REVIEW - LES MISERABLES

Musicals are difficult. Musical films are even harder. Sung-through musical films are nearly impossible. It’s not only that they are fraught with exigency for those making them, but it’s almost as taxing to like them. In my opinion, this is due to the frustration of trying to relate with the characters of a musical. When you see a musical live, if it’s done well, you get to experience the actors’ performances through somewhat of an osmotic process; the audience acts as a singular organism reacting to what the actors are doing. This is because it’s only the first few rows who are getting to fully appreciate the production. However, because the actors have to perform for the entire crowd, the delivery of their lines and their movements are all necessarily exaggerated. To that end, what those front rows get to appreciate may end up being a performance distractingly similar to a cop directing traffic; there‘s a reason theatrics and histrionics are synonymous. My point? Even the best live musical has a lot of obstacles to overcome before its characters can be relatable for its audience.

With musical films, everyone is in the front row. What that means is: every member of the audience can see and hear exactly what is going on; the actors don’t have to exaggerate anything, so you can get a more nuanced performance which can hopefully help you connect with the actors. The problem? Almost every musical film has chosen to have its cast pre-record their performances and then lip-sync to them on set. The reason they do this is to make sure every line is delivered clearly and to make sure every song hits the correct notes, etc. On the surface, that kind of makes sense, but the result is that you lose so much of the relatability for the audience. You can almost always tell the actors are singing to playback, and the movie basically turns into a concert (or worse, it ends up feeling like a bad music video).  My point? It is incredibly hard to make and/or like a good musical film.

This is why Les Miserables had been in “development hell” for over 20 years. Not only is it a musical film, but it’s also a period piece with extravagant set designs; if it flopped, it would lose a lot of money. That’s where Tom Hooper came in. Fresh off his success with The King’s Speech, Hooper lept at the idea of making Les Miserables. The first thing he did? Decide that everyone would be singing live on-set (well, I think the first thing he did was cast Hugh Jackman, but definitely the second thing…). The decision to have the actors sing live is daunting, of course, which is why they don’t usually do it; it is the sole reason why Les Miserables is as good as it is, though, because it worked. It freed the actors to actually act and adapt their performance to the set and to the other cast members’ performances; it let the actors become relatable. You get the intimacy of a live performance, with the authenticity of a film. Because of that decision, every emotion in Les Miserables positively jumps from the screen.

Obviously, if you don’t know the story of Les Miserables, it’s about Jean Valjean; he’s a paroled prisoner who believes his life to be unchangeable, until he’s the recipient of an act of kindness from a Bishop. From there, he changes his identity and leads a life of kindness. Javert, a prison guard (and later policeman), pursues Valjean for the entirety of their lives. I don’t want to be any more detailed, even though it’s a 150-year-old story.

Hugh Jackman plays Valjean, and he brings an earnestness to the role, and it’s endearing; you really feel that he’s a beaten man who grows to be a great man, partly due to Jackman’s natural gravitas. Russell Crowe is Javert, and much as been said about his singing in the film. I’ll just say that I didn’t think his singing was bad; it was okay, and being an okay singer surrounded by this cast of fantastic singers is going to make him seem worse than he is. What I loved about him in the role, however, is that Russell Crowe is a fantastic actor, and that’s the Russell Crowe that showed up behind the voice and, to my mind, made up for the singing. Amanda Seyfried is excellent as Cosette, a girl Valjean takes in after her mother dies. Seyfried was in Mamma Mia!, which was an example of a musical film that ended up looking like a bad music video; she was the only one in that movie who seemed to a) want to do well and b) could sing. (also, in that movie, you see Pierce Brosnan’s acting performance did not make up for his bad singing, and I like Pierce Brosnan; all the “stars” in that movie seemed to be in it just for the vacation). Eddie Redmayne was perfectly cast; not only is he a great singer, but he played Marius in a way that made him feel like a bizarro version of Jean Valjean, if Valjean had been born into a wealthy family. Samantha Barks is Eponine, and she turns in the second-best song performance of the film, with “On My Own”.

Second-best? Which one is the best? Well, first, all of the songs are great. Of course, the entire film is a song, so I can’t really go into each one, but I’ll say I loved “On My Own”; not only Barks’ performance of that song, but the way Hooper filmed that scene was mesmerizing. And “Suddenly”, which is the new song written for this film, complements the material very well; I don’t consider the Academy Award nomination that song got to be one of pageantry. I think the song is good enough that it earned the nomination.

That brings me to the absolute best performance in a film that I’ve seen in a while, maybe since Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight: Anne Hathaway as Fantine. Maybe you’ve read Victor Hugo’s original Les Miserables novel, or maybe you’ve seen the musical performed before, or maybe you’ve seen and read every incarnation of Fantine in the history of time; you don’t know Fantine until you experience Anne Hathaway’s Fantine. I can’t even really describe how good it is, and it is wholly embodied in her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream”. I’ve heard Patti Lupone sing “I Dreamed a Dream”; I’ve listened, repeatedly, to Lea Salonga’s fantastic version of “I Dreamed a Dream”; like everyone else, I was moved when Susan Boyle belted out “I Dreamed a Dream”; but they all sound like Patti Lupone singing “I Dreamed a Dream” or Lea Salonga singing “I Dreamed a Dream”, etc. Anne Hathaway doesn’t sound like Anne Hathaway singing “I Dreamed a Dream”; she sounds like Fantine singing about her life, and it’s simultaneously heartbreaking and inspiring. I’ve heard Hathaway say something like, “To sing the pretty version felt selfish”, and I love that; it is selfish. I don’t blame anyone who has performed that song before because I feel like Hathaway was only able to make that decision because Tom Hooper wanted the songs sung live, and that resulted in Hathaway singing “I Dreamed a Dream”, I think, 20 times--live… in succession of one another. You can listen to that song and know everything that it is to be Fantine, and you hear the moment (“He took my childhood in his stride”) when Fantine’s entire life ends. You can survive for years on the sustenance provided by the quality of that scene.

As a person who doesn’t readily feel anything, I harbor no inhibition toward admitting when a film moves me, and the entirety of Les Miserables spent every bit of its two hours and forty minutes hammering on me like a raw nerve. It is an exemplary film, and it more than earns the term “movie”.

-JOHN