{"id":27977,"date":"2019-11-27T11:48:44","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T10:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=27977"},"modified":"2025-12-04T22:30:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:30:05","slug":"understanding-misery-with-the-miserable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/cinema\/films\/understanding-misery-with-the-miserable\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding misery with \u00abLes Mis\u00e9rables\u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cinema Wednesdays - Loris S. Musumeci<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The atmosphere is warm in the heart of\nParis. It's summertime, and the final whistle announces France's victory\nat the 2018 Football World Cup. Suburbanites and urbanites celebrate together\nunder the blue, white and red flag. The joy of the moment nonetheless hints at\nanguish. It's the anguish of the rest of the film, set in Montfermeil\nin the 93. We already know the pressures, we already know the climate that will prevail:\nthat of confrontation. The shouting, singing and dancing appear in all their futility.\nfutility, because world champion or not, France is at war.\nFrance is at war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Clean break. We find ourselves\nwith St\u00e9phane, who joins the Montfermeil anti-crime squad that day.\nMontfermeil. It's his first day on the job, and the worst day of his life.\nWe soon find out why. In the meantime, his two colleagues, well rooted in the\nthe neighborhood, take him on a tour of the place and its marvels: community clans,\ntrash, mistrust, drugs, prostitution, Salafism and more. The\nmany of them are not directly concerned by these problems, and life in the neighbourhood\nmany are not directly concerned by these problems, and life is bustling from the market to the playgrounds.\nBut a little is enough to set people on fire, partly because they don't like the police in the neighbourhood, and partly because they don't like the police in the neighbourhood.\npolice in the neighborhood, and also because they do nothing to make themselves\nlikeable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Violence and hatred<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I was expecting a lesson in victim Manichaeism. On the one hand, there'd be those bastard cops, servants of a racist, oppressive state; on the other, there'd be idle youngsters whose dirty deeds and even crimes were always and endlessly justified by their condition as \"victims\". wretched<\/em>. Ladj Ly's film is not Manichean, because in reality, the three policemen and the local residents share the same malaise, the same language of \u00abwesh, gros\u00bb and \u00abputain, ferme ta gueule\u00bb. It's not the brigade that dominates, nor one clan or another. But the violence and hatred, of which all are victims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding nuance to the subject matter, the\nscript avoids portraying the characters as caricatures. The three\nare neither legalists nor tough guys, but they're not saints, either.\nsaints. Their behavior is nonetheless criticizable in many ways.\nin many respects. Yet we understand that certain methods and uncivilized\nuncivilized arrangements are perhaps the only ones possible in a neighborhood\nno one is afraid of anyone, but where everyone sees the other as a potential\nsometimes very real. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young people, too, are shown for what they are: dreamers who get excited when they have a ball at their feet, victims of their underprivileged environment, thugs who steal and break things, and who have no real respect except for the bearded big brothers who talk to them about religious life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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