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
-JOHN
