Les Miserables 2012 / Tropes M to Z

This page is for tropes that have appeared in the film Les Misérables (2012).

For the rest:

• Tropes A to L

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• Manly Tears:
  • When Éponine dies, Marius cries and Gavroche is silently weeping. Enjolras is also visibly stricken, although what appears to be a Single Tear is actually just rain dripping from his hair.
  • Courfeyrac sobs after Gavroche dies.
  • During "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," Marius sheds one Single Tear.
  • Valjean during his soliloquy and his death.
• Meaningful Background Event: After Enjolras gives Javert to Valjean, Combeferre can be seen in the background saying, "No. No, Enjolras" - and being ignored.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • In a way, "Valjean's soliloquy" and "Javert's Suicide". Valjean and Javert sing the same lines at the end of each song, but one ends with Valjean starting over clean and one ends in Javert's suicide.
  • When the Bishop hands the candlesticks to Valjean, after he had discovered Valjean had stolen all of his silverware; it's a Freeze-Frame Bonus moment, but at the beginning of "Who Am I?", they can be seen on his table. When Valjean leaves Cosette and Marius to retire to the monastery to die, the candlesticks are right beside him once again.
• Meet the New Boss: Gavroche takes this view regarding Louis Philippe I's July Monarchy in "Look Down (The Beggars)".
  There was a time we killed the King
  We tried to change the world too fast
  Now we have got another King
  He's no better than the last
• Movie Bonus Song:
  • "Suddenly" is a new song created for this production, in which Valjean sings about how his life has been opened up by Cosette. It was written by the same songwriters as the other songs in the musical, making it blend in better.
  • There are also several dialogue songs such as "Javert's Introduction" written to convey extra information whilst keeping the film as completely sung-through.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Jean Valjean does this twice. First when he is saved by the Bishop he robbed, and later when he finds out that he ruined Fantine's life without even noticing.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The "Work Song" features the convicts pulling a ship into a drydock, which may be a reference to some earlier adaptations (including at least one production of the musical) which erroneously depicted the convicts as actual galley-slaves (the term, galériens in the original, persisted as a designation for convicts long after actual slave galleys were used, and thus prison was figuratively called "the galleys").
  • As Young Cosette sweeps and sings "Castle on a Cloud", if you freeze at the right moment, there's a momentary live-action reproduction of the famous engraving of Cosette sweeping◊ that became the musical's emblem.
  • At the end of "The Confrontation", Valjean escapes Javert by jumping off a window into a body of water. At that point in the original novel, Valjean was recaptured and brought back to the galleys, but escaped by pretending to drown.
  • The elephant statue from the Brick makes a cameo in the film.
  • Valjean and Cosette being chased through the streets of Paris by Javert before climbing over a wall to escape and take refuge in a convent is straight out of the book.
  • Valjean being greeted by the Bishop as he walks into heaven. In the book, when he tells Cosette that he already has a priest and points upward, the narration implies that the Bishop is indeed bearing witness to his impending death.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The international trailer seems to show Valjean is an active member of Les Amis, and the movie's climax is a final showdown between him and Javert.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Thénardiers' appearance at Marius and Cosette's wedding results in them being able to find Valjean so they can thank him for changing their lives and allowing him to be at peace moments before he dies.
• Object-Tracking Shot: After Valjean tears up his parole record and tosses it away, the camera follows a piece that floats up to the sky then swiftly falls as the film does the first Time Skip to "At The End of the Day". May be a possible Call-Back to an older adaptation that used a similar shot.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Javert. Constantly. To the point of being somewhat memetic.
• Oh, Crap!: When told by Enjolras that they are the last barricade standing and that the people have not arisen like they thought, the remaining students stare blankly at each other, thinking "What am I dying for?"
• The Oner: The film sometimes pushes its (primarily film rather than stage) actors really hard in this regard. The most magnificent example of this is probably Anne Hathaway's spectacular rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream", which is done in one take and goes through Dull Eyes of Unhappiness, nostalgia, regret, sobbing, rage, and panicked gasping all while keeping the camera focused firmly on her face.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
  • The accent that Sacha Baron Cohen uses as Monsieur Thénardier varies from kind of lower-class British to slightly over-the-top French when he's trying to impress someone. May be appear odd and somewhat jarring due to the fact that he's the only one to use a French accent and play with the Translation Convention.
  • Valjean in early scenes (especially What Have I Done?) sounds suspiciously Irish.
  • Despite the fact that the lead roles went mostly to Americans and Australians, it's surprising that so many people's solos have various shades of English accents throughout the movie.
  • Irish. Fra Fee (Courfeyrac) can't seem to keep his Irish accent from making frequent appearances. For example, the slip that occurs at around 0:35 of this scene.
• Opening Scroll: Opens with one, clarifying that this film is not about THE French Revolution, but a later rebellion, the Paris Uprising of 1832.
  1815. TWENTY SIX YEARS AFTER THE START OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. A KING IS ONCE AGAIN ON THE THRONE OF FRANCE.
• Pet the Dog: See Worthy Opponent.
  • Also, once the fighting begins between the Army soldiers and the French citizens, a disguised Javert helps a fallen Courfeyrac to his feet amidst the chaos.
• Piano Drop: During the barricade construction scene, someone throws a piano out of a top floor window to add to the structure.
• The Plague: "Plague" was substituted for "The winter's coming on fast, ready to kill" on "At The End Of The Day". Considering the squalid conditions, an outbreak isn't so farfetched.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "The Confrontation"
  Valjean: "All I did was STEAL! SOME! BREAD!"
• Pyrrhic Victory: Javert is horrified by the army's victory against the students.
• The Queen's Latin: The cast is primarily composed of American and Australian actors. Not only do most of them speak The Queen's French, but many of the lower-class characters speak Cockney French.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: The revolutionaries lose the fight against the corrupt government, but Marius survives and gets married to his beloved Cosette, Valjean dies in peace, and the epilogue suggests the revolution will fight another day in liberating France.
• Real After All: The majority of characters in the stage musical are pessimistic about the existence of the afterlife and God. The movie's ending refutes this.
• Real Men Love Jesus: Valjean's religious outlook on life is restored to how it is in the book (some productions of the musical may downplay it). The more classical kind of this goes, as usual, to Javert, a change inherited from the musical (in the book, religion never enters Javert's thoughts until Valjean shows him mercy, but let's face it, it would have looked pretty silly for Javert to pray to a Lawbook).
• Reckless Gun Usage: Enjolras took away a musket from the hands of a reckless student in "ABC Cafe".
• Remake Cameo:
  • Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean, as the Bishop of Digne.
  • Frances Ruffelle, the original Eponine, has a cameo as one of the whores in "Lovely Ladies". Apparently, her character was dubbed "Most Fabulous Whore".
  • Hadley Fraser, who has played Marius, Javert and (most famously) Grantaire, is the officer leading the attack against Les Amis ABC.
  • Katie Hall and Gina Beck are some of the women on "Turning".
  • Katy Secombe, who played Mme. Thénardier in the 2011 London production, appears as a woman aiding the Friends of the ABC (she's the lady whose red flag was taken by Marius during "One Day More").
• Ridiculously Difficult Route: Unlike in the source materials where they are Absurdly Spacious Sewers, the sewers in this adaption are this. Valjean has to force himself and Marius through a tiny tunnel, and the parts where the ceiling is high enough to stand are so filled with gunk that it's easier to drown.
• The Rival: Inspector Javert makes it his life mission to capture Valjean after he breaks his parole. Averted by Eponine and Cosette, as Eponine as a child isn't shown (at least onscreen) to be as nasty to Cosette as her parents are, and as adults, despite the love triangle between them and Marius, the two never actually meet.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Javert's habit, if you can call it that, of walking on high ledges. Weird? Yes. Dangerous? Yes. Demonstrative of his belief that he is morally superior (and therefore higher), that God will not let him fall as he literally walks the straight and narrow path, and foreshadowing for his eventual death? Oh hell yes.
  • The eagle and night sky behind Javert forming an angelic wing and void.
  • The barricade erected by the doomed revolutionaries has coffins mounted on the front of it. It has a big red coffin and a small blue one. What were Enjolras and Gavroche wearing?
  • As Valjean prays to God in "Bring Him Home", a giant eye "Looks Down" on him from a billboard in the background.
  • In "A Little Fall of Rain", Eponine and Marius lean on a French flag, with the words "La Mort" clearly visible. And what does it mean? Death. Makes one wonder what's going to happen to her and the barricade boys.
  • Colm Wilkinson, who played the original Jean Valjean in the stage version, appears as the Bishop of Digne. When he gives Hugh Jackman's Valjean the silver candlesticks in the movie, he is Passing the Torch of Jean Valjean. Plus a number of actors that make up the barricade boys also played Marius or Enjolras in the stage versions.
  • "Don't they know they're making love to one already dead?" sings Fantine at the end of "Lovely Ladies", and for "I Dreamed A Dream," she spends the next few minutes in a box resembling a coffin, complete with pillows^note Anne Hathaway even said in an interview with Jon Stewart that, among the many, many takes of "I Dreamed A Dream" that were shot, one of them was entirely inside a coffin.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: As the revolt starts going badly for the students, many try to escape the barricade into the near-by houses. The occupants lock them out instead.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Marius asks Eponine to tail Cosette for him, they spar lines set to the melody of "I Was Made For Loving You" by Kiss.
  • The hymn sung on the barricade has chords and a melody that suspiciously sound at times like the "Chant des Partisans", the hymn of the French Resistance during World War II.
• Shown Their Work:
  • During Javert's roof walking sequence in "Stars", there is a shot of Notre-Dame without her spire. It's accurate, since the original one was demolished during the 18th century prior to this time period, and the building of the one that lasted until the 2019 fire did not begin before 1845. Also accurate? The depiction of the area of Saint-Michel as one huge dirty hovel.
  • The uniforms Javert and the constables wear also count: the 1823 version sports the fleur-de-lis, the traditional symbol of the French monarchy. On the 1832 version, it has disappeared, since the July Monarchy had dropped its use in 1831.
  • Avoided entirely in the opening scene however, which uses the wrong version of the French flag (the tricolor was the Revolutionary flag, replaced by the crown and three fleurs-de-lis of the Bourbon royal family after Napoleon's defeat in 1815).
• Sickening "Crunch!": In "Javert's Suicide"
• Signature Style: The film, like The King's Speech, is filled with distinctive walls with distressed layers of paint, eye-catching bricks, or battle damage, along with an unsteady and claustrophobic camera.
• Slasher Smile: The john who tries to rape Fantine.
• Small Start, Big Finish: The film's version of "I Dreamed A Dream", moreso compared to the stage version as it begins with Fantine laying in a bed almost murmuring as she laments the state of her life. The accompaniment swells in the last verse and her singing incorporates more belts.
• Stealth Pun: After the final battle at the barricade, when Valjean flees with Marius into the sewers to avoid capture, there is a shot of Javert searching for him with that Determinator face he has. Cut to Valjean in the sewers, and the background music is now the melody of the Work Song from the beginning, when it was accompanied by the lyrics "look down, look down".
• Sung-Through Musical: Much like the original musical, the movie's dialogue is almost entirely sung-through. However, it does have dialogue that's regularly spoken, albeit it only happens occasionally.
• Take a Third Option: Javert's solution of whether To Be Lawful or Good — morally, he can't continue to harass a man who saved his life, but legally he can't let a convict go free — is to kill himself.
• A Taste of the Lash: Valjean is not shown being flogged during his time as a convict, but in the "Work Song", he's got injuries suggesting that it's happened to him.
• That Poor Cat: In "Master of the House," we see Thenardier chopping off a cat's tail and placing it in a mincer to pretend it's beef.
• Thousand-Yard Stare:
  • Marius sports this briefly after the events at the barricade. It takes a love song from Cosette to pull him out.
  • And another one, though brief, is at the end where the dead people start singing "Do You Hear the People Sing? (Reprise)". As Marius is hugging Cosette, his gaze briefly, but perceptibly, shifts into this - Word of God has stated this is because Marius can actually hear them singing. Cosette's gaze also shifts in much the same way, implying that she can hear them too.
• Timeshifted Actor: Isabelle Allen as young Cosette and Natalya Wallace as young Eponine.
• Truer to the Text: Though the film primarily adapts the stage musical, it also changes or adds in a few details to be closer to the original novel.
  • Several additional scenes from the book that were cut for the play are added back in; see Adaptation Expansion.
  • The scene where Javert informs the Mayor about "Valjean's" arrest is rewritten to portray him as ashamed about his seeming false accusation, to the point of asking him to dismiss him for it.
  • Quite a few circumstances around Éponine's death are far closer to the novel than the musical:
    • In the original book, Cosette leaves a note in the garden for Marius after Valjean tells her they're leaving; Éponine finds, takes, and conceals it from Marius in an attempt to sabotage the relationship, but later gives it to him after being fatally wounded. Marius then sends Gavroche to deliver a letter of reply to Cosette at her new address. This is also how it plays out in the movie (with the possible exception that Éponine doesn't seem to be actively trying to break up Marius and Cosette by taking the note, and just does so in a Moment of Weakness), which is a change from the stage production, in which Marius sees Éponine at the barricade and sends her (rather than Gavroche) to deliver his reply in an attempt to keep her safe and out of danger, while Cosette never writes him a letter at all.
    • How Éponine gets shot also changes; in the novel, where she is a Yandere, she tricks Marius into going to the barricade so they can die together, but ends up Taking the Bullet for him so she can die before he does. The stage play changes this to her simply being shot when she returns to the barricade after delivering Marius's letter for him. Since, as mentioned above, Éponine does not deliver this letter in the film, this is changed back to her Taking the Bullet to save Marius when he's about to be shot by the enemy (though, thanks to her Adaptational Heroism in the play and movie alike, she did not lure him to the barricade here).
    • This also causes a small detail of the ending to change. In the theater version, right as Valjean is dying, the deceased Éponine appears as an angel to guide him to the afterlife together with Fantine, presumably due to his kindness to her when she delivered Marius's note. Because she did not do so in the film, Valjean doesn't know her, and thus, when he dies at the end of the film, it's only Fantine's and the Bishop’s spirits who appear to him, which was also the case in the original book.
• We Have Reserves: The soldiers who crushed the revolt. There's so many of them that their dead weren't even properly gathered, in contrast with the students who laid side by side.
• Wham Line: You just know the ABCs are definitely doomed.
  "We're the only barricade left."
  "CANNONS"!
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • How Fantine responds to Valjean's intervention in her arrest - he might not recognize her, but she clearly recognizes him as the factory owner whose refusal to intervene months ago led to her being fired and eventually forced into prostitution in the first place.
  Fantine: You let your foreman send me away - yes, you were there and turned aside!
  • Not all of the students are happy about Marius' gunpowder stunt. Combeferre (the blond in the blue vest and red tie), in particular, practically shouts at Marius' face, "What were you thinking, Marius?! You could have gotten us all killed! My life is not yours to risk, Marius!"
• Where It All Began: Valjean dies in the convent where his life began anew. He even brought back the candlesticks the Bishop gave him.
• Worthy Opponent: Between Javert and Gavroche. When Valjean asks to kill Javert, Gavroche lets him have a pistol but looks upset, and also looks grim when he hears the gunshot a moment later. Javert is also aghast when he discovers Gavroche's body, and pins a medal on him in respect of his bravery.
• Would Hurt a Child: Gavroche, even more so than in the stage adaptation, with a long, extended scene of him defying a soldier's orders and getting shot at while singing "Little People", until the soldier eventually hits him square for the kill, with no Gory Discretion Shots to hide the fact that a soldier just killed a child.
• You Are Number 6: Javert insisting on calling Jean "24601" even after Jean has been paroled.
• You Have No Chance: Said word for word by the Loudhailer to Les Amis.

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