#barricade scenes

[midautumnnightdream]

Consider The Cat

[pilferingapples]

Re. barricade adaptations, I think it's partly about what you're inclined to notice. You're an Amis fan so you've been through those sections of the book with a microscope and even tiny deviations stand out to you. Let's take Arai, who is a pretty loyal adapter overall. Everyone knows he went off-piste in the barricade sequence (wtf was up with Combeferre?) But the "Confrontation" sequence was way off too- Valjean turns himself in after the three days in the manga, which is a massive change.

I wouldn’t count the “turned himself in in three days” thing as a massive change, though?– after all, the only indicator we have of what he did following the Simplice conversation and escape is at the start of The Ship Orion, when Hugo says he’ll “Skip over the painful details” and proceeds to give us the story through a couple newspaper articles. 

The Drapeau-Blanc, which is clearly the more objective paper, only tells us that he’s been apprehended again. The Journal de Paris, which is rather less objective, does say he was captured while trying to catch a carriage to Montfermeil– but it also says Fantine was his mistress (super wrong) and that he was captured thanks to the zeal of the authorities , and calls him a villain. While him trying to get to Montfermeil of course makes sense, it’s still a thirdhand account, from a markedly unreliable source.  Changing the details of that seems like a fair shift to me (if it is changed; I’m taking your word for it, because dealing with two languages that aren’t mine, here, and the only visual cues are that he’s been taken again, which IS accurate). 

If I were going to criticize the Confrontation sequence, it would be on the grounds of it being rather more violent than it is in the text, but I can understand that as a visual effect. I still think it’s a change that does matter–part of what makes Javert terrifying is that he never has to use force to do harm, with the power of the state behind him– but it makes some sense in a visual medium.(If we’re doing a comparison, I’d class this with having Combeferre’s final act being the saving of  a fellow revolutionary instead of a guard– both adaptational choices change the tone of the character, but not so much as to utterly contradict the character. We can be fairly sure Javert must have used his nightstick sometimes, and we can be fairly sure Combeferre was helping his fellow revolutionaries as well as he could, too.  Change of focus, but still with some logic for the character).

..okay this gets long now. 

 Or, again: having Valjean escape from the hospital rather than letting Javert take him and then escaping from the local prison  is condensing things a bit, but the method of escape (breaking through the iron bars) stays the same.  And, again, I understand it– drawing an entire new set, several pages that introduce no dialogue and no visible character interaction (because really that trip to the prison and the intervening time is about how the town reacts, which is not terribly visual) . So only  having the escape there doesn’t add a great deal symbolically without that Town Gossip element, which Arai gives us anyhow.   (As far as adaptational changes go, I’d say this is on par with having Feuilly live long enough to chop down the stairs– it may directly contradict a minor point in the book,but it’s doing so to make the flow of action more clear in a visual medium, and it in no way contradicts the characters or avoids any larger scene or point.)

Whereas the whole thing with Javert turning himself in to the revolutionaries for seriously NO REASON AT ALL instead of having Gavroche blow his cover, which really DOES alter his character, like, a LOT. Honestly if that were the only version I knew, I’d assume this was a guy who was already on the edge of turning from the path he’d chosen because of his  devotion to the truth over the law, and of course it’s really important that that’s not what’s happening!

And Arai is, seriously, one of the BEST if not THE best of the adaptations for sheer incident accuracy, which makes these things stand out more. Like, why start leaving out major on-page incidents here? Why THOSE scenes? (Why that thing Enjolras is wearing? Why???) 

--Anyway, to address the more general point, you’re wrong about why I pay so much attention to the barricade scenes (though I definitely do); it’s not because I’m “ an Amis fan” (though I am, it’s true) , it’s because the barricade sequence is one of the most beautiful examples of a literary/narrative effect I really adore, where multiple separate threads of a story combine with such harmony that it’s suddenly obvious they were all inevitably linked through the entire story, and that’s REALLY IMPORTANT for Les Mis, with its argument of all the individual stories having their common link, in a way it is with really very few books even when they pull this off. Every digression and rhetorical point, every main interest and conflict , religion and state, the convict, the woman, and the child, the question of faith and redemption, order and rebellion, all get summed up in one single harmonizing scene and it is AMAZING. 

Between you, me, and the somehow nonzero number of people following my blog , Nonny, I really don’t like battle or fight scenes, as a rule. If the barricades were just “Amis Fight Scene”  I would skim it; they’d still be my favorite secondary characters, but, y’ know, fight scene. But I love it BECAUSE of the rest of the book, because every single detail and argument Hugo throws out through the novel gets a reprise at the barricade, and the sequence involves EVERY MAJOR LIVING character (even Cosette gets her chapter!) and most of the secondary ones, all singing together for single instant (sometimes almost literally), and honestly I can’t think of any single sequence in ANY other fictional work that pulls off that effect so amazingly and on that scale and for a reason that’s still so horribly urgent in the world??* 

And THAT’s why I track changes in the barricade sequence, because changing things THERE can so easily deny OTHER PARTS OF THE STORY their note in that grand sequence, and those notes are there for a reason, and the reason is really, really important.

*which isn’t to say there is no other! This is just the only one I can think of. 

[thenightendsatlast]

Prima o poi impiegherò il mio tempo in qualcosa di serio.

Nel frattempo....