Die Wütenden - Les Misérables

In Paris the fragile peace between gangs and police is threatened when a lion cub from the circus goes astray. Depicting the harsh and violent culture of the authorities and those the authorities universally neglect and forget (the world over): you reap what you sow and cultivate, if it has sharp fangs it will bite you where it hurts the most.

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.

Some people acknowledge that this movie is well shot, but complain that it doesn't get the roots of the problem, doesn't point out the culprits, probably the capitalist society and France's colonial past. Neither does it offer much in the way of easy solutions, which would have been completely off the mark. Any of that would have led to a militant movie that would have satisfied a few militants but that would have had much less impact on the rest of the viewers.

People compare this movie to La Haine, which was a landmark in its time; but Les Miserables takes a much wider view, where each participant - even the shadiest - has his own logic (few women in this movie, btw) and reasons for doing what they are doing. It is this humanist outlook that tags it to Victor Hugo, rather than the story that has little to do with the novel of the same name.

The suspense is riveting to the end, all the more that we don't know exactly where the movie is going. There are loads of short appearances by little-known actors that leave you wondering whether they are are actually acting a part or playing their own role. The action scenes are realistic and original.

"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."