In its opening weekend Les Miserables has broken box office records for a film musical. The same show continues to pull people into the stage show in the West End and around the world. What is it that draws people to this particular story? Why do so many return to see it again and again? If you haven't seen the show, film or read the book you might find a few spoilers in this posting, (though I shall try to avoid them).
There are certain things that undoubtedly draw people to the musical. Chief amongst these must be the music with stirring anthems like "Do you hear the people sing?" and "Red and Black" through to the heart wrenching "Empty chairs at empty tables" and "A little fall of rain" and the comic elements of "Master of the house". For those liking musicals it is difficult to refrain from singing, humming, or whistling your way through the score for days or even weeks after seeing the show.
Another feature of the film and stage show must be the quality of the performances. Whether it is actors who turn out to have great singing voices, (thank you Russell Crowe), or singers who act their socks off, (stunning performance from Samantha Barks even if she didn't win the BBC talent show looking for Nancy). The film allows the audience to get close to the actors and see every ounce of emotion as they sing their way through the show. I felt, and have heard others say the same, that the film was able to tell the story more clearly than the stage show partly because of that.
However, the main thing that seems to me to draw people to this show is the story. Having seen the stage show twice, read the book and seen the film once at different points in my life I have found each time there are different characters I identify with, but I suspect that for all those that let themselves be drawn in to this story of the redemption of Jean Valjean they will find some timeless themes brought out.
The first time I saw the show as a teeneager in love with a succession of girls who were utterly united in their failure to be in love with me my heart was won by Eponine, the daughter of some dasterdly innkeepers, who fell for Marius who remained oblivious to her love as he fell for Cosette instead. That story of unrequited love connected with me. It didn't hurt that the lady playing Eponine at that time was also rather beautiful.
In reading the book I was more struck by Thenardier. He is an utterly odious character and yet, within both the book and the show, he is the centre of the comedy. We can feel so uncomfortable with evil that the only way we can deal with it is to hold it up to ridicule. In some way we feel this distances us from it and enables us to stand over it as superior judge rather than the one falling under judgment. Any part of us that identifies with Thenardier - selfishness, greed, dishonesty - must be ignored. Otherwise we might have to look at ourselves more deeply and change our ways.
The second time I saw the show, as a trainee lawyer, it was the story of Javert, the policeman who gives his life over to hunting down a man who breached his bail. There is something terribly noble in his search for justice regardless of the consequences, and the film brings out this desire in relation to Javert's own Christian faith. There is something in each of us that cries out for justice, whether for individuals facing personal hardships or communities held back by poverty or crime. However, in the story of Javert, this desire for justice takes over to become an obsession and prevents him from seeing any bigger story of what is going on and also blinding him to the possibility of change. All of us fall short of our own standards even if we don't break the law. We share that frustration, usually with ourselves, over the inability to overcome those things that hold us back and yet we long for change. Javert's tragedy is his inability to see the change when it happens in front of his eyes.
However the primary character that we are asked to identify with is Jean Valjean himself. A man who committed a minor offence and was jailed. During his imprisonment he attempted to escape and compounded his crime leaving him with 14 years of hard labour. During this time he is driven lower and lower until on being granted parole he is a broken man who thinks nothing of stealing from a man who grants him shelter. He can even justify this as society seems unwilling to give him another chance on seeing his parole papers. However this bishop's kindness in not condemning him cuts through his anger and bitterness and brings about the change in his life that forms the backbone of the story, although he still breaks his parole. There are points through his life where he questions what he should do, especially when he hears of another man who looks similar to him being arrested as the parole breaker. Valjean's move to redemption is not an easy one, but then we are all rather more complicated than we sometimes like to think. We act with mixed motives and often with only partial information. We see Valjean develop through the almost 3 hours of the film and part of us wants to be like him and another part of us, in our honest moments, isn't sure if we are willing to pay the price.
The film version of Les Miserables brings the story to life and places it more clearly in the context of French history. The French Revolution was over, the monarchy had been restored and was as corrupt as ever. The hope people had of a new beginning had been dashed and while they might hope for a new dawn 'when tomorrow comes' they are less likely to put themselves on the line to achieve it and so those manning the barricades are left to face the army alone as the idealists in the face of the realists. As I have thought about them in the last few days it occurred to me that we often fall into the same difficulty in relation to the Christian faith. In Christ's death on the cross a decisive battle was won to overthrow the ruler of this age and yet, within a very short space of time, it looked as if everything had returned to the former way of being. In church we believe that we are living in a different way, under a different ruler and yet so often we conform to the world around us. Our ideals get crushed by what we see as 'reality'. When Paul wrote to the church in Rome he knew they faced similar temptations to give up on what they had started and just fit in. He encourages them, in view of God's mercy to them, "Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." In Les Miserables we see Jean Valjean going through exactly that tranformation, we see the students of Paris willing to place themselves on the line to see the transformation they believe in. Perhaps the draw of Les Mis through the years has been that we long to see that transformation in ourselves and to be instruments of change to bring about a juster and fairer society as we build the Kingdom of God.
I remember a craze a number of years ago for 'magic eye' pictures. These seemingly abstract patterns, if stared at for long enough would eventually take shape before your eyes and form some sort of three dimensional image, or might do, or in my case never did. I was left a little bewildered as friends would stare amazed at these images while I was left confused at what they were seeing. I had all sorts of explanations and advice about how you had to look at them and where you focused your eyes, but I never saw anything beyond a mass of squiggles, lines and colours.
Whatever we think about Jesus, there seems little doubt that he is one of the most significant figures in the whole of human history. I believe he is the most important because he was able to embody so many different things. He could take on the weight of Jewish expectations of a prophet like Moses, a priest like Aaron and a king like David. He could take on all that Israel was meant to be as well as everything that humanity was meant to be. On top of all of that I believe that he was both fully God and fully human, though I have to confess that I can't fully understand all that that means.
