Reposted from a Facebook note of mine.

Not sure whether this belongs here, as it takes on both the film and the book at once. I thought that since we discuss books elsewhere on this forum, it could be risked, but if not, feel free to delete it, Teague.

It's known as one of the biggest big books of all time, coming in at 1,900 pages in the original French and 530,982 words in one of the many English translations. The world-renowned musical adaptation, which has been seen by an estimated one billion people, is by necessity a condensed version of the tale, but retains its epic scope and humane spirit. I am, of course, speaking of Les Misérables, Victor Hugo's masterwork.

I saw the musical for the first time on New Year's Day 2013, by way of its film adaptation. My reaction was overwhelmingly positive, and I felt I had to read the book. In order to prepare myself for the undertaking, I read the other of Hugo's twin masterpieces, Notre-Dame de Paris or simply The Hunchback of Notre Dame, first. It was enjoyable, but it also had me worried. Hunchback is, quite simply, a melodrama—an excellently told one, and far above the rest of the nineteenth century's Gothic tales, but a melodrama nevertheless. In fact, I honestly prefer the Disney film, and far prefer said film's Berlin stage adaptation, Der Glöckner von Notre Dame; the darkness of the story feels more bold and startling in the context of a Disney production, and the music remains Alan Menken's best ("Hellfire" in particular is semi-legendary for its dark, adult themes and choral power). My reaction to Hugo's youthful work made me apprehensive as to whether or not I would enjoy his magnum opus.

I needn't have worried.

In both forms, Les Misérables is sprawling, frustrating, and overly grandiose. Objectively, it is not a good film, and a horribly crafted novel. However, its massive flaws are, in a way, strengths, essential to the greatness of the work, and are in any event overcome by the essential emotion and humanity of the story. The following review will address both the novel and the 2012 film, comparing and contrasting the two and addressing their shared and separate strengths and weaknesses.

The core story of both the novel and its musical adaptation follows the plight of Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who spent nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread in order to feed his family. Bitter and spiteful, Valjean finds himself at a crossroads after an incredible act of mercy on the part of the aged Bishop of Digne saves him from being arrested yet again. Determined to change his ways and become a force of good, Valjean breaks his parole and begins a new life as the mayor of a small French town. Under his leadership, the town begins to prosper, and it would appear that he has escaped his former life for good. However, he is forced to reveal himself when another is arrested in his place, and finds himself on the run again, pursued by the rigid Inspector Javert. This time, Valjean is not alone in fleeing the law—he has taken it upon himself to protect Cosette, the child of the prostitute Fantine, after rescuing her from the scheming innkeepers who have raised her. Years pass, and Cosette becomes a woman. She and Valjean are swept up in the July Revolution of 1832 when she finds herself in love with one of the republican insurgents, Marius Pontmercy, and as the conflict widens, Valjean may be unable to avoid a final reckoning with the law.

Both versions of this tale are behemoth in scope; however, the film is a pale shade of the novel in terms of length. Hugo conducted thirty years of extensive research before completing the work considered to be his masterpiece. A massive egotist, he refused to allow editors to cut any material from his book, and this results in a novel that is among the most horribly structured known to man. The first hundred pages of the story do not deal with Valjean at all, instead choosing to give us an intimate portrait of his savior, the Bishop of Digne, who is not seen again after his act of mercy toward the ex-convict. Seventy pages are spent discussing the Battle of Waterloo, and only the final three of these have anything to do with the rest of the book. Chapter after chapter is spent on the obscure rites of a group of nuns and the morality of convents, twenty pages are devoted to the terminology of the Parisian argot street-speak. Within the novel's climax comes a twenty-page discourse on the history of the Paris sewers. These rambling lectures of Hugo's bring the story to a grinding halt time after time, and leave the reader understandably frustrated.

The film is much better in the regard of pacing; it removes by necessity all of Hugo's narrative side lectures, cuts out subplots that take up large chunks of the story, condenses the central plotline, and squeezes scenes that took up numerous chapters into four-minute songs. The resulting runtime of two hours and forty minutes is positively brisk compared to Hugo's narrative. As a result, the film is much more breathless and exciting at parts, and much easier to follow without one's eyes glazing over.

However, better pacing is not always a good thing. In some crucial instances, the film's abridgments hurt the plausibility of the story. The most egregious example of this is Fantine's descent into prostitution in order to save her daughter. In the novel, chapter after chapter details the degrading process Fantine goes through as she loses her beauty, her hair, her teeth, and her dignity, and the time frame is several years. The film condenses the entire process into one evening, and while it is still heartwrenching, it is not believable. In most other instances, it is not the story that is hurt but the characters. "Who Am I?", the song that Jean Valjean sings as he debates whether or not to turn himself in and save the man arrested in his place, utterly fails to convey the agonizing dread and indecision that plague Valjean in the novel; over twenty pages are spent inside his mind as he pleads with his conscience to find another way. What follows is one of the novel's most exciting passages, in which Valjean desperately rides to the impostor's trial, encountering obstacle after obstacle and still wrestling with his fear and indecision even as he enters the courtroom. This sequence leaves the reader utterly breathless with suspense, and as agonized as Valjean over his decision.

The film cuts it entirely.

As a result, the film's Valjean is not as great a man. The Valjean of both works is, in the end, a saint; but the novel's Valjean is a tortured, imperfect saint, while the film's nearly never wavers in his good deeds. This loss of character development is also keenly felt in the relationship between Valjean and Cosette; we can see their love for each other unfolding in the novel, and it is a love that will warm the coldest of hearts. The film never shows us how the two came to love one another as father and daughter, and we feel that loss.

Even the cutting of Hugo's narrative rambling is sometimes a loss, in a way. Yes, the history of the Bishop is entirely unnecessary, and the film was right to remove it. It is also beautiful, and allows us to appreciate the good man so much more. Yes, the recounting of the Battle of Waterloo is unforgivable. It is also a magnificent piece of writing. And really, it is these diversions that make the book what it is; part of its greatness is its immense scope, a scope that does not care about plot or narrative but instead gives us a picture of what France was during the time of Les Misérables.

The core characters of Valjean and Fantine are essentially the same in the novel and the musical. However, nearly all of the rest of the cast is altered, in ways both major and minor, in the musical, usually for the better. Cosette's character is sacrificed for the rest of the performers, and as a result her and Marius' love story loses plausibility and emotion (we do not care in the novel, either, really, but at least they fall for each other over a period of weeks instead of the instant their eyes meet). However, Marius' character is bettered by this sacrifice; the film chooses to focus on his role in the July Revolution, which makes his arc more believable and makes us care for him more. In the book, he literally wanders into the conflict due to his heartbreak over Cosette; he has no personal stake in the matter. The film's Marius is one with purpose. Eponine, the girl who loves Marius but is not loved by him in return, is also improved; in the novel she comes off as slightly creepy and obsessed, and has no real reason for caring for him. In the film, she is established as his best friend. (The novel does, however, have the more tear-jerking dying words for her, after she has saved her love's life at the cost of her own during a battle: "You know something, Monsieur Marius? I think I was a little bit in love with you.") The Thénardiers, the innkeepers who raised Cosette as a servant, are complete monsters in the book. They become the film's comic relief, and while they do not really fit the story anymore that way, it allows us to like them instead of being outright horrified by their actions.

The most dramatic character changes in the musical belong to Javert, and they are most welcome. In the novel, he does not show up until far into the first act, and appears sporadically from there until the end. The reader never really gets a sense of his personal stake in the hunt for Valjean. In the film, he is there from the beginning, where he is the prison guard that releases Valjean to his parole; he becomes obsessed with apprehending the ex-convict after he reappears. His strict adherence to the law is also given added depth in the musical, as he believes it will grant him salvation from God.

In both versions of the story, we are utterly moved by the characters. It is different for each person—some may prefer Valjean, some Fantine, some Eponine—but everyone will find a character to latch onto and invest in. It is here that Hugo's improvement as a writer from Hunchback can most clearly be seen. Hugo was a youthful man when he wrote Hunchback, and it shows. The characters have little depth, and the narrator's views on life and love are sometimes charming in their naivete. In Les Misérables, we can see how much he had matured as a writer in the thirty years since he had penned his famous melodrama. Les Misérables is an uncomfortable look at the dark places of Hugo's world. The poverty, indignity, and hopelessness of that age's poor are conveyed in all their tragedy and brutality. The novel's title is a microcosm of this—the reason the English translation retains the French title is because English fails to convey the French's nuance and layers of meaning; the title can be translated as "The Miserable Ones", "The Wretched Poor", "The Victims", "The Hungry Poor", "The Underdogs", etc. The musical also accomplishes this portrayal, in Anne Hathaway's stunning, bitter soliloquy "I Dreamed a Dream" (the only time I have ever cried during a film). However, while Hugo had lost his naivete concerning the world, he had not lost his essential faith in God, love, and humanity, and this is crucial to the emotional impact of both the novel and the musical. Yes, the world is ugly and cruel, and the poor and downtrodden suffer in ways beyond imagining, they say. But we do not have to give in. There is always hope, there is always redemption. We all have the capability of choosing to act as Jean Valjean did, to escape our bitterness and despair and embrace love and God. We need not submit to our oppressors; there will always be those like Marius and Enjolras to rise against tyranny, and while they may fail, their spirit lives and fights on ("Do You Hear the People Sing?"). Love, in the end, will conquer all; humanity will free itself, and mankind shall be redeemed. Hugo's magnum opus is still a melodrama; any work written in the nineteenth century really cannot help but be classified as such. However, it also transcends melodrama, becoming something much more.

In the end, Les Misérables is indeed the greatest story ever told. Not the best, and not my favorite, but the greatest. Within it is contained history, suspense, emotion, a look at humanity in both its best and worst states—an epic, sprawling (for better or for worse), and yet still intimate portrait of the world that Hugo lived in. Nothing written before or since can ever convey the sense of scope that Hugo's novel has. The musical lacks this behemoth nature, but retains the book's themes and characters and in many cases betters them, and its music has become a phenomenon of its own.

In the end, Hugo himself summed his masterpiece up best, in his 1862 preface to the novel:

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century—the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labor, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this.

Postscript: For anyone out there interested in reading the book, I'd recommend the Norman Denny translation; it's the best blend of readability and accuracy of the many available, and moves two of the longer digressive sections into appendixes.