Valjean a cold-blooded murderer? No thanks. I cannot continue past his introductory scene, solely due to the fact that the creative liberties taken here have fundamentally changed the character for the worse. The tragedy of this man is that he stole bread to feed his sister's hungry children and effectively spent two decades of his life in prison. Sure, he wasn't perfect -he tried to escape a number of times and added to his own misfortune... but one cannot blame Valjean for these acts, as it's fully imaginable that he did so out of desperation. The problem here is that within the first minute of Valjean's appearance on screen, the writer has him willfully causing a rockslide with intent to kill a guard out of spite. Not even self-defense! That fundamentally changes him from a desperate man who was punished for an unfortunate crime during a time of mass poverty and hunger, to a vindictive criminal who is clearly capable of murder. Valjean's story is better served as a man who was pushed by the state of his impoverished society to commit a crime that he would not have otherwise committed. It's a comment not just on the man himself, but of the social and political problems of the time. When you make Valjean a man who is undeniably a criminal at heart, you change not only his character, but the very point of the story. And when you change the point of the entire story, you miss what Les Misérables is about. These characters are not all miserable and suffering because they deserve it - they're all victims of a tragic time and circumstance. For these reasons, I immediately stopped after the rockslide and refused to watch further. I do not accept this interpretation, as it robs the Valjean character of any innocence, however misguided he may have been in his choices, and it begs the question: if he's THAT cold-blooded and spiteful, then why does Valjean not kill Javert at every turn throughout the rest of the story, since he is clearly capable of killing others responsible for his imprisonment? I mean, the whole reason he allows Javert to live later on is because he is NOT that type of man, and the arc of his character (his internal struggle) is about proving to himself and the world that he's not the vile criminal which the world has branded him to be. What they've done here makes zero sense and I can't evaluate the rest of the story in any form of fairness while the main protagonist has been so callously deformed. Perhaps if he'd been pressed to defend himself, or kill to save someone he loves, then his character would remain true: as a man who acts out of love and desperation and must bear the consequences to his name. As it stands, I've no interest in the sob story of a vengeful, cold-blooded would-be murderer with no regard for human life.
Review of Les Misérables
