OVP: Les Miserables (2019)

Film: Les Miserables (2019)
Stars: Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti, Djibril Zonga, Issa Perica, Al-Hassan Ly, Steve Tientcheu
Director: Ladj Ly
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best International Feature Film-France)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

When I first heard about Les Miserables randomly being in contention for the Oscars for France this year, I was a bit surprised.  After all, we've seen Victor Hugo's tragic tale brought forward so many times in cinematic history-why would it need to be redone again, and was this really a better bet than some other French features, particularly the critically-lauded Portrait of a Lady on Fire?  Turns out I was wrong in both regards.  Les Miserables was indeed a good bet for France, scoring their first nomination since 2015's Mustang, and it is not, in fact, a literal translation of Hugo's novel, nor of the hit Broadway musical, but instead a movie that takes place near where Hugo wrote the book, and of course as the movie goes along, borrows heavily from the spirit of Hugo's original tale, even if we don't have a Cosette or Javert there to guide us through Paris.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place over the course of two days, and we get as our protagonists three cops: Stephane (Bonnard), Chris (Manenti), and Gwada (Zonga).  Stephane is new on the force, coming from the country, and gets a tutorial in the corrupt ways that Chris & Gwada manage the streets, claiming it's because they need to demand respect, but really it feels like they have little care for the law.  The two men frisk women they find attractive, and are clearly used to exerting their influence through abuse of power.  This comes to a head when, after a lion cub is stolen from the circus by a young man named Issa (Perica)-one helluva weird red herring-Issa is shot with a flash ball.  This is caught on video by local Peeping Tom/drone enthusiast Buzz (Ly), who thus has evidence against the three cops that could end their reign of terror.  The cops eventually get the memory card from the drone back, but not before Issa is literally thrown to the lions (in a harrowing scene), and swears revenge after escaping from the adult lion at the circus.  This happens the next day, when the police are lured into a trap by a group of young men, led by Issa, and the film ends in something of a cliffhanger.  Issa, holding a molotov cocktail, stands above the three officers, in a standoff with Stephane, deciding whether to throw the bomb and finish off the three officers or not.  The film ends with a quote from Victor Hugo's novel, "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men.  There are only bad cultivators."

The movie is really two halves, and it's hard to combine the two in a review.  You spend most of the first half of the film in a relatively conventional plot.  Stephane is the good guy, Chris is the bad guy, and Gwada is the character whose soul might be saved by doing the right thing in the end.  It's also kind of staid-this is a story that's been told a thousand times before, and there really aren't enough interesting characters in the tale to make up for the lack of originality.  People like Steve Tientcheu's The Mayor are meant to be intriguing, the sort of side characters that light up an otherwise conventional movie, but Ly's narrative has little time for anyone other than the three police officers.  Hell, there's a sexually-harassing police commissioner who shows up for one scene & then we never get any explanation as to her existence for the remainder of the film.  Even Issa doesn't serve as much more than a means-to-an-end-you end up learning little about him.

The second half is considerably better, and sort of proves why we don't learn anything about these characters-we aren't meant to do so because these cops don't learn anything about them.  Even Stephane, the good guy, represents a corrupt system that is going to constantly cash in on the status of Issa and the young boys like him who are constantly in-and-out-of-prison, never giving them a real chance for economic opportunity.  After all, instead of ending Chris & Gwada's authority, he chooses to simply push the violence against Issa under the rug so he can remain on the force.  The final scenes are jarring and violent, but they also help to illuminate not just Ly's thesis, but Hugo's as well-that the people will only listen to revolution, that it's the only language the authority hears.  It's a jarringly anarchistic political explanation for the actions of all involved, and one that is shockingly controversial for the more traditionally-minded Academy, but it's also a well-lensed & edited final sequence.  Les Miserables is a modern story, one that meanders and that I don't always agree with, but its ending is nonetheless one of the more well-crafted ones I've seen this year at the cinema.