“At the end of the day you’re another day older…”
Christmas arrived at last.  For the Sergeant Major and me it began with new high tech gadgets, and ended with more satisfying content and substance from 150 years ago.  We found that we both like it that way.
For her, it was the Kindle Fire HD 8.9” tablet from Amazon.  For me it was the Samsung Chromebook.  Two different devices for two different styles.  We like it that way too.  She can sit and read quietly, or play a game, or hold our Grandson in her lap and share a game with him.
I can sit in my chair and read too, but there is a keyboard readily at hand for when I want to talk back.  And I always want to talk back. 
At any rate, the big buzz in the world at large, was the opening on Christmas Day of the movie “Les Miserables”.  Big Budget.  Big Stars.  Big Advertising.  This was the first time someone had really taken on bringing the wildly successful stage musical to the big screen.  Not something I could do, but I really wanted to see how they did it.
So I bestirred myself to drive all the way to town with the Sergeant Major to take in a movie.  At a big complex.  On a big screen.  Neither of us was able to remember how long it had been since we’d done that. We just knew it was back in the old days before Netflix.
I’ll admit that I was hoping it would knock my socks off.  I wanted it to knock my socks off.  And I am delighted to say that it really did knock my socks off. 
Oh, we can quibble about this scene here, or that scene there, but it’s all just nibbling around the edges.  They got it right.  They did nothing to destroy the beauty of the musical play that 60 million of us love so much, and yet they used the power of film to do things you just can’t do on a stage.
Now, some of the “professional critics” are going wild.   I know that.  I’ve read a couple of reviews where the reviewers seemed totally unable to control their emotions.  One of them, after brilliantly, in his mind, explaining to us unenlightened just why the film was no good, suddenly and derisively blurted out, “But the audiences will love it”.  How true.  We “bitter clingers” out here in the wastelands, still clinging to our guns, our religion, and our beloved “Les Mis”.  He actually got that part right.
So why is it that we love “Les Mis” so much?   For me there are two very clear reasons:  The Music, and the Story.  Surprised huh?  I bet you thought there’d be a deeper answer.  Nope.  It’s all in the fundamentals.  Music-Story. 
First, Composer Claude-Michel Schonberg has written a series of beautiful and sometimes painfully haunting songs.  But more importantly he has crafted a melodic theme for each character, and then has carefully woven that character’s theme into the relationship with the other characters.  Sometimes he uses these recurring melodies to build to an intense level of emotion, and sometimes he uses them quietly, to calm us back down, and get us centered again.
Second, is the classic story from Victor Hugo.  Pain and suffering, love and loss, vengeance and forgiveness.  All centered around one man who, in the end, perseveres to the finish and is redeemed. 
So, sockless and all, it seemed right to me to be sitting in a big movie house on a Christmas afternoon, in the company of my beloved Sergeant Major, watching and listening to a story of Redemption.  Understanding in this lesson from 150 years ago that people haven’t really changed much.  For all our preoccupation with the “modern”, and the high tech gadgets and gizmos of our lives, we are still very much human.  We all need to live.  We all need to love and be loved.  And we all need to be forgiven.  Then it becomes our duty to take that forgiveness and let it mold us and fashion us and encourage us to persevere until one day we too, like Jean Valjean, can join those who have been redeemed. 
“Do you hear the people sing, lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light.
For the wretched of the Earth there is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end and the Sun will rise. “