Not because of the music, not because of the first two shots of a man I didn't recognize, but because of Anne Hathaway and her haircut. The desperate song, the hair, and the knowledge in the back of my head of a movie about this book coming out-- Les Misérables.
I'm not at all familiar with the musical, Les Mis (because I am uncultured and uncouth?), nor do I know any of the music from it. But I know the book. Allow me to catch you up with events leading up to me reading Les Mis:
1. The Abridged Heidi Incident
2. Desire to read more classics
3. Started reading the abridged Les Mis
4. Panic upon realization of another abridged book
5. Purchase of a brick known as unabridged Les Mis
Les Mis took me almost an entire year to read cover to cover. It is, by far, the most difficult book I have ever read. I can't say that I understood every last detail or grasped every last symbol or even appreciated every last reference to historical events that I should know more about but don't. My French history knowledge is rusty at best, and my God, was Hugo ever determined to make sure his readers understood Waterloo. I still can't believe that one book took me a year to finish. Granted, that was a very busy year for me and a very wordy, very elaborate, very difficult book to finish, but still. I was a little ashamed of how slow my reading pace went with Les Mis.
But I'm so glad I read it. And seeing the movie trailer gave me chills, truly, like, goosebumps all up and down my arms and hair standing up and everything. It just absolutely blows my mind that things like this can happen, can transcend time and country and language. This book was written in 1862. I wish I could capitalize letters to impress how insane I think that date is. EIGHTEEN SIXTY TWO! In the year one thousand, eight hundred, and sixty two, Victor Hugo wrote a book as a social commentary on various subjects about the lives of these damned and somewhat helpless French lower-class citizens that we can still relate to today. Centuries later, we have made songs from it and a movie from it, and if I can cry about the death of a fictional prostitute (driven to such a profession by her miserable circumstances) from the 1800s, then surely I can be moved to see the current world in which I live in a different light, and make a difference-- can't I?
Books and the themes with which they present us are meant to light a fire within us that catapults us to a new state of thinking and being. When I read, I want to be faced with an idea or opinion or belief that I have never yet encountered, and if it's uncomfortable or something I've been opposed to before, all the better. Make me think. I am a conscious, sentient human being, and I want to be challenged and made to consider options I never would have thought of on my own. My favorite books have shown me worlds and ways of thinking that make me hungry for more.
It was incredible for me to see the trailer for Les Mis, to see scenes so similar to what I had pictured in my head in bright, moving images before me. I swear, the barricade scene during the émeute was almost exactly like what I had conjured in my mind, and that visions like this can happen astounds me. And it all started from a
Banned Books Week has recently finished, and even though I'm quite late on addressing that topic, just give me a couple of sentences more to say-- books should never be banned. Even when I think a book is stupid and worthless (and oh, I could name a few), I do not believe they should be banned. There are so many worlds to discover and so many new ways of thinking to try. I want so badly to share this sentiment through my own writing. One day!
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