(a) giving him a loyal sidekick to whom he can confide his thoughts, although "Is everything all right, sir?"/"No, everything is not all right" isn't the most stirring of introductions, and the speech that follows didn't really strike me as explaining anything. I liked the way that they included the fact that his 'suicide note' in canon consists of a list of recommendations for improving police work, although so far as I recall they changed the actual content of the list to make it all for the benefit of improving prisoners' conditions (to ram home the idea that Javert has Seen the Error of his Ways) rather than the oddly-assorted collection of trivia from canon.
(b) having him comment on the way that Valjean was for some reason fondling Marius's head in the cab by hinting that the young man must be Valjean's "special friend" (or a similar euphemism), and having him totally flabbergasted when Valjean returned that he didn't know Marius at all and would in fact suffer by his survival, if he should live. Although I would have thought that concluding that Valjean must be out of his mind (as Javert in fact replies at the time) was a rather more likely outcome than concluding that Valjean was a saint and that he should kill himself...
The Seine under the bridge is remarkably flat and placid, contrary to Hugo's description :-p
Valjean's death makes no sense in this version :-(
First of all they've presented him as much younger than in the book (where we are told that he is in fact eighty, but appears a hale and hearty sixty until he loses Cosette); then they've cut out the whole business of his slow decline and gradual self-excisement from Cosette's life -- doubtless because it would be hard to show and occupy a lot of screen-time -- and had him run off to Digne to tend the Bishop's garden instead, where Cosette tracks him down six weeks later. (Surely the Bishop isn't still alive? What does the current incumbent make of this?) So instead of being reunited with Valjean in his own home on his deathbed, she finds him outdoors busy digging in the garden... whereupon he announces that he is dying. After a gap of only six weeks, and with no reason given. (You could theorise that he had been suffering from some long-standing condition which he had hitherto taken care to conceal from Cosette, but that certainly isn't stated.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-02-11 12:40 am (UTC)(a) giving him a loyal sidekick to whom he can confide his thoughts, although "Is everything all right, sir?"/"No, everything is not all right" isn't the most stirring of introductions, and the speech that follows didn't really strike me as explaining anything. I liked the way that they included the fact that his 'suicide note' in canon consists of a list of recommendations for improving police work, although so far as I recall they changed the actual content of the list to make it all for the benefit of improving prisoners' conditions (to ram home the idea that Javert has Seen the Error of his Ways) rather than the oddly-assorted collection of trivia from canon.
(b) having him comment on the way that Valjean was for some reason fondling Marius's head in the cab by hinting that the young man must be Valjean's "special friend" (or a similar euphemism), and having him totally flabbergasted when Valjean returned that he didn't know Marius at all and would in fact suffer by his survival, if he should live. Although I would have thought that concluding that Valjean must be out of his mind (as Javert in fact replies at the time) was a rather more likely outcome than concluding that Valjean was a saint and that he should kill himself...
The Seine under the bridge is remarkably flat and placid, contrary to Hugo's description :-p
Valjean's death makes no sense in this version :-(
First of all they've presented him as much younger than in the book (where we are told that he is in fact eighty, but appears a hale and hearty sixty until he loses Cosette); then they've cut out the whole business of his slow decline and gradual self-excisement from Cosette's life -- doubtless because it would be hard to show and occupy a lot of screen-time -- and had him run off to Digne to tend the Bishop's garden instead, where Cosette tracks him down six weeks later. (Surely the Bishop isn't still alive? What does the current incumbent make of this?)
So instead of being reunited with Valjean in his own home on his deathbed, she finds him outdoors busy digging in the garden... whereupon he announces that he is dying. After a gap of only six weeks, and with no reason given.
(You could theorise that he had been suffering from some long-standing condition which he had hitherto taken care to conceal from Cosette, but that certainly isn't stated.)