"Radicalism of Les Miserables" compared to the OWS movement

excerpts from Huffington Post article on the film, "Les Miserables," by Nathan Newman; NYU Information Law Institute Fellow:

Quote :: ... in many ways, this 1832 occupation of the barricades of Paris is the early forefather of 2011's Occupy protests across the country.

But the real measure of the radicalism of Les Miserables is not in the character of the heroes or the evils visited upon them, but in that of the movie's villain, Inspector Javert. Unlike so many political films whose villain may be a rogue corporation or a corrupt cabal of the government, Javert is rigidly honest and even fair in his own terms, since he believes his harsh standards of justice should apply to himself when he falls short.

As the movie sings, Javert is the law, embodied, a representative of the system not at its worst, but in many ways at its best.

And that economic and political system, even at its best, leaves mothers dying in the streets, children orphaned and good men losing decades of their life in prison for minor crimes committed to feed their families. This is the rare movie with hard class politics that demands not opportunity for a few marginalized people but a change in the system itself.

It is not just because the hero Jean Valjean is a good man that he saves Javert's life, but because Javert on his own terms is a good man as well -- just dedicated to protecting a very bad system. Instead of personalizing politics in a bad guy the hero can kill, this is a movie where a Javert defending the system is instead confronted with the system's own failings -- and can't live with having dedicated his life to defending a lie.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-newman/the-enduring-radicalism-o_b_2386479.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

More in the full article including an interesting bit on the child, Gavroche and the film's treatment of his part of the story.

And the conclusion includes:

Quote :: Hugo's whole story is that of how revolutionary change is needed to make the world safe for love and compassion in the world. Yet his romanticism would argue that love is needed to make revolution safe for the world as well -- something lost in the worst, dogmatically ideological revolutions we saw in the last century.

Anyone want to discuss?

» Les Misérables - Extended First Look
» Home Box Office to carry Les Miserables
» The Art of Movement