This movie is the truest adaptation of the book I've ever seen. The movie is actually set during World War II, with a new plot, but one that echoes and follows the book constantly in surprising ways. Claude Lelouche is an ideal Valjean--with the natural, powerful goodness Victor Hugo intended and none of the cloying or artificially heroic goodness Valjeans in movies often have. Whether you've read the novel or not, this is a wonderful, emotionally wrenching movie, worth watching.