In discussing Les Miserables, most critics have focused on the spectacle (grand), on the acting (quite outstanding) or the use of real-time singing (quite effective), but far less has been written about Victor Hugo's enduring radical politics being brought to the big screen.
This is a case of a movie budget making poverty look nasty and heartbreaking, as nearly sainted characters join revolution in protest of its ills. And 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.
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