Die Wütenden - Les Misérables

Profoundly moving, hard hitting moral drama elevated beyond being yet another 'banlieu' film through masterful use of cinematic language, combined with heartfelt performances from a largely non professional cast. France's ongoing tensions around identity, race and belonging expand, confronting you head on with dilemmas about the sheer difficulty of the human condition.

Looking for something going further than social realism? Comfortable being uncomfortable? Willing to question the assumptions of multiculturalism and the liberal enlightenment project? Prepared to wrestle with the effort of formulating just what questions need asking instead of expecting someone to bring you answers? Les Miserables will be for you.

Opening with shots of young black teenagers celebrating France's world cup victory celebrations in Paris in 2018, concluding this opening scene with a shot of the Arc de Triomphe superimposing the title Les Miserables, director Ladj Ly at once situates himself in a canon of French 'auteurs' while claiming space for these marginalised and excluded kids as being indeed French and, furthermore, spiritual descendants of the 19th century 'Les Miserables' of Victor Hugo's novel.

Montfermeil cite (housing project / estate), on the Eastern outskirts of Paris. Following the world cup, three policemen, Chris, Gwada and newcomer to the team Stephane, are looking for a thief who's stolen a lion cub from a travelling circus - they have a limited amount of time - if the cub isn't returned, war will erupt between the various patriarchal groups who live uneasily alongside one another in the cite.

The liberal enlightenment project assumes the inevitability of 'progress' - it's only a matter of time before everyone, everywhere in the world, adopts European (French) systems of democracy, liberal capitalism and so on. Human beings are rational and reasonable, living peacefully through democracy, state institutions and the rule of law.

The 'panopticon' is a system of total surveillance which emerged from 18th century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. This can be seen to manifest in housing estates like Montfermeil - uniform, system built apartment blocks facilitating observation and control. However, the surveillance is subverted by the nerdy boy Buzz (played by the director's son, Al Hassan Ly) whose hobby is flying drones and who, through the drone, witnesses and records an act of police brutality.

Spectacular use is made of the cite with drone shots soaring above the apartment buildings. Implying freedom, escape yet there's something more sinister. Early on the viewer is implicated in Buzz's pubescent voyeurism using his drone to spy on women - we see from his point of view, implicating us in his voyeurism which confronts us with how so often people in these places are used by politicians and the mainstream media as objects to be exploited for entertainment or political purposes. What's our purpose in watching this? How many times have we watched prurient documentaries about 'tough gangs' or 'problem estates?' While 'District 13' or 'La Haine' spring to mind as obvious comparisons, Les Miserables shares some characteristics, including one crucial scene in particular, with Francois Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows'. Both films show marginalised, excluded children. The same difficult age, 12 / 13, moving away from childhood into adolescence.

An academic called Anne Gillain wrote an essay about 'The 400 Blows' called 'The Script of delinquency' drawing on psychoanalytic theories from DW Winnicott and Melanie Klein. Returning to Gillain's work helps account for why and how Les Miserables is so much more than just another 'banlieu'/ social realist film.

Issa's mother in Les Miserables appears, like Mme Doinel, in 400 Blows, uninterested in her son. If I understood the dialogue correctly, when the cops call at the flat, she doesn't know where he is. Instead, she shows Gwada a room full of female friends counting out money. Clearly materialism and money are more important than children.

Stealing is central in both films - Gillain draws on psychotherapists Winnicott and reads stealing as being 'a gesture of hope' on the part of the child to reclaim the care and love to which they are entitled. Lead actor Issa Perica is perfectly cast as Issa - cub like himself with his delicate features, complexion, beige combat pants, sporting a T shirt with a lion motif explicitly identifying him with the animal. This however is an animal destined for a life of imprisonment as a circus animal. By stealing the cub Issa at one and the same time reclaims the nurturing to which he's entitled and by liberating the animal expresses his own yearning for freedom beyond the confines of his current life.

If women have little visibility in Les Miserables I read this as a comment by Ly on the macho posturing of the patriarchal society he reflects. Women, when they do appear, are strong figures. Teenage girls answer back when provoked by the cop Chris, an inadequate little bully of a man. An enraged mother intervenes against the cops' abusive questioning of four small boys.

If the state has abandoned these kids, literally excluding them and their families to the peripheries, other organisations or institutions don't offer much in the way of alternatives. There's the fast food restaurants and a fast food stand whose owner turns the kids away when they ask for food - the nurturing they seek, embodied by food, is denied them. Promises of reward and fulfilment through work unfulfilled for those too young to participate in economic activity.

Another form of imprisonment is implied through conformity to religion. During a scene when the boys are invited to the mosque, the camera is close in to the Imam and his co worshippers, wearing Islamic dress and beards. One of the boys yawns. Religion, with it's imperatives of dress, conformity of appearance, closes down possibility. By contrast, when they're left to their own devices - playing basketball, making slides from discarded car doors or goofing around in a paddling pool with water pistols, freedom expresses itself through camera work which opens out to long, expansive shots. Envisaged by the state as ordered, regimented public housing the cite becomes instead a locus of spontaneity - space around the blocks is reclaimed as somewhere to play. A similar binary operates in The 400 Blows with interior shots (carceral space) contrasted with exterior - the city as a place of exciting potentialities.

In Les Miserables carceral (prison) space manifests through cars. Patrolling the cite the three cops are confined to their car, unable to leave it for fear of attack. Ultimately, the custodians are metaphorical prisoners themselves, in contrast to the kids, who occupy the space of the cite. There seems little to distinguish the cops from criminals. At one stage, Chris negotiates a favour with the criminal owner of a sheesha lounge. Where's the moral compass? The police here, as representatives of the state, behave in ways which are anything but reasonable and rational. Their lack of integrity shown by their appalling mistreatment of the children they're supposed to protect.

Finally, staircases and trash feature prominently in both les Miserables and The 400 Blows, although as different signifiers. At one point Stephane is at the foot of the stairs of an apartment block, in the foyer, calling for reinforcements, unable to give his position. There's no address on the building, this is nowhere and everywhere. Montfermeil stands for every marginalised, excluded community, indeed estates like this are to be found on the fringes of every French town and city, populated in the main by those considered 'not enough French.'

I'm saying no more. Hopefully after reading this you'll be off to watch les Miserables as it should be seen - on the big screen. Enjoy.

I walked into the theater to see Les Miserables late this afternoon with no expectations.

Maybe a thought that this was a modern 'woke' version of Hugo's classic. It isn't. It's a gritty, fast paced, police procedural set in the banlieues of Paris. Unflinching about what the police find there, and how the police act and react to a Paris that tourists never see.

Sobering and revolutionary.

A stunning find and a great movie.

Does one have to be hardcore all the time? A cop that is in the streets of Paris. I am not pretending to know what it is like ... walking that thin line between being respectful but having others treat you with respect too. Especially when it comes to the criminal element on the streets.

But this is where this excels. While we concentrate on the cops mostly, we do get to see the world from every perspective there is. I think people compare it to La Haine, which might be fine, but I was thinking more of The Wire. The latter being American and tv show, but still ... the vibe of showing multiple sides ... and the humanity of both sides is strong in this one.

And when I say humanity ... we mostly see people not being able to actually communicate ... and therefor being stuck. Stuck in a circle of hate, frustration and violence. Something that the director is really capable of showing us. We dive into the whole thing and it is tough to know who to root for ... or rather and that is the tricky part: against! Because you see the police doing shady things, you won't really like them being ... mean to ordinary people.

There is an inciting incident ... well one that will change the world for all involved. And unfortunately that does not seem to be uncommon ... violence begets violence. And it is tough to impossible to break out of it ... but where will it lead? And how can it conclude? Is there hope? And what sacrifice would it take? What would it cost? To the dignity and the soul of those involved ... there is so much here, because it goes beyond the surface.

I stumbled across this by accident, but am more than happy that I did. And I had no idea what this would be about ... I actually thought it was going to be a documentary ... and it sort of begins like one too. But it does change lanes/gears and pace quite fast ... and goes on to tell a story that is one of the most gripping and intense ones I have seen this year ... not easy to watch at all mind you ... still worth every minute of it.

The movie is very good but left me a bit unsatisfied. It is well shot with good acting from all the actors. But it seems like the story was mixed with La Haine, Banlieue 13 Ultimatum and City of God. The bad cop/good cop story line along with the outsider point of view of one of the policemen felt cliché (as some parts of the dialogue). It has a good message and I could clearly see the intentions of the director in making this movie. But, as someone familiar with French cinema that shows Paris suburbs, police brutality and racism in France in general, I haven't seen anything new here. And I know there's still a lot in those issues that hasn't been shown in movies yet. As this movie is nominated for an oscar I was expecting something more.

"Those who live are those who fight." Victor Hugo

Because I have had my fill of violence recently in the realism of For Sama and the fantasy of The Gentlemen, I can more easily recognize the artistic importance of it to represent the malign tendencies of human nature and the absurdity of having to defend life with terror rather than thought. The rugged streets of ethnically-diverse Paris, usually hidden from us white travelers, come alive in this loose update of Les miserables by director Ladj Li's

Violence is cinematic, and in the Oscar-nominated Les miserables, set in Hugo's modern-Paris hood, it serves to explode in our minds the great divide between kids and adults and the evil of police brutality for those kids doomed to spend their days under racist dominance and ignorant supervision. The

Young Issa (Issa Perica) steals a baby lion from a circus; an active crime unit, led by modern-Javert Chris (writer Alexis Mananti), pursues him with brutal results. As white police clash with predominantly Muslim citizens, kids ironically become the antagonists, as if writer/director Li wanted to remind us that in Lord-of-the-Flies tradition, even the innocent are not so innocent if we teach them well. Hugo would have agreed that the adults in charge are jailers with cruelty on their minds.

The cinematographic movement of this Oscar-nominated drama is active with Steadicam balance and drone perspective. We are there.

Of the dozen or so characters, not one is neglected, and not one is irrelevant to the plot. As for the Parisian setting, Ladj makes sure the Eifel Tower appears in a few shots, more I suspect to make fun of our cliched experience with the great city because the hood we see in Les miserables is the world we most likely would never see in our travels. Chalk up another of cinema's gifts to us.

Here's a film of enormous humanity and entertainment couched in a tense world of racist clashes and violent conclusions. Hugo would agree while offering a modicum of hope: "The darkest night will end, and the sun will rise."