Hugo's "Les Misérables" has been passed down as a famous book, and has also experienced countless remakes of stage plays, movies, TV series and so on. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, a French remake of Les Misérables once again appeared in the public eye, and the debut of Raj Leigh was well received. Although this film is not all based on famous works, the title and scene of the film have already shown the concept of the whole film, the same deep and fiery social background in the same famous book, using the location of the novel "East of Paris, France", which is a firefight zone, using struggle to show complex social issues such as human rights and law.
Complex attitudes towards marginalized groups
Director Rajli can be said to be too nameless, because this "Les Misérables" is the opening work he wants to open the film market. The birth of the riot in this movie does not look like a debut film, whether from the perspective of the maturity of the play or from the fullness of the scheduling of the character shots. The director intercepted the famous 2018 World Cup as the background of the story, and the crowd under the Arc de Triomphe showed us an illusion of unity from victory, and the different skin tones in such a noisy opening shot and the different transformations in the close-up and long-range scenes accurately expressed the meaning that the film wanted to express. As an opening, such a steady grasp is more like a veteran, which pushes the film to the outlet before it starts in the scene, and also increases the audience's interest and doubt in this sense of fault tolerance. Compared with the short film of the same name, a lot of details are expanded, but there is not much depth in the proposition, which is regrettable.
The names of the coloured people chanted by the crowd seemed more like irony and a clue, and the respect they chanted about the heroes they had in the original society was turned upside down. The fact that he saved France in the World Cup not only pointed to the colorization of the French team at that time, but also attracted attention to the trend of European immigration. Seemingly simple, but in fact, it has a profound meaning, and the vicious circle of violence against violence and deep-rooted racial discrimination make white policemen forget that these marginal people should also have rights. The frenchman's dual attitude towards these marginalized groups in a complex context is the subject of this film.
Looking at society in the lens
The overall lens of the film has its own style, a very full sense of documentary, street sense and cleverly designed camera scheduling are showing reflections on the current reality of French society, such a performance is undoubtedly very good for the same new directors, but also makes the whole film from "gradually getting better" to "thrilling". Now look at the French exposure of racial themes can be regarded as really explicit, following the police car, the camera gradually penetrates into the turbulent city, we can really see the different perspectives of the three protagonists on the same identity. There are a lot of shaky shots used in the film, but they don't seem disorganized. Although such handheld shots are not uncommon, and even have too many shows in young directors today, Rajili has given him life again, restoring the fluidity and pulsation of the plot. The action scenes are also very exciting, the tension of the plot is very full and attractive, and the rhythm is just right.
Narratives still have logical integrity in the chaos, and such maturity is not something that everyone can do. Although the stable text structure has a certain relationship, the mutual pulling and enhancement between the texts, emotional rendering, etc. are the real solid skills of the director, and also increase the examination of violence. The lens shows a lot of regional things, used to piece together a piece of the puzzle, with the continuous advancement of the film plot and the dramatization of the development of the characters gradually revealed, the struggle that may erupt at any time, the sense of relevance of the characters are delicately balanced, class contradictions, the confrontation of primitive status are examined with the lens. And when the camera finally uses an unbalanced angle to look at the entire suburbs of Paris, everyone is so ordinary, all are humble souls bathed in the sun, and they are all so insignificant.
External contradictions and internal alienation
The director actually started with short films and documentaries before shooting Les Misérables, so he was better at detailing the characters. The success of this film is not only related to this, he himself was born and raised in this "crossfire zone", so he has a fairly real material and lifestyle experience of the working class struggle contained in this area. The contradictions shown in this film will naturally become more profound, secretly using the excessive violence of the police to sow the seeds of revenge, and finally become the fuse of this war, depicting the external struggle in detail. This work can be called the "Angry Youth" of this century, when this work also used teenagers and police struggles to show the violent hatred entanglement in the French ecological environment, and 29 years later, such a dilemma is still unsolvable.
Internal alienation is also the focus of the film, which is also the special highlight of the film, and different ideas for the three protagonists are doomed to different approaches. The ugly racist face of the black community is disgusting, and the policeman who is black is equally brutal, using the law to suppress everything. The strengthening of the different differentiation between the three finally pushes the film to a contradictory climax, while the narrative before this does not show any traces, so that the appearance of the film's alienation problem is not abrupt and blunt. French history has never lacked the changes caused by such reasons, but there has never been a proper solution, and the problem has gradually deepened the problem of the police fighting violence, the reincarnation of resentment, and the freedom of power.
Exchange the flow dynamics of the rights
Where there are people, there are rights, and rights are often the source of war. The exchange of interests between the clique forces and the local government agencies brought this issue to the fore. The forces that govern the progress or regression of our society are really about the replacement and separation of rights and interests, not the disappearance of rights. The whole movie of "Les Misérables" happens to be the flow of the whole state of power, and it is difficult for individuals to survive under the continuous growth of violence, so there will be different rebel groups, and it is difficult for us to judge the right and wrong of the two sides with the eyes of good and evil. Just as in the game Detroit, where contradictions arise, there is always no fixed reason for the judgment of good and evil, so the film also shows us that it is difficult to eliminate violence in a social structure like France.
The tension of the film is full, from the protagonist's theft, the passion of the whole film is ignited, in which the acts of ownership, possession and so on are actually the separation and control of rights. Violent money is a closed circle, once the beginning can not be easily stopped, it is unlikely to get smaller and smaller, the beginning of the carnival and the end of the riot are the embodiment of the contradiction of rights. These problems rooted in human nature are always the driving plot, and even the biggest assist of the world, and they are always force majeure, difficult to resist, weak people, powerless people are always speechless, even love has become very fragile.
In fact, this movie is more of a sense of closeness to the characters, everyone's choices make the audience feel thrilled, in fact, no matter what group, whether it is a police or a gangster, there is an emotional lack of emotion, and the social proposition of the film is too public and sensitive. Society's neglect of responsibility and belonging is always the place of violence, which can lead to a violent backlash against the government by the lowest marginalized groups, and all people will be involved in such struggles, which will lead to destruction. No one is born violent, and the flowers that can reach the end of the heart's malice are all grown out of selfishness and malice. And the most thought-provoking thing left by this movie is that Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables" is still tragic and unsavable today, the world is still so powerless, everyone is still so small, and such an ending makes people sigh.