![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2012\/12\/javert-crowe.png\" "\\"javert")
<\/a>The two things I found most frustrating about the\u00a0Les Mis<\/em> movie were the camerawork and Russell Crowe\u2019s performance as Javert. \u00a0And they both came together to annoy me during \u201cStars.\u201d \u00a0Crowe is sad-eyed instead of steely from his first appearance and, for this number, director Tom Hooper places him on a ledge. \u00a0This seems to be done simply so that Hooper can set up some parallelism in his cimematography; the shots of Javert walking right along the edge of the roof in \u201cStars\u201d are echoed when he paces the bridge in \u201cSoliloquy (Javert\u2019s Suicide).\u201d<\/p>\n But these two scenes don\u2019t correspond in this way. \u00a0Javert has no suicidal ideation; he is pure certainty. \u00a0Frankly, even the pacing, on or off a roof, makes no sense. \u00a0Javert is complete and stable in himself. \u00a0It\u2019s very fashionable to show villians as sympathetic by revealing their weakness and doubt, but it might be a more accurate (and a better warning!) to show that uncharity can feel like joyful\u00a0strength<\/a>. \u00a0In Hugo\u2019s novel, he describes Javert as follows.<\/p>\n He, Javert personified justice, light, and truth, in their celestial function as destroyers of evil. He was surrounded and supported by infinite depths of authority, reason, precedent, legal conscience, the vengeance of the law, all the stars in the firmament; he protected order, he hurled forth the thunder of the law, he avenged society, he lent aid to the absolute; he stood erect in a halo of glory; there was in his victory a reminder of defiance and of combat; standing haughty resplendent he displayed in full glory the superhuman beastliness of a ferocious archangel; the fearful shadow of the deed which he was accomplishing, making visible in his clenched fist the uncertain flashes of the social sword; happy and indignant, he had set his heel on crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, and hell, he was radiant, exterminating, smiling; there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous St. Michael.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Javert is a grotesque echo of something beautiful and truly\u00a0desirable\u00a0 \u00a0He lives in the moral uncanny valley. \u00a0Crowe\u2019s best moment as Javert comes after he is discovered by the revolutionaries, who plan to put him to death. He barks out, \u201cShoot me now or shoot me later \/ Every schoolboy to his sport \/ Death to each and every traitor \/ I renounce your people\u2019s court!\u201d \u00a0His defiance is tinged with contempt, but here Crowe musters a joy akin to the Trappist martyrs in\u00a0Of Gods and Men<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0He is free because he answers to something higher than other men and is conserving something beside his own life.<\/p>\n The film could have done more to heighten Javert\u2019s jarring not-quite-virtue if \u201cStars\u201d had been set up to parallel \u201cWhat Have I Done\u201d instead of the suicide. \u00a0Valjean sings \u201cWhat Have I Done\u201d in a moment of profound doubt, as he decides whether he can accept the forgiveness of the bishop he has robbed. \u00a0Let\u2019s listen to it again:<\/p>\n