[moonyjulian]

[breadvidence]

Remember when I used to write out adaptation reactions? Well, I sure did watch Les Misérables 2000, and—wow! What an impressively bad piece of television from all directions. I find it deeply compelling and will doubtless watch again. The folks of this year's Les Mis Letters on Discord were treated to my live react. Here, I'll simply outline the high (?) points:

The plotting is bad. This is a curious accomplishment, on account of it's based off of a novel that—despite its length and digressions—has a coherent, tidy, and driven sense of plot. LM2000 fails here, I think, for two reasons: 1) the chronology is wobbly, which creates disorientation for a viewer trying to track events 2) it freestyles subplots but doesn't make alterations to the overall story, resulting in the new material feeling disconnected and meaningless. I am totally fine with adaptations being creative, but when Robert in '52 is a more coherent and meaningful addition to the story, you might have gone wrong.

The acting is bad. So many of the cast members seem tired—I'm a fan of Malkovich, and I think he's interesting here, but he's peculiarly exhausted in his delivery. Steffen Wink (who plays Enjolras) stands out as being enthusiastic (bizarrely), and Asia Argento as Éponine sometimes aspires to be a Hermine Karagheuz in her delivery, but overall: they were definitely handing out downers instead of uppers on this set.

The dialogue is bad. We have all of us writers been journeymen once. Most of us, as journeymen, did not get to script professionally produced television. Good for whoever landed that job, I guess, despite the pain they caused me. And—y'know—despite my love for the fidelity of a '25 or '72, I do not demand an adaptation quote Les Misérables. Further, I understand that the subtitles I was provided with are, with all appreciation for the person who made them, a little wonky. Regardless of both these things: lord, do these characters say some dumb shit. If you haven't watched it yet, wait 'til you get to yellow is the color of happiness.

Did you want a Jean Valjean who is violent, brash, dim-witted, and a sexual predator? Me neither! Given rumors and accusations surrounding Gérard Depardieu's personal conduct, quite possibly he's chosen to play the role as a kind of self-insert. Most adaptations go the "I don't know, I guess this is a story about redemption?" route, but here's LM2000 boldly asking instead: what if criminals are inherently evil? (We could talk about the ways in which '98 and BBC 2018 share this fault—but I cannot emphasize the degree to which Valjean in LM2000 is, ultimately, a villain, which is not at all true for either of those.)

No, really: Jean Valjean is a villain.

Really.

So: a character who makes unambiguously morally bad choices like locking up and wanting to fuck his daughter I wouldn't always call a villain per se—that implies a role in the story as well as being a value judgment. However, even though the show tries to preserve the final moment of Marius' realization that Valjean is his savior and a good man, we the viewer know he is not. We have seen him be menacing, be violent, be controlling, be nasty, we know that Marius was correct to want him separated from Cosette. He's a Bluebeard, and the story of LM2000 knows he's a Bluebeard, it treats him as one, even as it gets incoherently tugged back to being Victor Hugo's Les Misérables and hits emotional beats it hasn't earned and doesn't really want to have.

No, really: Valjean wants to fuck Cosette.

Really.

At the convent, Cosette lets down her hair to indicate to Valjean she will visit him in the gardeners' hut that night. Valjean rhapsodizes to Fauchelevent—in a rare case of Depardieu's acting reflecting that there's a beating heart in his chest—about her beauty. The Mother Superior is shown to equate letting down one's hair to sexual availability. We then cut to Cosette and Valjean in bed together. Their dialogue refutes that they fucked because otherwise it would be very intuitive for the viewer to assume they did so. This viewer remains unconvinced they didn't. I was spoiled for the explicit incest (Valjean, as part of his confession to Marius, makes it clear that his interest is sexual), but I would've known at this moment where the relationship was headed.

You could read this Cosette as an interesting representation of how people who experience abuse can become attached to their abusers, particularly where isolation normalizes the relationship for them. Or not.

They could have given the show the tagline Javert Shows Up. Where's Javert? He's giving Fantine financial advice soon after she becomes a sex worker. He's at the Sergeant of Waterloo asking little Cosette if she's OK because he got lost on the way back to Montreuil. He's at the convent interrogating the Mother Superior. He's in the university as an undercover student telling the Amis not to rebel. I'm used to Javerts showing up where they ought not (at Valjean's release from Montreuil and to the Rue Plumet, mostly), but this version (with an air of exhaustion) is everywhere.

Malkovich and his leather coat are—perhaps unsurprisingly—my favorite part of this adaptation. I like his expressive forehead, his futility, his absurd and unsettling slow walk into the Seine (it's silly—then Malkovich shivers). In precisely one moment LM2000 manages to have an unusual flash of insight into the novel compared to other adaptations: Javert, during the Montreuil era, declines to explain to a colleague/superior (I fail to recall and I refuse to re-watch in this moment) what precisely he's on to—he's career-focused and embodying the artistic desire not to "brush the bloom off the rose", notes lost in television and fandom alike.

I am trying to wrangle the thematic implications of Javert coming from a family who hunt criminals—something about blood and history as destiny? Is LM2000 so invested in the idea of criminality as inherent that an upright police officer being the child of criminals is discordant? Is it simply fucking stupid? I don't know.

I would urge any viewer to anticipate and enjoy the Legless Wife, who is the symbol of Javert's moral awakening.

Really!

Yes, I should say: don't bother watching this, pals. Except: if you are real intense about Les Mis, watch lots of adaptations, and enjoy bad media if it gives you something to chew on, I won't actually say don't—in part, yes, because I like the idea of others suffering with me, but also because this version has been an enriching experience. It prompted bafflement. Confusion. Distress. Contemplation of why you would take a story about the flaws of society and make it about the flaws of a man, and how this is merely an amplification of how the story has been told again and again since its origination. More confusion. An ineffable calm effected by Malkovich's voice. Hilarity. Anxiety. So much! So bad! And yet—yes, I'll watch it again. Despite itself.

[its-kapi-wara]

"Don't think about it, Marius.

With all the years ahead of us!

I will never go away

And we will be together

Every day.

Every day,

We'll remember that night

And the vow that we made"

Everyday / A Heart Full of Love (reprise)

Random person - "Well, let me get this straight, you think that Marius and Cosette make a lovely couple?"

Me - "I do. And I'm tired of pretending they not."

[leascno]

high school crush

[milkteahoe]

World ain’t ready is my heartstopper

[demon4dilfs]

Javert’s suicide in les miserables (2000)

[l832]

a series...

[meet-the-thenardiers]

Guys, I have been thinking and I guess we haven't hated Félix Tholomyès as much as we could...

This needs to be changed, this idiot needs to be spoken about and hated properly by this fandom!

[thatisntverycombefair]

genuinely can't remember if I posted this to Tumblr or not so Les mis exr Tumblr have some food

close ups under the cut

insta: capskneecrunchnoises

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

what are your honest opinions on Les Mis 2000

Before receiving this ask, I had only seen a little under half of Les Mis 2000 (French version). In order to provide a fair and complete response to this question, I started over and watched the entire show from beginning to end over the course of 5/6 weeks.

I will provide more details below the cut, but my completely honest opinion on Les Mis 2000?

Looking at the show as a whole, without considering adaptational value, it's scattered and confusing. A lot of storylines get picked up or dropped with little to no explanation, the characters and their motivations make little sense, and the time skips are inconsistent at best (Félix abandons Fantine when she is still pregnant, JVJ is released after Cosette is already 4yo and just being left at the Waterloo Inn/Fantine is already on her way to Montrieul-sur-Mer, Immortal Gav is 12 for ten years, meanwhile Javert undergoes a dramatic appearance change many scenes into the time skip, Cosette ages up when I assume the time skip takes place, and Depardieu [I refuse to call him Valjean] never ages until after the wedding). If you look at the context, it makes sense: they decided to (rather than dubbing after the fact) shoot everything in French and then again in English, so of course performances are going to flag, editing is going to be a mess, and the storyline is going to get lost in the changes they've made while shooting two shows at once.

Which takes me to my next point: as an adaptation, it's also incredibly weak. I don't know if I should be blaming the writer, director, or a terrible combination, but so many elements are not only not accurate to the book (fair enough, if you want book accuracy watch '25 Les Mis or '64 I Mis, or '72 Les Mis for accurate barricades specifically) but seem to totally miss the messages of the book altogether! Fantine was always in trouble before she gets fired (undermines Hugo's message that even doing everything "right" Fantine was still put in an unwinnable position), Javert gets his usual "obsessed with JVJ specifically and also treated as unusually cruel by everyone else" treatment, Gillenormand looks out for this fellow old man who was a gardener and has now been joined into his family by marriage, and Depardieu's character is going to get an entire section below. The Thénardier sex scenes are a lot but ultimately harmless compared to, say, the part where Javert cuts his hair (?) and attends law school with Marius and Enjolras as himself (?), and then later arrests the entire class for treasonous speech. This kind of belongs in the previous editing section, but a lot of the reveals (Marius knowing his neighbors are the Thénardiers, the Thénardiers recognizing the old man in the sewers, Cosette knowing her dad saved Marius, Gillenormand and Marius knowing Cosette's dad's background, Depardieu's character knowing about Javert's death) happen WILDLY out of sequence, and since they are plot-driving sequences, the motivations become confused, the choices make no sense, and you get scenes like Éponine trying to coerce Marius into having sex with her. I kind of liked the switch from jet beads to stinging nettle fabric except again, it didn't matter because Fantine's downfall was so badly done (forget that she turns to sex work immediately, only later selling TEN TEETH and her hair to make ends meet — Javert threatens to [and later does] arrest her for the completely legal profession of sex work before showing her where she can sell her teeth???) and Madeleine was so opposite from everything his character is supposed to be and show.

Which brings us to our next point: yes, in both the English and French versions, Depardieu's performance falls flat, but more importantly, there is an inherent misunderstanding of who and what Jean Valjean is at each phase of his life. I'll be honest, there was a lot going on when he was in prison with Javert tormenting JVJ for fun and the fire that Cochepaille needed saving from and Myriel announcing that he was buying JVJ the same way Judas sold Jesus and Cosette already being with the Thénardiers, so I don't have much feedback about JVJ's characterization or the paper that was yellow like sunshine at that point, but (ignoring the fact that Fantine apparently shows up in Montrieul-sur-Mer with no established factory in sight) then he becomes the most corporate businessman possible, with no regard for the wellbeing of his employees or town who spends all of his time running numbers? The hospital is underfunded, he only rubs elbows with other government officials/bankers, he is painfully out-of-touch with the people of his town, and apparently he doesn't even pay enough for Fantine to be making ends meet even before she is fired. A big part of what JVJ goes through in the book is that he feels like he cannot safely express his feelings about the system to anyone, leading him to act like a scared animal after Petit-Gervais, living in constant fear of being kicked ( @secretmellowblog has a great post about this here), but this Madeleine is CONSTANTLY venting and complaining to anyone who will listen. Not only that, but after he leaves M-sur-M, the police admit to Javert that they knew who he was and just decided to ... leave him be? This isn't a man who's living in fear, and this isn't a man who has to make hard choices in order to do good and help his fellow man. For some reason, Sister Simplice seems to be like 85% of his morality? (and we are very much skimming over the romance subplot that was going on there) So it doesn't even feel like he helps Fantine altruistically, it feels like Sister said "Please help" and Depardieu sighed and went, "Fine, I'll see if I can't pull some strings." When he gets Cosette and begins taking care of her, it feels ENTIRELY self-serving and creepy, and he later confirms with his own words from his own mouth that his feelings for her are not fatherly. He cares about prison reform because he experienced it, not from any sense of altrustic human kindness, and Toussaint ends up robbing him for having taken a chance hiring an ex-convict? (because ofc this Toussaint is a mute manservant, not a maid who can actually help Cosette, because all of Depardieu-Dad's choices are to serve himself, not to keep Cosette safe or happy). By the time Marius is sending Depardieu's character away, it's the only only adaptation that you're cheering on Marius, because this man calling himself Cosette's father who bought her for 1500 francs and still sometimes shares a bed with her and locks her in various rooms and has just admitted his love is not fatherly needs to LEAVE.

Finally — and I will freely admit that this is the pettiest section — the historical accuracy is in shambles. Electricity in the 1820s? 1840s fashions in the 1830s? The hair and makeup are given as errors, but how do you have accurate men's shirts and repeatedly let them wander around without cravats? And no one, not a single person, thought to check 1800s French currency? Sending Cosette off to buy bread with FIVE FRANCS (~$100USD)? Leaving one hundred thousand francs for the funeral of someone who canonically doesn't even have a marked grave? Even the part where Fantine sells her teeth: these were simple numbers they could have checked (two teeth, one napoléon aka twenty francs each — not ten for four each). All of the prices and amounts were in the book. It is not that hard to call the imaginary coin being passed between two characters a sous instead of a franc: we couldn't even see it.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would respond to this ask before finally answering, but ultimately, I was asked for my honest opinion, and this is it: it missed the mark for me in every way. I'm sure there are some people who enjoy it, and I am happy for them, but it is not an adaptation that I would recommend to anyone looking for a good Les Mis adaptation or a well-executed show.

[autumnalmess]

Obsessed with fantine saying "je voulais rire, aimer et vivre" in the french version of Les mis because it means 'I wanted to laugh, love and live'. She was really just a live laugh love girlie

[ronniesart]

I think they’re neat

[breadvidence]

I am begging for your 2000 Les Mis thoughts.

(I don't like it, but I spent 6 hours watching it and heard you have fun takes.)

I'm a quarter of the way through (which puts me just past Simplice with a gun), and because I am a dirty sinner I've enjoyed almost every minute of it. Not because it's good—God help me, no. The script was written by a journeyman, the acting ranges between "man trying to remember if he left the oven on" and "fish suffering hypoxemia", the timeline's fucked in a way that seems accidental (and I think all that bad is much more forgivable because I've been watching in 15-30min snippets rather than in 90min chunks, by the by). Rather, the ways it is bad tend to be steep enough to be funny ("Yellow... the color of happiness...", Malkovich's many ineffable expressions, "I am going to leave now because I don't want to be arrested now"), and it has occasional moments where the character dynamics catch my beady little eye and make me wonder.

Take, for example: what is up with this version of Javert and Fantine? Why is he in her room giving her financial advice, at one point? He's offhandedly vicious to her when she dies, but with body language that's oddly intimate, sitting on her hospital bed. They've built up a history by that point. Theory: forbidden from arresting her, he's like a terrier with a bait-rat in a cage, and he can't let it go, he snarls and threatens and rattles the bars. She can't make him go away, they interact, and it's one way to get to know someone, a restrained mutual torment.

And Sister Simplice and Valjean, what's going on there, then. I'm so used to Fantine and Valjean being swung as the romantic arc but I think the writers were trying to build a case for nunfucking. She has that dialogue—roughly I can only cry over Christ's suffering on the cross—and then weeps for Valjean being forced out of Montreuil, and I'm... not sure if the writers were smartdumb enough to be trying to riff off the Valjean-as-Jesus imagery in the book, or what. But it is. something.

[lenievi]

Title: Unwalked Paths

Pairing: Jean Valjean/Javert

Summary: Just a few days ago, Jean Valjean had wanted to flee France. Just a few days ago, he couldn’t sleep out of fear that Javert would find and arrest him, and Cosette would learn everything. The thought of that was unbearable. To see her love change into hatred and disgust would kill him. It would kill him . . . and he was bringing Javert home.

Rating: G-T

Notes: This fic is just catering to me personally. I needed to use Javert walking into the river from Les Misérables 2000 as my starting point because it opens different opportunities, at least for the beginning. I'd be really happy if you give it a try. You don't need to know the adaptation; I'd follow the same trajectory if I were to write a book 'verse fic as well, and I'm tweaking the characterization anyway. I just had these scenes in mind and needed to get them out 🙃