This afternoon, I went to see Les Miserables, a movie adapted from the musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the famous masterpiece by Victor Hugo. The conflicts presented in the story make it greatly enchanting to me.
During the movie, I was wondering what people in general would think of Javert, the policeman who keeps hunting Jean Valjean, the protagonist, because the latter has broken the parole law. At first, since Jean Valjean has turned over a new leaf after being released from jail, I disliked Javert's ruthlessness, expecting him to be forgiving and show mercy. However, when he sings aloud the conflict in his mind of whether to arrest Jean Valjean or to let him go because his life has been spared by him and finally jumps to death, I felt pity for him. Viewed in a different light, he is just a government officer who performs his duty. His relentless pursuit of Jean Valjean is not wrong at all. To me, this is one of the main conflicts in the story. Also, through Javert, Hugo successfully created a conflict in readers' mind--to resent Javert, or to sympathize with him?
Another conflict is when Jean Valjean faces the decision of whether to go to the court and confess that he, then a mayor, is the real Jean Valjean so as to save a man who is mistakenly identified as him. Finally he makes the right choice.
In fact, I've been familiar with the main storyline of the novel since I was in elementary school. However, watching it presented in the form of either a musical or a movie, I was still very touched.
Want to read something about the movie? Click the link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1707386/
Or about the novel? Visit the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables
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