#beeble mis

At a guess from having watched it all way too many times, and based on Davies’ comments in interviews, I think the BBC approach was to try to make LM “realistic”. 

Now, I think this is a common approach in more recent adaptations, and I think it is, in general, a huge  mistake in adapting LM.  The novel’s not realistic, at all-- it’s Romantic, capital R , with visions and implied ghosts and explicit divine intervention and emotions that are meant to be clear from mental equivalent of the cheap seats in the back of the theater.  It’s got Love at First sight, fer cryin’ out loud!  I’ve seen several adaptations try to calm it down and make it realistic and it just does not work, the story fights realism on a fundamental, structural level. 

And the barricades are , very intentionally, the  Grand Mythic scene*, directly meant to be Epic, full of grand idealism and the sense of gods and giants and impossible feats.  It really really  doesn’t  work as Realism. 

And yet!! somehow! this is the one bit that imo really works, on its own terms! 

I think it may be because combat is one of the few places that modern-approach directors will actually accept a degree of heightened reality; the weirdness of combat and emergency situations is well known enough to make that a “realistic” approach.  So even though this adaptation was never going to give us Enjolras standing unmarked at the end of combat, or the full force of the Quel Horizon speech, or Prouvaire’s final prophetic cry of defiance or “your friends have just shot you” --we still get a setting-fitting version  of Five Less One More, and of OFPD, and some really sincere and emotionally raw moments between characters , and even Enjolras talking about love at the top of the barricade.   

The series even goes on the side of a bit of idealism itself, really -- Le Cabuc is cut out, the non-student fighters are given more agency and sense of self-organization than Hugo really hands them, and Hugo’s focus on the costs to surrounding residents of having a barricade spring up in a neighborhood are  pretty well minimized.  And then there’s the whole thing with Not!Feuilly Despiat which, geez, that is so  good and so idealistic and Mythic and on-theme for the story even on a novel level, that’s a whole extra post but geez--  Anyway,for some reason, this  is the point where the show decided to play gentle with the take on the characters and imo it works! 

Also: while we’ve only got three named Amis,  and Not!Feuilly Despiat , and all four of them get their own solid arcs here .  Courfeyrac goes from an uncertain, inexperienced fighter who seems to fear he’s only been playing with revolution to finding an absolutely hardcore level of commitment and an absolutely heroic final scene,  Grantaire gets his whole conversion arc, Enjolras visibly moves from immediate pragmatic focus  to a longer, wider view that’s more explicitly about love for people and faith in the ones who’ll come next-- it’s all there, it all works.  It’s not Hugo’s barricade, of course it’s not, but what it is works on its own terms. 

(and seriously I gotta write about the Despiat thing some other time)