Les Miserables
I don't know how the cool kids feel about Les Mis these days, whether they hate it for being too schlocky and mainstream or whether they love it because it's kind of cool to hate it. No matter; it's a rare occasion that I'm accused of being cool.
I've seen two stage productions of Les Misérables: an abridged school production when I was in high school, and a traveling production at LA's Ahmanson Theater when I was in college. I've also listened to the 10th Anniversary concert album about a hundred times. I know the songs so well that I used to pass the time in the filing room by singing the entire thing to myself, back when I had a summer job at a title company.
So, you know, I guess I'm a little biased.
Here's the thing: I know that Les Misérables is melodramatic and overwrought. I know that the music is sentimental as all get-out, and that the lyrics are often clumsy. I can't help it, though—I still get a lump in my throat when I hear Fantine singing about the dream she dreamed.
I wasn't sure exactly what to expect from this movie. On the one hand, as I've mentioned, I do enjoy this musical and I was intrigued by the trailer, which showcased the way they recorded the actors' vocals in scene, rather than having them lip-sync. On the other hand, I wasn't sure about some of the casting, especially Russell Crowe as Javert—sure, I respect him enough as an actor to know that he could do something with the part in a non-musical, but here he'd have to sing. It had also been over a decade since I last saw the play performed, and I wasn't sure if my opinion might have changed as I aged.
As it happens, many of my concerns were borne out, but I still enjoyed this movie.
Some of the vocal performances were, indeed, a bit heavy-handed. Russell Crowe, in particular, had a near total lack of nuance to his singing, with every number sounding thin and boring in the same way. I was reminded a bit of Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia!—oddly, both movies had Amanda Seyfried in the ingenue role. Seyfried, herself, was a bit uneven—her pitch was fine, and actually her soprano range was quite impressive, but there was an odd warble to her singing that made me think of the Disney Snow White—something that I don't recall coming out when she was singing a bit lower in Mamma Mia!—and she, too, didn't have quite the emotional range that I would have liked. Samantha Barks' Éponine was OK if a little overwrought, but then I imagine most anyone would have a hard time living up to Lea Salonga, so I'll give her a pass.
Still, one thing that film gave this production that the stage can have trouble delivering was the opportunity for softness. On stage, even with mikes, actors tend to have to project out to the last row, but on camera they can be a little more subtle. Hugh Jackman was a bit hit-or-miss, but when he was good he was very good; I wished for less belting in "Bring Him Home," but thought he brought something pretty special to "Who Am I?" and "Valjean's Soliloquy." Eddie Redmayne's performance of "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" was as good as any I've heard, maybe better. Even some of the minor roles found some interesting ways to play their parts—the foreman in "At the End of the Day" was refreshingly devoid of bluster while managing to be exactly as sleazy as he needed to be. And it was a nice surprise to see Colm Wilkinson—who played Valjean in the original London and Broadway productions—show up as the Bishop.
But the real star—and surprise—for me was Anne Hathaway. I knew that Hathaway is a capable actress, having seen her tackle some complex roles in Brokeback Mountain and Rachel Getting Married. And I knew she could sing from things like Rio and the Oscars. But it was that last one that made me wonder whether she could do both at the same time, since her performance as Oscar host was needy and quite the opposite of subtle. So I was quite impressed with how dynamic she made her performance of "I Dreamed a Dream," despite the fact that most of that number was filmed with a static camera, up close, in one long shot. (A lot of the big numbers were filmed that way, which I imagine was largely due to the fact that they were recording the vocals live—most likely that meant that everything had to be done in one take. That puts a lot of pressure on the actor to make it interesting.) She really nailed it; I got choked up.
The non-vocal parts of the production suffered from the same unevenness. The camera work was at times odd and distracting, with odd angles and weird cuts—or lack thereof. As I mentioned, the long shots were very demanding for the actors, not all of whom lived up to the challenge. But at the same time, I also felt that cinematographically, a lot of the movie was quite beautiful, especially the close-ups—if those shots had been stills, they'd have made some really interesting portraits.
There were also a number of changes to the songs, some of which were very strange. I understand that in order to fit the entire musical into a film of reasonable length—and at 2 hours and 37 minutes, this one was pushing it—some cuts were going to have to be made. But why add a whole new song, then? And why cut out just certain parts of some of the duets? Leaving Javert to sing parts of "The Confrontation" alone, for example, when Crowe could only have been helped by having Jackman take some of the focus off his weak voice. Director Tom Hooper made some choices that just felt weird to me, but perhaps I'm nitpicking.
This isn't a perfect film, and most likely isn't the best version of Les Misérables ever produced, but there were enough things done right that I feel comfortable giving it a good recommendation to anyone who enjoys musicals.
Viewed: 2013-01-01 | Released: 2012-12-25 | Score: B-