Les Miserables---the power of the musical of mercy

I just returned from the movie theatre, having just viewed the Les Miserables film for the first time since it came out this Christmas. My mother and I both felt that this was the most powerful film we had seen in quite some time. I couldnt help myself, but I must confess I cried through a great deal of it, so much was I moved in my very soul. The very fact that this version was a film adaptation of the actual stage musical was a feat in and of itself, but the skill and talent of all the actors in their singing and theatrical performances prove that true talent in the film industry has not died and given way to that mediocrity of television called "reality tv." Tears sprang to my eyes every time Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman were on screen. I left with a feeling of emotional exhaustion, my heart and soul run through the gamut of all spectrum of human emotions: terror, shame, anger, exhileration, adoring love, confusion, excruciating pain, and shock at undeserved mercy. I was still atop the cloud of bliss musicals of such depth and magnitude bring, when I was jarred out of my reverie by a young man who laughingly joked, "so this police guy just hunts that other wdude for 30 years and then kills himself? Seriously? Thaats so lame." The critic within me raged---you know whats wrong with this generation?! Everything is trivialized! He missed the whole point! The ignorance! Gah!!! And then it came to me (of course, in the voice of my mother, who, bless her heart, listened to my tirade of uneducated youth and ignorance abounding in the world with a smile.): of course he asks that question. He missed the mercy extended and mercy rejected. He missed the blindness of Javert to the mercy extended to him because mercy was not a solution to any situation or dilemma in his world. Punishment, consequences of actions, the letter of the law---that was all he could understand.Javert was trapped so much in his law, the regulation, that he could not, would not relinquish his insatiable desire to regulate the law. It was not that he had a "hobby" in hunting Jean Valjean, but that he was bound to his rules, so much so he could not bring himself to giver mercy, because HE must have justice. And as I realized these ponderings, I felt for the young man, for he was every bit a blind as InspectorJavert, and indeed pitiable, for when truth faces you head on and you cannot see it, what a misguided life of delusion you lead...