#apolloandr

[apolloandr]

If the Les Mis movie were made today James Corden and Rebel Wilson would play the Thénardiers and we would all suffer

[apolloandr]

Ok let me explain. BBC Les Mis is bad. But it’s not bad in the way you think it is. And it’s good in some other places. But what makes it good also makes it worse. But it’s BAD and you won’t enjoy it. But it’s unfairly maligned and deserves to be watched. See, now you understand.

[apolloandr]

I just think it’s funny how enraged everyone was by Joseph Quinn as Enjolras but now that his hair color doesn’t matter he’s everyone’s favorite sexyman

[apolloandr]

What vest were you referring to about Enjolras in the BBC review?

This one:

It’s colloquially known as his xylophone vest, the actual garment is called a hussar vest. Enjolras wears it to the barricade in every staged production of the musical but it’s never present in any other adaptation.

[apolloandr]

An Exhaustive Review of BBC Les Mis (Part 1)

So this review ended up being long. Like ABSURDLY long. So long that I had to split it up into multiple posts. But after 5 years of bad faith superiority I finally got around to watching the 2018 BBC Les Mis miniseries! I have…a lot of thoughts.

This post is going to go through the things I liked about the series, because believe it or not there is actually quite a bit that I liked. Then the next post will go over the things I didn’t like, and the final one will be a sort of “what did I think/what did I learn” thing. Without further ado:

My favorite thing about this whole series was Jean Valjean. I LOVE Dominic West’s performance and I love the way he’s written. Turns out this is an unpopular opinion, because the fandom tends to perceive Valjean as this innocent, bread loving, do-no-wrong grandpa type which is not in keeping with his character in the book at all. Remember, Valjean is a person who tries very hard to be good, not a person to whom goodness comes innately. He has a huge heart, is incredibly charitable, and is always ready to help those who need him. He also steals, lies, acts selfishly, has violent thoughts, and is not above making threats. I really appreciate that this series allowed Valjean to struggle, and be brutal, and do morally dubious things without undercutting any of his goodness. This is the most nuanced portrayal of Valjean I’ve ever seen.

Every scene between Valjean and Bishop Myriel was GOLD. I’m very fond of this firmer, more authoritative Myriel and the way he bounces off of Valjean’s hostility. The final scene with the candlesticks is particularly fantastic.

This is the first iteration of Les Mis I’ve seen in any medium in which representation is integrated consistently. Tokenism is not an issue here; BIPOC people are everywhere at all times. There is definitely an implications issue, but we’ll discuss that later in the second post.

OLIVIA COLMAN AS MADAME THÉNARDIER AND NO ONE TOLD ME?!??!! It’s so nice to see her in her element doing the kind of character work she’s known for in the UK, especially for western viewers who have a very fixed perception of her as a dramatic awards show darling.

Gavroche is a Thénardier! I am a little miffed that his name is Gavroche, because in the book the Thénardiers cared about him so little that they never even gave him a name, but that is very nitpicky.

I didn’t love the sequence of Fantine losing her teeth and hair, but I DID love the man who did it. It was nice when he sat Fantine down and said “you don’t have to do this.” A single moment of kindness before the enaction of violating and commodifying a body. Very Brechtian. Fantine’s relationship with the man at the post office was also a nice touch for the same reasons. We’re lured into a false sense of security where we see him as an ally, but then he turns on her the moment he perceives her as having lost her value. VERY powerful stuff.

Some of the hair and costumes are really well done, key word being SOME but still, credit where credit is due. It’s great to see women in bonnets and men with lace up back vests and high society hard top wigs. My favorite thing: Black hair that looks good!!! Holy hell it is so common for Black hair to look horrendous on film because white people don’t know how to properly care for or style it (filmmakers PLEASE start hiring Black stylists,) but here the hair looks awesome! We have locs, we have afros, we have kinky curls, and everything looks natural. A+.

Every time there’s an allusion made to Valjean’s past it hits hard, especially when Cosette enters the picture. That moment when Cosette says “this place is like a prison” and Valjean responds with “you don’t know what a prison is…” OOF just twist that knife a little harder why don’t you. 

I don’t mind this Grantaire. Just because he’s not George Blagden doesn’t mean he’s not good. It’s kind of a nice change to see a Grantaire who’s crass and bumbling and not at ease on the battlefield. Also, there is definitely ExR present in the series, you just have to pay attention. In general I’m pretty neutral on the depiction of all of Les Amis. They don’t have a lot to them, but they’re very minor characters who appear in less than a third of the source material; it makes sense that they would be kind of glossed over. (Remember guys, the actual story of Les Mis does not revolve around Les Amis just because you made it so.)

Marius threatening to light the barricade on fire is awesome, it’s great to see him be a badass for once. Love that for him.

This rebellion is BRUTAL. People are getting stabbed with bayonets left and right, bullets flying everywhere, bodies in the street, people have bits of shrapnel stuck in their face, someone starts swinging on soldiers with an axe. I love it. I love that we get to see how UGLY and THANKLESS this moment was. It heightens the tragedy of the moment and the reality of the history.

The died holding hands scene is GREAT.

Javert’s suicide is quite well done. It was an interesting choice to have him resign from his position and leave behind a list of prison reforms, and I like that we got to see him break down and cry, especially since Javert is usually played in a very closed off, unemotional way. 

So those are the things I liked! It’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but things I like I REALLY like, to the point that some of them have become my favorite adaptational moments. See y’all in part 2 for the negativity! Hooray!

[apolloandr]

Showed my boyfriend the picture of Timothee Chalamet as Wonka, he said “that’s just Montparnasse” and I am INCREDIBLY angry

[apolloandr]

I know that all I do these days is criticize the popular trends of the Les Mis fandom but GOD writing this video essay has made me so hyper aware of the GSA coffee shop utopia we placed all the characters in where any of the grit and nuance and emotional ambiguity of the source material is scrubbed away in favor of Courfeyrac’s bowties and feminist icon Musichetta and the fuckshit with Jehan that I could probably rant about for hours if someone asked me to, like. We made Les Mis less interesting. How did we do that

[apolloandr]

An Exhaustive Review of BBC Les Mis (Part 3)

Part 1 | Part 2

Before getting into my feelings about this miniseries, I feel the need to talk about the Les Mis fandom, because it ended up coloring my feelings in a major way. And once again, I remind everyone that this fandom was an incredibly important part of my teenage years and an overall positive experience that I look back on fondly and still participate in occasionally. I make these criticisms out of love.

This elephant in the room: the biggest reason why the community reacted to BBC Les Mis so poorly is because it wasn’t a 6-hour adaptation of your favorite ExR fanfic. I know this, because that’s exactly the reason why I was so angry about it back in 2017. And I think that reaction was completely undeserved. The worst thing about the Les Mis fandom—the thing that ultimately lead to my disillusion with it—is that it’s not about Les Mis. The fandom hyperfixated on the nine semi-attractive twinks, then manufactured a false version of the story around them with barely any ties to canon at all and called it gospel. And then we criticized Andrew Davies for having the gaul to adapt the story of Les Misérables instead of the Les Amis de l’ABC Modern AU Power Hour that we twisted it into. As a fandom, we criticized this series in bad faith. We automatically assumed it would be trash because it wouldn’t look like our warped version of the source material. Nobody wanted to give this series a fair shake, and nobody cared whether or not it was actually a good adaptation of Les Misérables.

This miniseries is not automatically bad because it got a minor character’s hair color wrong and made some bad typography choices. Those are surface level CinemaSins critiques which we lash ourselves to instead of doing the work of legitimate, good faith criticism. We need to stop operating as though the shit we made up in 2013 about Piningjolras and soft boy Jehan and feminist icon Musichetta and Courfeyrac’s bowties is the same as the actual text of Les Misérables. It’s not. It may be fun, and you may love it, but it’s not. 

So that’s out of the way. Time for the big question: is the BBC Les Mis miniseries good?

No. It’s not very good; maybe a 5/10 on a good day. It had a lot of good things IN it, but it’s more frustrating than satisfying and misses the mark as a whole. I maintain that the musical is the best adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel that we have, and it’s probably the best adaptation we’ll ever get.

But I still want you to watch it. I want you to engage with this series. I want you to judge it based on what it actually presents you with, based on the choices it makes and the content it contributes, based on what it IS instead of what it’s NOT.