{"id":6366,"date":"2016-07-03T01:12:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-02T19:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=6366"},"modified":"2016-07-03T01:12:57","modified_gmt":"2016-07-02T19:42:57","slug":"les-miserables-review-a-searing-portrait-of-the-cyclical-nature-of-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=6366","title":{"rendered":"Les Mis\u00e9rables Review: A Searing Portrait of the Cyclical Nature of Violence in an Increasingly Divided World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

L<\/span>adj Ly\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>, that snagged the Cannes Jury Prize last year and was France\u2019s entry for Best International Film at the Oscars<\/a> this year, doesn\u2019t update Victor Hugo\u2019s eponymous novel as much as it reclaims it. Like the 1862 novel, the film is set in the suburbs of Montfermeil in Paris and there\u2019s still strife and humiliation to absorb. Yet 150 years later, if there is something that has changed, it is the language of oppression \u2013 now informed by the tensions and power imbalances brewing under the veneer of modern multiculturalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 103-minute long film, efficiently paced and shot with a percipient eye (the cinematography is by Julien Poupard), unfolds over the course of one single day in Les Bosquets, a poor Muslim neighbourhood, home to people of largely African descent. Adapted from Ly\u2019s short of the same name, Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> opens with a breathtaking sequence of an equally breathtaking chapter in France\u2019s memory: It\u2019s mid-July 2018 and the football<\/a> team has just won the World Cup championship. It\u2019s a moment of nationwide unity that cuts across racial differences and socioeconomic divisions. Grins are plastered on almost every face and the jubilation is shared. In between the celebration that takes over the streets, the camera finds its way to an ecstatic Issa (Issa Perica), a young Muslim boy, who runs around with the national flag in tow. The unbridled euphoria of the moment is merely a ruse, foreshadowing the sinister reality that lurks beneath the layers of emancipation.

\u201cWhat if voicing your anger is the only way to be heard?\u201d a character asks well into Les Mis\u00e9rables.<\/blockquote>
Narrated as a slow-burn police procedural that teeters on the brink of explosion, Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> doesn\u2019t waste time in laying out the stakes. For one, it\u2019s St\u00e9phane\u2019s (Damien Bonnard) first day at the precinct. He\u2019s newly-transferred to the anti-crime squad patrolling this volatile neighbourhood. His team is led by the temperamental Chris (Alexis Manneti, also doubling up as the film\u2019s co-writer), consumed by rage and a toxic masculinity<\/a> that seems emboldened by the power he can leverage with the badge on his uniform. In one frightening scene, he announces \u201cI am the law\u201d right after threatening to falsely implicate a Muslim man as a terrorist and in other, he proceeds to sexually harass a young woman. Rounding up the squad is Gwada (Djibril Zonga), a black, trigger-happy police officer who is only too willing to play along in terrorising civilians, even if they\u2019re children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meticulous setup finds its bearings when a lion cub, part of a travelling circus, is stolen and Issa, the meek youngster is implicated for the crime. What ensues is a standard portrait of escalation \u2013 seething around its edges in a way that possesses a lived-in quality \u2013 of the nonchalance and depravity of police brutalities. Ly is invested in not just the outcome of violence, but also in its origins, which lends the film much of its pulsating clarity.

Narrated as a slow-burn police procedural that teeters on the brink of explosion, Les Mis\u00e9rables doesn\u2019t waste time in laying out the stakes.<\/blockquote>
As Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> compellingly posits, violence doesn\u2019t just beget violence <\/a>but also mainstreams aggression as the preferred language, promptly indoctrinated by younger generations. The film\u2019s commentary on the pervasive, lingering stain of social injustice culminates into a suffocating climactic set-piece that is dressed as a confrontation of how easily and insidiously rage becomes a generational inheritance. Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>\u2019 masterful filmmaking (Ly finds an ingenious way to make drone shots as a part of the action in a way that succeeds in making them exciting again) embellishes the narrative\u2019s kinetic jumps, evoking the extent of powerlessness that the marginalised are forced to internalise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat if voicing your anger is the only way to be heard?\u201d a character asks well into Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em>. Throughout the film\u2019s runtime, and in particular during its gut-punch of an ending shot, Ly not only offers up an answer, but also strikingly locates its significance by dressing up the film as a portrait of a time and a mentality. By the time the closing slate of Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> reiterates the words of Hugo \u2013 \u201cThere are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators\u201d \u2013 Ly\u2019s point about systemic apathy is long made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Narrated as a slow-burn police procedural, Ladj Ly\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables is a commentary on the pervasive, lingering stain of social injustice. The masterful filmmaking evokes the extent of powerlessness that the marginalised are forced to internalise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":6367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[10378,279,10379,10380,3953,10381,1935,347],"class_list":["post-6366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-best-international-film","tag-cannes","tag-ladj-ly","tag-les-miserables","tag-oscar","tag-social-injustice","tag-toxic-masculinity","tag-violence"],"yoast_head":"\nLes Mis\u00e9rables Review: A Searing Portrait of the Cyclical Nature of Violence in an Increasingly Divided World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Narrated as a slow-burn police procedural, Ladj Ly\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables is a commentary on the pervasive, lingering stain of social injustice. 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