I checked out the movie Les Miserables from the library and the movie adaptation is BRILLIANT! I never understood Javier's character until I watched that movie. They didn't just add a scene here or there, they rearranged the order of the songs to emphasize emotion and add meaning, rearranged the locations of the characters at certain time periods (Eponine wasn't supposed to be at the barricade until after the first battle), they added interludes to connect scenes together, added scenes that were in the book but not in the play (Javier pursuing Valjean and Cosette through Paris), added bits and pieces of dialogue to explain character motivations...it's BRILLIANT! The barricade shown during the finale of "Do You Hear the People Sing" is even a reference to the barricade built sixteen years later in 1848 that successfully overturned the French monarchy. Wow! I'm attempting my own novel adaptation right now and it's harder than it looks. I thought it would be easy since the story is already laid out, but what works on paper doesn't necessarily work on the screen and I'm changing so many things so that I can portray the characters visually and make them more interesting. Sometimes I look at the book and think, "What am I doing? This book is awesome. Why should I even try to mess with it?" I thought that book adaptations would be easier than writing an original story, but boy was I wrong.
I highly recommend listening to the director's commentary of Les Miserables AND the interview with the screenwriter, William Nicholson (the director calls him 'Bill' in his commentary). I'm pretty sure I posted a link to William Nicholson's interview before, but it's so good, I can't resist posting it again:
http://www.theqandapodcast.com/2012/12/les-miserables-q.html
And if you haven't seen Les Miserables, WATCH THE MOVIE! And the play, and read the book, and, you know, do everything you can to immerse yourself in the emotional brilliance that is Les Miserables :)
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