How do you feel about the newest l'homme qui rit?
I know you sent me this question last week, anon, and I apologize for not answering sooner. I have a lot to say and yet no words have been readily available, but I figured that I had dallied long enough. When I have a better and more eloquent answer, I will be certain to let you know.
I’m assuming you mean the 2012 film? (There have been many stage productions in recent years including the Russian musical so if you meant one of those, I’m sorry that I misunderstood. And, if you did mean the Russian musical, let’s talk off anon because I don’t know anyone who has seen it yet.) And I reblog things about the 2012 movie, but I know I don’t talk about it quite as much as I could or perhaps should.
It’s not because I don’t appreciate it. I do. I have seen it quite a few times, a great deal more times than anyone knows about. I treat it a bit like contraband, relegating my watching habits to when I have the apartment alone because it sets me off for days, to the point that, for well over the past year when I have been moody or unusually melancholy, the first question is always “what’s wrong?” followed immediately by, “you didn’t watch l’homme qui rit again, did you?”
The first time I saw it was with my love. She knew that I had been waiting for it to come out and she’s the one who studies French in this household, so it made sense to experience it together. We cuddled on the couch as it played. She had tears in her eyes by the end. Meanwhile I had spent the whole movie silently weeping into her hair. Not my finest few hours.
I could write a great deal about how I feel about it, and maybe I will eventually when I am capable of processing it without being so profoundly affected. While it is not the most book-accurate, it is the most vicious version, not due to the tragedy of the story set as a fairy tale but in the small incidental ways that are more than rooted in reality. When he spills the wine on himself while drinking for example, it is not secondhand embarrassment or even the resulting laughter from those attending his fête that makes me lose it (yet again). Some people carry pens or breath mints or band aids wherever they go; I carry straws with me because I will spill otherwise. And no other version illustrates these daily realities and difficulties or offers this brief and brutal exposure of insecurities quite like this version. There’s a real and terrifying humanity at play. And it’s painful. And it’s beautiful. And it’s cruel.
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