Posted on 12/17/2012 9:31:42 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe sing -- and wage a Sisyphean battle against musical diarrhea -- in Tom Hooper's adaptation of the stage sensation.
A gallery of stellar performers wages a Sisyphean battle against musical diarrhea and a laboriously repetitive visual approach in the big-screen version of the stage sensation Les Miserables. Victor Hugo's monumental 1862 novel about a decades-long manhunt, social inequality, family disruption, injustice and redemption started its musical life onstage in 1980 and has been around ever since, a history of success that bodes well for this lavish, star-laden film. But director Tom Hooper has turned the theatrical extravaganza into something that is far less about the rigors of existence in early 19th century France than it is about actors emoting mightily and singing their guts out. As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good.
The first thing to know about this Les Miserables is that this creation of Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, is, with momentary exceptions, entirely sung, more like an opera than a traditional stage musical. Although not terrible, the music soon begins to slur together to the point where you'd be willing to pay the ticket price all over again just to hear a nice, pithy dialogue exchange between Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe rather than another noble song that sounds a lot like one you just heard a few minutes earlier. There were 49 identifiable musical numbers in the original show, and one more has been added here. Greatly compounding the problem is that director Hooper, in his first outing since conquering Hollywood two years ago with his breakthrough feature, The King's Speech, stages virtually every scene and song in the same manner, with the camera swooping in on the singer and thereafter covering him or her and any other participants with hovering tight shots; there hasn't been a major musical so fond of the close-up since Joshua Logan attempted to photograph Richard Harris' tonsils in Camelot. Almost any great musical one can think of features sequences shot in different ways, depending upon the nature of the music and the dramatic moment; for Hooper, all musical numbers warrant the same monotonous approach of shoving the camera right in the performer's face; any closer and their breath would fog the lens, as, in this instance, the actors commendably sang live during the shooting, rather than being prerecorded.
With Hooper's undoubted encouragement, the eager thespians give it their all here, for better and for worse. The “live” vocal performances provide an extra vibrancy and immediacy that is palpable, though one cannot say that the technique is necessarily superior in principle, as it was also used by Peter Bogdanovich on his famed folly, At Long Last Love.
One of the chief interests of the film is discovering the singing abilities of the notable actors assembled here, other than Jackman, whose musical prowess is well-known. Crowe, who early in his career starred in The Rocky Horror Show and other musicals onstage in Australia, has a fine, husky baritone, while Eddie Redmayne (Last seen in My Week with Marilyn) surprises with a singing voice of lovely clarity. Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean onstage in London and New York, turns up here as the benevolent Bishop of Digne.
On the female side, Anne Hathaway dominates the early going, belting out anguish as the doomed Fantine. These few minutes of heart breaking performance will boost her chances of winning the Best Supporting Actress trophy at the Golden Globes and Oscars. Playing her grown daughter Cosette, Amanda Seyfried delights with clear-as-a-bell high notes, while Samantha Barks, as a lovelorn Eponine, is a vocal powerhouse.
The problem, then, is not at all the singing itself but that the majority of the numbers are pitched at the same sonic-boom level and filmed the same way. The big occasion when Hooper tries something different, intercutting among nearly all the major characters at crossroads in the Act 1 climax "One Day More," feels like a pale imitation of the electrifying "Tonight" ensemble in the film version of West Side Story.
It's entirely possible that no book has been adapted more frequently to other media than Hugo's epic, one of the longest novels ever written. About 60 big- and small-screen versions have been made throughout the world, beginning with a representation by the Lumiere brothers in 1897, and Orson Welles did a seven-part radio version in 1937. In 1985, five years after the Paris debut of the French musical, the English-language production, with a new libretto by Herbert Kretzmer and directed by Trevor Nunn, opened in London, to less-than-stellar reviews, and is still playing. The New York counterpart packed houses from 1987-2003 and, at 6,680 performances, ranks as the third-longest-running musical in Broadway history (it reopened in 2006 and played another two years).
At the story's core is Jean Valjean (Jackman), a convict who has served 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread and trying to escape and, upon his release, redeems himself under a new identity as a wealthy factory owner and socially liberal mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. But his former prison guard Javert (Crowe), now a police inspector, finds him out and, over a period of 17 years, mercilessly hounds him until their day of reckoning on the barricades in Paris during the uprising of June 1832. Woven through it is no end of melodrama concerning Valjean raising Fantine's beautiful daughter Cosette (Isabelle Allen as a tyke, Seyfried as a young woman); the latter's star-crossed romance with Marius (Redmayne), a wealthy lad turned idealistic revolutionary; his handsome comrade-in-arms Enjolras (Aaron Tveit) and the earthy Eponine, who woefully accepts that her beloved Marius is besotted by Cosette. Well and truly having rumbled in from the film version of Sweeney Todd, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen gallumph through as small-time swindlers in very broad comic relief.
Startlingly emaciated in his initial scenes while still on strenuous prison work detail, Jackman's Valjean subsequently cuts a more proper and dashing figure after his transformation into a gentleman. His defense of the abused Fantine and subsequent adoption of her daughter represent the fulcrum of Hugo's central theme that a man can change and redeem himself, as opposed to Jalvert's vehement conviction that once a criminal, always a criminal. The passions of all the characters are simple and deep, which accounts for much of the work's enduring popularity in all cultures.
But it also makes for a film that, when all the emotions are echoed out at an unvarying intensity for more than 2 1/2 hours on a giant screen, feels heavily, if soaringly, monotonous. Subtle and nuanced are two words that will never be used to describe this Les Miserables, which, for all its length, fails to adequately establish two critical emotional links: that between Valjean and Cosette, and the latter's mutual infatuation with Marius, which has no foundation at all.
Reuniting with his King's Speech cinematographer Danny Cohen and production designer Eve Stewart, Hooper has handsome interior sets at his disposal. However, with the exception of some French city square and street locations, the predominant exteriors have an obvious CGI look. His predilection for wide-angle shots is still evident, if more restrained than before, but the editing by Melanie Ann Oliver and Chris Dickens frequently seems haphazard; the musical numbers sometimes build to proper visual climaxes in union with the music, but as often as not the cutting seems almost arbitrary, moving from one close-up to another, so that scenes don't stand out but just mush together.
The actors are ideally cast but, with a couple of exceptions, give stage-sized turns for the screen; this bigness might well be widely admired. Jackman finally gets to show onscreen the musical talents that have long thrilled live musical theater audiences, Hathaway gamely gets down and dirty and has her hair clipped off onscreen in the bargain, and Redmayne impresses as a high-caliber singing leading man, but there is little else that is inventive or surprising about the performances. Still, there is widespread energy, passion and commitment to the cause, which for some might be all that is required.
It was ! Fredric March was Valjean and Charles Laughton was awesome as Javert. I missed the third movie - I really wanted to see that one as it was in French with subtitles.
Summed up rather neatly here.
What can one say? Bad cars and bad ideas...
Yes! It was Frederick March. I hesitated to say so, for certainty. Sounds like you also missed the third one that night. I would have liked to wade through that one also! Thx.
BTW! You’re so right! Charles Laughton nearly stole the show! Magnificent chactor acting, a more poignant portrayal of despair for his guilt, the likes of which ever could be portrayed better.
I was just joking-—but can same-sex marriage scenes injected into one or another “updated” classics be too far off?
Think of all the muggings Shakespeare’s plays have taken over the years as a way to make them more ‘relevant’.
It must be subliminal advertising, because I do remember the view of Ann’s “nether regions” made me feel “less miserable”.
Victor Hugo is better known in France as the greatest of French poets.
His poetry is excellent and too many Westerners think his reputation rests on “Les Mis.” It doesn’t.
The article is in error - the later events in Hugo’s novel are a portrait of the July Revolution of 1830 that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy and brought to power Louis-Phillipe - the “Citizen King.” Hugo was originally a conservative and monarchist but the events of the Second Empire under Napoleon III made him a republican and socialist.
What didn’t you like about the stage version? Did you see a bad production? It obviously endures.
I saw the original RSC production at the Barbican Centre in London. It starred Colm Wilkinson & Patti Lupone.
I’m a traditionalist: I simply don’t like English musicals. I like Broadway musical comedies or serious American musicals like Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.
I don’t think the English standards for musicals are up to snuff. As much as I hate the way Broadway musicals have evolved over the last 20 years, the on-stage talent is still utterly amazing. British talent just can’t compete.
But, if you want to talk about standards in drama, the Brits have it all over us. Again, with exceptions.
You don’t even like “Oliver!”?
Hmmm...an interesting question. What I like about that musical (and I have the original recording) is the great Georgia Brown singing “As Long as He Needs Me.”
I only saw one production of that in London in the 1970s and it was very limp-wristed.
It has as many great songs as any American musical and its’ success here probably paved the way for the popularity of the Beatles. ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and Evita work better as concept albums than stage musicals.
West Side Story. Gang warfare, the two male leads die.
Porgy and Bess. About a begger, an abused wife, and drugs.
Showboat. The show-in-show lead performer is outed as 1/32 black, and ostracized.
South Pacific. WWII. Second love interest is killed in action.
Evita. She dies.
Jesus Christ, Superstar. He dies.
Chicago. They're all murderers.
Sweet Charity. An optimistic prostitute?
And on and on.
-PJ
There were some ambiguously shady people at the inn during Master Of The House.
-PJ
Okay, let’s do one on Auschwitz or Treblinka or any German concentration camp. I bet there’s some fun stories there that could be put to music.
Please, sir. May I have some more?
-PJ
Ever hear of The Producers?
-PJ
Musicals are not inherently frivolous. Yes you could do a musical set in the camps if you do it with taste.
On the stage, when Valjean dies he's greeted by Fantine and Eponine.
In the movie, it's just Fantine.
-PJ
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