Arise citizens!

[Guinevere]

It’s Bastille Day! Missing Le Tour and Wimbledon and so many other of our rituals. But liberty and equality will live forever.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Où est le papier?

[Guinevere]

Où est le papier?

Sing it to yourself if you like.

[eddieq]

Not the same "French Revolution" but my kids had the 25th anniversary Les Miserables concert on last night. When I mentioned that today was Bastille Day, I got the opportunity to both give a history lesson and lament the state of public education in my country.

Vive la révolution

[ex-khobar Andy]

[Big RR]

Not the same "French Revolution" as the 1789 one, but I have always thought the separate "revolutions" were all connected into a single one spanning decades. Then again, I always considered the war of 1812 the second part of the American Revolution in which we finally got our independence from Britain (mainly because it wasn't worth fighting, and also because fighting with France had ended).

[MajGenl.Meade]

. . . et fraternité!

[TPFKA@W]

Ostensibly expressing Louis's POV. He sort of half-assed tried to be a people's king and fell very short thus losing his privilege, title and head.

[RayThom]

Ou Est Le Papier

Oh merde


A Frenchman went to the lavatory
For to have a jolly good shit, shit, shit.
He took his shirt and trousers off
So that he could revel in it, revel in it.
But when he reached out for the paper,
He knew that someone had been there before.
Ou est le papier? Ou est le papier?
Mon Dieu! Monsieur! Je fais manure!
Ou est le papier?

[Gob]

I've an Irish mate, who teaches Spanish in Luxembourg, coming to stay this weekend. That's as close as you'll get me to celebrating the French.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Gob, surely you have to applaud their long-standing habit of taking a shower? And washing their bums on a regular (daily?) basis in those little bidets?

Back in the days of yore, you and I probably sat in our own (if we were lucky) dirty water once a week and called it "bath day".

[Big RR]

Pissing at the fan is not a shower.

[Gob]

Back in the days of yore, you and I probably sat in our own (if we were lucky) dirty water once a week and called it "bath day".

Sunday night, after mam and dad had used it.

[Burning Petard]

I had to revive this thread because I just watched the 2012 movie version of Les Miserables. I have a question, but I liked seeing these posters that I have missed greatly.

What is the general evaluation of the music in this stage/cinematic production? For reason that are not relevant here, I am focused a lot on suicide in our society. Someone called to my attention the suicide scene in this movie. I have had people I respect tell me this particular stage production and the movie are of strong artistic importance. The music doesn't work for me. I liked the movie. I loved the Baron and Baroness in their final appearance in the weddding party. The last ten minutes or so was a constant tear jerker for me. But I never was impressed by the music.

Somebody tell me what I am missing?

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

There has been an ongoing debate over the 2012 film production of Les Miserables. Tom Hooper obviously wanted to emphasize the grit of the story and he got some truly excellent performances out of the actors he cast, some of whom were clearly cast more for acting ability than singing chops. Nevertheless I thought Hathaway was phenomenal in her single take performance of I Dreamed a Dream and definitely earned her Oscar for it. I also thought Crowe’s performance of Javert’s Suicide was brilliant even though he doesn’t have a particularly good singing voice - he captured the anguish of Javert’s realization of a life wasted in pursuit of law over compassion and humanity.

I think the music of Les Miserables is quite good, so I’m assuming your issue is with the version presented in this film adaptation?

Although I haven’t yet seen it myself, I would recommend to you the 2019 staged concert film by a cast performing at London’s Gielgud Theater in celebration of 35 years of Les Miserables continuously performed in London. It is available to stream on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Apple TV and PBS Passport and has a 100% rating on rotten tomatoes - it was also nominated for a Grammy Award so I would expect it’s a very good version of the music.

This reminded me of a special day in my life, the day I moved into my house in Montana after closing on it - I rented the 2012 movie of Les Miserables and watched it on my laptop (didn’t own a TV) while lounging on my air mattress with my three dogs.

It also reminds me that time is growing shorter every day and I need to get around to reading the Hugo novel sooner than later.

PS, a couple of years ago I did a short course in suicidology via some very good books I borrowed from the library. If you are interested in the reading list let me know I would be happy to share it with you.

[BoSoxGal]

Not the same "French Revolution" but my kids had the 25th anniversary Les Miserables concert on last night. When I mentioned that today was Bastille Day, I got the opportunity to both give a history lesson and lament the state of public education in my country.

Vive la révolution

Reading back through the thread I wonder if eddieq was referring to the concert I just posted about- he misstated it as the 25th, but it was really the 35th anniversary concert.

Here is a link to the PBS video https://www.pbs.org/show/les-miserables-staged-concert/

You have to have a passport account which I think requires a minimal donation of $5/mo. to PBS. Or you can rent it one time on Prime for $5.

[Big RR]

BP--I am a big fan of the stage show Les Miserables (I even appeared in a community theater/local college production as the opera singer a number of years back), but my problem with the film is what BSG alluded to--casting was more for acting ability, not singing ability. For me, the primary draw for musical theater is the music, and I enjoyed the music immensely in the stage production (as well as that concert performance often broadcast during PBS fundraisers), but it was sadly lacking in the film. With a few exceptions, many of those, including some featured characters could barely carry a tune, let alone do the music justice. Indeed, this seems to be a problem with many of the musical theater films, casting people without caring about their singing ability and then making it worse by recording live during the filming. Sure, this is done onstage, but most (until recently) of those in onstage musical have studied singing for years, if not decades, and are up to it; one would think the director could use production tricks to make the singing "better" (or, gasp, dub in the vocal tack of a trained singer as in the past--shure it looked cheesy in the past, but technology is much better now) but they rarely do.

FWIW, this is now increasingly becoming a problem on Broadway as well, where TV and film stars are cast in major roles in musicals, whether they can sing or not, because they are an audience draw, and those who have trained to perform in musical theater are pushed aside. Nt only does this affect the starring roles, but the featured ones where up and coming musical theater actors apprentice and eventually progress to starring roles--when there are less starring roles the otherwise future principals stay in the featured roles which cuts off the apprenticeship of the talented chorus members. It also affects the type of music write, as it needs to be written for less accomplished singers and, IMHO, theater suffers.

[Burning Petard]

People I know and respect told me way back when Les Mis was the hot ticket on broadway that this was a great demonstration of musical theater.
Live theater, even local community productions, have been beyond my finances back then, and now. Now suicide is a primary focus for my life. IMNSHO, professional objective scientific scholarship on this topic is not worth a bucket of warm spit if it is not informed by a personal intimate experience with suicide. I pretend that my opinions on anything are always subject to revision based on new information. On this one, I have low expectations for change. My preferred paradigm on suicide now is that those who do it, rarely do it because they do not want to live. They are driven by pain they can no longer tolerate. They just want the pain to stop. Pain from physical, moral, emotional, psychological events have different procedures for treatment. BUT that difference is of no utility to the one who is in pain, whose brain is screaming I HURT so loudly that nothing else is perceived.

So yes, I would appreciate that reading list.

I am not convinced the suicide scene in the Les Mis movie assumes that paradigm. That is ok. Good art has meaning on many levels. I thank you for this information. I came to Les Misarables, the 2012 movie, with hopes for perhaps an operatic experience like La Traviata. This movie was not that.
I will look to other recordings as cited above. I have Amazon Prime (I don't know how much longer--that too has become a huge expense)

My original drive to watch the movie was a comment that an early scene of redemption used the exact same music as the suicide scene. I was unable to hear that as I watched the movie. That inability may reflect my own qualities rather than the movie. I did not go back and review the scenes side-by-side for comparison. Perhaps in a more musical performance, I should do that.

Thank you all in this virtual community.

Snailgate.

[Big RR]

Re the suicide, I am not sure it is unrelated to pain. Javert was a man who had his whole life yanked out from under him, including the beliefs he ha or his own value. As the son of a prostitute, javert prided himself on being able to transcend his low criminal nature and not be one of hem through a devotion to god and the law--those who fail (like Valjean) are rightly condemned by man and god because they are beyond redemption. And then he sees Valjean act out of mercy, both in sparing his life and trying to get Marius to help, and his life falls apart. He cannt conceive of the shade of gray he has just seen, and cannot live with the implications, leading to his suicide. as he says in the soing:

And must I now begin to doubt
What I never doubted all those years?
My heart is stone but still it trembles
The world I have known
Is lost in shadow
Is he from heaven or from hell?
And does he know
That granting me my life today?
This man has killed me, even so

And continues:

I am reaching but I fall
And the stars are black and cold [interesting aside--in an earlier song he sang how the stars fill the universe with order and light; now they are black and cold and that order dissolves]
As I stare into the void
Of a world that cannot hold
I'll escape now from that world
From the world of Jean Valjean
There is no where I can turn
There is no way to go on

he mental anguish drove him to the suicide--at least that's the way I see it; he just cannot live in a world that is not as black and white as he thought it was. I don't thinkk he wanted to die necessarily, but he no longer wanted to live