Re an actor just wanting to be liked and having his character doing things not in keeping with the character -- I've seen it differently with Crowe's choices and just wrote about it somewhere else. Here's how I'm seeing it:
Javert makes his plea to the stars for constancy and for the straight and narrow, hoping for no grays. As he encounters the grays, in Valjean and even in himself (w/ the medal), he can't deal with it, as his entire value system is upended.
He's left unable to act because he does see an opposing option that he himself took (letting Valjean go).
So, the medal pinning makes sense to me (as one of the moments in which he sees something that is probably shocking enough to break through his wall of ordered self-righteousness and leaves him wondering -- which means a niggling 'doubt').
And then his need to kill himself (this guy who was so sure of himself and "never doubted") when he can't reconcile the dueling value systems, most of all now in himself too (when he chose not to turn Valjean in).
The medal was a step in that direction, when he starts a break from his certainty. That part got to me, because I felt that this was when things began to 'get to' Javert. And it makes the suicide less 'sudden.'
Rethinking Crowe's Javert
Updated On: 2/13/13 at 12:22 PM
