Les Misérables (Ladj Ly, 2019)

[zedz]

Because we really wanted to dredge this up again... an insider on AW said the French Foreign Language Film submission vote was 5 to 4 (v Portrait) and aided by Amazon literally bringing in the creative team to plead their case with the French committee. So, it was close, DarkImbecile

Les Miserables is a terrific, socially engaged film by a first time black director. It'll be an attention-getter when it's released in the US anyway, but this gives it a heightened profile, and it's possibly got a stronger narrative for Academy voters (since France would have submitted it before they knew the full extent of the positive critical reception of Sciamma's film in the States.)

[domino harvey]

Les Misérables is finally up on Amazon Prime

[swo17]

For free!

[therewillbeblus]

Am I the only one who didn’t like Les Misérables? It’s not that it’s a bad film, it’s just the same didactic Message movie that’s been made countless times about various systems with their own social contexts clashing in a grey world trapped in the same pot. I love this thematic exposition when sides are fleshed out in unique and honest ways but the insights we do get are thin representations of self-gratifying dialogue that pose as gritty realism. I get why people might think this was a ‘timely’ exercise, but to be frank it’s always a relevant topic and these groups deserve to have their stories told outside of passive cookie cutter projections in a dressed up exploitation film. At this point if we’re going to rehash the same concepts, might as well try for something novel and actually curious about our subjects rather than simply exploit their exploitation.

[knives]

Our clinical team at work tasked us each to create a list of recommendations for self-care and I wound up researching what films were on the major streaming sites and wrote some thoughts, so I thought I’d share that here since I was pretty unaware of what was available and where

You forgot Les Miserables from the Prime list too. Literally just finished it and was very impressed. It flew by like films rarely do.

[therewillbeblus]

I left a lot of movies off that I love, including other Soderberghs after going that route, but I deliberately did not put that movie on because I didn’t like it

[knives]

I guess nobody's perfect.

[therewillbeblus]

I guess that's your defense of the film?

Since everyone else seems to find merit in it, I'd really love to hear an alternate perspective to my thoughts since I'm sure I'm the outlier here and could benefit from hearing why the film works against what I perceive as its flaws, but those four words are a strange response.

[knives]

T'was a joke made in a joking mood.

If you really do request a serious response then I'll start by agreeing that this is nothing new, but I don't value new so that's fine for me. Instead what I value about the film is that it remixes the beats in just the right sort of way to make it consistently engaging while giving me some added food for thought from its higher aims. The movie must first and foremost be thought of in terms of French procedural of which I haven't seen any better. It definitely rests in the fantastical, but as Scott Tobias wrote in his pan it plays things down where even the bad cops aren't that bad (no one is screaming about Donkey Kong here) which I think helps it have its cake by also forcing moments of realism into the mix as a modern pop version of La haine. That the film shows a boring life when the shift is over helps connect the entertainment (the primary reason for the film) to its political ideas. In that sense this is like classic Hollywood.

[therewillbeblus]

I knew it was a joke, I guess the intent behind it was cryptic which I took as an invitation to engage on the film. I didn't mean to force a request but I'm glad I did because your response is excellent in all the right ways you usually happen to find to look at something I don't love in a way I never would default to and now I can see it in a new light. I still don't like the movie, but I can now at least appreciate it through that lens rather than the more weighty one I was forcing a reading through, and if I ever revisit it I'll re-read this first to prep the muscles on a fresh perspective. Thanks

[knives]

As the Rock would say.