Raise your hand if you bet on this Victor Hugo adaptation being the one to make a list of top movie musicals. Now put your hands down, fibbers.
I imagine that I was not the only one who expected Les Miserables. It is a beloved musical with embedded religious themes. But the 2022 voters distinguished, and rightly, between the underlying source material and the adaptation of it, insisting that for a film to make a list of best movie musicals, it had to work as a movie.
Disney’s Hunchback is nobody’s favorite entry from that studio. It came after the Disney renaissance had crested and a year after Toy Story signaled the rise of Pixar and the computer-generated animation style.
But in terms of spiritual significance, it is hard to argue that any Disney film invokes and addresses religion more than this one. One of the two most memorable entries is “Hellfire” sung by Judge Frollo, a frankly scary anthem about a man giving himself over to his own lust. I recall talk that Frollo was too evil (or complaints that Disney had turned him into a church figure), but in an age where villains like Scar and Ursula luxuriate in their delightfully nefarious natures, it is actually counter-cultural to encounter a villain aware of his own moral shortcomings. Frollo does sing “God have mercy on me,” perhaps a little too late and a little too half-heartedly, but his recognition that his actions are counter to the gospel he preaches and the church he represents provides the sort of self-awareness that is largely missing in so-called faith-based films.
But if “Hellfire” expresses anger at the potential hypocrisies of church people, “God Help the Outcast” insists that there is still empathy at the heart of the faithful. It also has a mournful quality, foreshadowing the exvangelical movement of the early twenty-first century. When Esmeralda says in her prayer, “I ask for nothing, I can get by…” there is a hint of defiance and anger directed towards the God who would allow his church to be represented by such as Frollo. But when she follows it with, “….But I know so many, less lucky than I….” she expresses the postmodern conundrum of those who are impatient at God for the social justice He claims to want and represent but aware of their own inability to offer genuine hope to the poor and downtrod. Today the label Social Justice Warrior is spat with contempt at those who would insist that we “all are the children of God.” Hunchback reminds us that there was a time when compassion, mercy, and empathy were not only allowed but expected of those who would call themselves representatives of a God whose very nature, properly understood, makes it impossible to hold one’s neighbors in hatred or contempt. — Kenneth R. Morefield (2022)
- Directed by: Gary Trousdale; Kirk Wise
- Produced by: Don Hahn; Roy Conli; Philip Lofaro
- Written by: Victor Hugo; Tab Murphy; Irene Mecchi; Bob Tzudiker; Noni White; Jonathan Roberts.
- Music by: Alan Menken
- Cinematography by:
- Editing by: Ellen Keneshea
- Release date: 1996
- Running time: 91 minutes
- Language: English; Latin
Arts & Faith Lists:
2022 Top 25 Movie Musicals — #24