A summer's day in a Paris housing estate tightens like a fist: three cops, one stolen lion cub, and a drone overhead turning a small humiliation into a fuse waiting for a spark.

Les Misérables

14 November 2019 France 104 min 7.6 (1,628)

Director: Ladj Ly

Cast: Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti, Djebril Zonga, Steve Tientcheu, Jeanne Balibar

Drama Crime Thriller Policing as an abuse of power Intergenerational injustice The cycle of violence and retaliation Images, surveillance and who tells the story A fragile social ecosystem

Budget: $2,500,000

Box Office: $54,606,372

Les Misérables — Movie Quotes

Name: Les Misérables
Director: Ladj Ly
Released: 2019

Memorable Quotes

Mes amis, retenez ceci : il n'y a ni mauvaises herbes ni mauvais hommes. Il n'y a que de mauvais cultivateurs.

— Victor Hugo (closing epigraph)

Context

The line from Hugo's novel appears as a title card closing the film, immediately after the confrontation in the stairwell cuts to black.

Meaning

Rendered in English as "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators." Placed after the film's unresolved final image, it reassigns responsibility from the children on screen to the adults and institutions that shaped them — and to the audience that has just watched.

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