The big Les Miserables review
Dec. 29th, 2012 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalUm, I feel sort of silly putting a spoiler warning on a 150-year-old novel - and I strongly doubt there are many people going into this movie not knowing the story beforehand - but, you know.
So, I should probably preface this by saying that I'm kind of a Les Miserables expert? I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of people who've read the book multiple times, possibly even in multiple languages. And I'm sure there are people who have seen the musical performed multiple times and who can sing the entire show in their sleep. There are probably even people who have watched the previous non-singing movie versions. But I also took a whole college course on Les Miserables. I wrote papers on Les Miserables. I got a research grant to go to France and study Les Miserables.
My point being, I am not exactly coming at this from a normal human perspective, lol. Fortunately, my mom also went to see the movie with me, so she provides a reasonable-person counterpoint. Let's just bullet point this, shall we?
The Performances:
* Hugh Jackman is a decent Valjean,even if my mother kept calling him Hugh Grant. In general, it seems like they were going more for the big names than for people who were actually suited to the roles. And it's not that Jackman makes a bad Valjean, just that I'm sure there are many, many other less famous people who probably would have done a better job. And my mom agreed with me on this one, so I don't think I'm being too hard on him. To be fair, this is one of those roles where one particular actor made it famous and so it's hard for anyone else to live up to that iconic performance. And I wasn't expecting him to be Colm Wilkinson, because no one is Colm Wilkinson. (Speaking of which, yay for the Colm Wilkinson cameo as the Bishop of Digne!) But we've also seen non-famous actors in touring/regional productions that were better than Hugh Jackman. His acting choices were just so over the top sometimes, like he was calibrated for the stage rather than the screen, which I think was a consequence of him being too into the live singing.
* Russell Crowe is TERRIBLE as Javert. I mean godawful. He is so unbelievably miscast, it's painful to watch. I was actually embarrassed for the guy, and I don't even like Russell Crowe. It's not that he has a bad voice, it's just not at all suited to this style of singing. And maybe if he had acted the part better, it would've made up for it, but he didn't even get that right. My mom made a comment about it being easy to dislike Javert, because she doesn't like Russell Crowe, either, and I pointed out that he's not really supposed to be a villain? You're supposed to sympathize with Javert at least a little bit, because he's just as miserable as everyone else. He's uncompromising in his principles and trying to do the right thing in upholding the law, and it ultimately destroys him because he can't reconcile his worldview with Valjean's compassion.
* Anne Hathaway as Fantine, on the other hand, deserves every single award they want to throw at her. Seriously. I'm not a huge fan of hers, either, and I was skeptical when I heard the casting announcement, but my god, she OWNS this role. Her performance is so raw and vulnerable, perfectly suited to Fantine's desperation and brokenness. If you think Claire Danes has cornered the market on the Ugly Cry, you haven't seen Anne Hathaway sing "I Dreamed a Dream" yet. And while I don't have many good things to say about the live singing thing, this is one place where it really works.
* Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter were meh as the Thenardiers. My mom thought they were miscast. I wouldn't go that far, but something is sort of off about them. I know that they're supposed to be the comic relief, and so their scenes have a much different tone than the rest of the show, but their characterization is noticeably more Tim Burton-esque, which... Tim Burton doing Victor Hugo kind of breaks my brain. I also don't know why Sacha Baron Cohen chose to do a French accent when everyone else in every other production of Les Mis (including the rest of this one) uses a British accent. I mean, I know that makes no sense that they're French and all have British accents. But. I mean. It's what we're used to, and if you're not gonna do it, why JUST HIM?
* Eddie Redmayne is a surprisingly good Marius. I don't know that I've actually seen him in anything, so I just had this idea of him as one of those funny-looking Brits that people inexplicably think are attractive (*cough* Benedict Cumberbatch). And I still think he's kinda funny-looking, but he has an excellent voice, and he did a great job in the role. "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" is just devastating in his hands.
* Amanda Seyfried is also good as Cosette, even though the part is so blah and the romance between Cosette and Marius is half-baked at best. This is a problem that goes all the way back to Hugo, so it's not the movie's fault, really, that they didn't do more with it, but it almost feels like a waste of Amanda Seyfried. I did get a bit misty at her reaction to Valjean's death, though.
* Samantha Barks is outstanding as Eponine, unsurprisingly. I just... the one person I had never heard of prior to their being cast in this movie, and it's one of the best performances of the entire thing. Coincidence? I think not. Unfortunately, Eponine gets a bit of short shrift here, downplaying her friendship with Marius in favor of the Marius/Enjolras bromance (which is truer to the book). I am torn, because I love both Eponine and Enjolrasand think they should get together in the afterlife and be awesome without boring Marius dragging them down and wish that giving one character more screen time didn't end up taking it away from the other.
* Aaron Tveit, my precious, is lovely as Enjolras. If not for being my Broadway crush (thanks to Next to Normal), he'd probably be another unknown giving one of the best performances. As it is, I feel that irrational pride that comes from having followed his career since before anyone (outside of Broadway addicts) knew who he was, and it's almost rewarding to see him succeed on a larger scale.
* The two kids who played young Cosette and Gavroche were stellar. Go kids.
The Adaptation:
* Obviously, a movie presents different opportunities and challenges than a stage musical, and I liked that the movie took advantage of that in some ways. In particular, I noted several little details from the novel that didn't make the cut in the musical, but were easy to add in the movie, like the existence of Marius' grandfather, the convent where Valjean raises Cosette, THE ELEPHANT (I love that Gavroche lives in the elephant statue, LOVE IT), and the retreat from the barricade into the cafe during the final battle. As iconic as that image of all the revolutionaries draped across the barricade is, it made me all tingly that Enjolras and Grantaire face their deaths standing side by side like they do in the book.
* I also loved that the movie plays up the bromance between Enjolras and Marius. (LOL how are people not shipping this already?) I know, I know, Eponine's role is smaller as a consequence, but they are BFFs in the book, and Marius is heavily involved in the student uprising until Cosette comes alongand distracts him like a shiny thing being dangled in front of a cat. That friendship gives a lot more emotional depth to Enjolras, as does the interplay with the other students, particularly Grantaire.
* That said, the direction was pretty terrible. Tom Hooper had the opportunity to do SO MUCH with the camera that you simply cannot do on stage, and he mostly blew it. He doesn't know how to frame a shot properly. He uses the same types of shots over and over. The cuts are poorly timed and the camera movements are erratic. There's too much gratuitous lingering on symbolic shots (mainly religious imagery, as if this show needed more of that, lol). The CGI'd Paris backgrounds are pretty obviously CGI, and the fact that they mainly appear when Javert is singing on rooftops only adds to the cringe factor of those scenes.
ETA: This article (though unfortunately in all-caps) really spells out exactly what my problems were with the direction. It's not something I really had the language to describe, but I definitely had that off-kilter "shouldn't I be crying?" feeling while watching it.
* The solo numbers are all right, albeit all shot the same way - extreme close ups, with long or even single takes (presumably to preserve the continuity of the live singing performances). Which was effective, if rather repetitive, since my mom said that this was the first time she really felt the "miserableness," which sometimes gets lost in the grandeur and pageantry of the stage show. There's definitely a plus side to being able to see the actors' facial expressions, and I think it worked best for "I Dreamed a Dream," where you get to see the depths of Fantine's misery and pain.
* The rest of the songs, on the other hand, are full of painfully jarring cuts, which aren't timed with the music and frequently create an unfortunate emotional distance. For example, I don't think Marius and Cosette are ever actually in the same shot together in "A Heart Full of Love" - it just goes back and forth between close-ups of each of them, occasionally cutting to Eponine, who might as well be in a completely different place. Marius/Cosette is a weak love story under the best circumstances, so killing the romantic chemistry with bad editing is doubly unfortunate.
* That sort of thing is bad enough in love songs, but it totally kills the momentum of the big climactic numbers. I mentioned this as a concern when I saw the clip of "One Day More," and that is by far the worst, but it pretty much holds true for the rest of the big numbers. I did like this take on "Do You Hear the People Sing," with the students taking over the funeral procession and that leading directly into building the barricade, even if they had to seriously shuffle the song order to make it fit. The cuts felt more natural there, because we were cutting between the students scattered in the midst of the crowd, with the tension building until they made their move and converged on the procession.
* There are a significant number of music and lyric changes. Nearly every major song had a verse omitted, presumably for time, which I can't fault them for because the movie was effing long enough as it is, but as someone who loves those songs, it kind of made me sad that whole chunks of them were missing. The one place it made a substantive difference is with the Thenardiers. They lose quite a bit of their edge without "Dog Eat Dog" or "Beggars at the Feast" cynically showing how they manage to survive through it all, like human cockroaches.
* If I understand this article correctly, the connective tissue in between the main songs was converted from sung-through to dialogue and then back to sung-through. I'm not entirely clear on why they felt the need to write new dialogue and then set it to music, particularly since in most cases the new lyrics don't really change anything or bridge the gaps better. It just made for clunkier lyrics.
* My mom did say that she was able to follow the plot a lot better, though. Whereas the musical, to her, is mostly just pretty songs strung together by some vague "this guy is chasing that guy for some reason and there's a revolution?" plotty thing in the background, here she was able to really understand why the characters were going where they were going and doing what they were doing. I'm not sure why that is exactly, since I've known the plot intricately for so long that I can't remember what it's like to not know it, lol.
* I was extremely underwhelmed by the new song, "Suddenly." It's pretty bland and unremarkable compared to the existing music, and it doesn't really add much to the story. My mother didn't even notice they'd added a song.
Anyone else seen it? Thoughts? Feelings? Recriminations?
So, I should probably preface this by saying that I'm kind of a Les Miserables expert? I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of people who've read the book multiple times, possibly even in multiple languages. And I'm sure there are people who have seen the musical performed multiple times and who can sing the entire show in their sleep. There are probably even people who have watched the previous non-singing movie versions. But I also took a whole college course on Les Miserables. I wrote papers on Les Miserables. I got a research grant to go to France and study Les Miserables.
My point being, I am not exactly coming at this from a normal human perspective, lol. Fortunately, my mom also went to see the movie with me, so she provides a reasonable-person counterpoint. Let's just bullet point this, shall we?
The Performances:
* Hugh Jackman is a decent Valjean,
* Russell Crowe is TERRIBLE as Javert. I mean godawful. He is so unbelievably miscast, it's painful to watch. I was actually embarrassed for the guy, and I don't even like Russell Crowe. It's not that he has a bad voice, it's just not at all suited to this style of singing. And maybe if he had acted the part better, it would've made up for it, but he didn't even get that right. My mom made a comment about it being easy to dislike Javert, because she doesn't like Russell Crowe, either, and I pointed out that he's not really supposed to be a villain? You're supposed to sympathize with Javert at least a little bit, because he's just as miserable as everyone else. He's uncompromising in his principles and trying to do the right thing in upholding the law, and it ultimately destroys him because he can't reconcile his worldview with Valjean's compassion.
* Anne Hathaway as Fantine, on the other hand, deserves every single award they want to throw at her. Seriously. I'm not a huge fan of hers, either, and I was skeptical when I heard the casting announcement, but my god, she OWNS this role. Her performance is so raw and vulnerable, perfectly suited to Fantine's desperation and brokenness. If you think Claire Danes has cornered the market on the Ugly Cry, you haven't seen Anne Hathaway sing "I Dreamed a Dream" yet. And while I don't have many good things to say about the live singing thing, this is one place where it really works.
* Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter were meh as the Thenardiers. My mom thought they were miscast. I wouldn't go that far, but something is sort of off about them. I know that they're supposed to be the comic relief, and so their scenes have a much different tone than the rest of the show, but their characterization is noticeably more Tim Burton-esque, which... Tim Burton doing Victor Hugo kind of breaks my brain. I also don't know why Sacha Baron Cohen chose to do a French accent when everyone else in every other production of Les Mis (including the rest of this one) uses a British accent. I mean, I know that makes no sense that they're French and all have British accents. But. I mean. It's what we're used to, and if you're not gonna do it, why JUST HIM?
* Eddie Redmayne is a surprisingly good Marius. I don't know that I've actually seen him in anything, so I just had this idea of him as one of those funny-looking Brits that people inexplicably think are attractive (*cough* Benedict Cumberbatch). And I still think he's kinda funny-looking, but he has an excellent voice, and he did a great job in the role. "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" is just devastating in his hands.
* Amanda Seyfried is also good as Cosette, even though the part is so blah and the romance between Cosette and Marius is half-baked at best. This is a problem that goes all the way back to Hugo, so it's not the movie's fault, really, that they didn't do more with it, but it almost feels like a waste of Amanda Seyfried. I did get a bit misty at her reaction to Valjean's death, though.
* Samantha Barks is outstanding as Eponine, unsurprisingly. I just... the one person I had never heard of prior to their being cast in this movie, and it's one of the best performances of the entire thing. Coincidence? I think not. Unfortunately, Eponine gets a bit of short shrift here, downplaying her friendship with Marius in favor of the Marius/Enjolras bromance (which is truer to the book). I am torn, because I love both Eponine and Enjolras
* Aaron Tveit, my precious, is lovely as Enjolras. If not for being my Broadway crush (thanks to Next to Normal), he'd probably be another unknown giving one of the best performances. As it is, I feel that irrational pride that comes from having followed his career since before anyone (outside of Broadway addicts) knew who he was, and it's almost rewarding to see him succeed on a larger scale.
* The two kids who played young Cosette and Gavroche were stellar. Go kids.
The Adaptation:
* Obviously, a movie presents different opportunities and challenges than a stage musical, and I liked that the movie took advantage of that in some ways. In particular, I noted several little details from the novel that didn't make the cut in the musical, but were easy to add in the movie, like the existence of Marius' grandfather, the convent where Valjean raises Cosette, THE ELEPHANT (I love that Gavroche lives in the elephant statue, LOVE IT), and the retreat from the barricade into the cafe during the final battle. As iconic as that image of all the revolutionaries draped across the barricade is, it made me all tingly that Enjolras and Grantaire face their deaths standing side by side like they do in the book.
* I also loved that the movie plays up the bromance between Enjolras and Marius. (LOL how are people not shipping this already?) I know, I know, Eponine's role is smaller as a consequence, but they are BFFs in the book, and Marius is heavily involved in the student uprising until Cosette comes along
* That said, the direction was pretty terrible. Tom Hooper had the opportunity to do SO MUCH with the camera that you simply cannot do on stage, and he mostly blew it. He doesn't know how to frame a shot properly. He uses the same types of shots over and over. The cuts are poorly timed and the camera movements are erratic. There's too much gratuitous lingering on symbolic shots (mainly religious imagery, as if this show needed more of that, lol). The CGI'd Paris backgrounds are pretty obviously CGI, and the fact that they mainly appear when Javert is singing on rooftops only adds to the cringe factor of those scenes.
ETA: This article (though unfortunately in all-caps) really spells out exactly what my problems were with the direction. It's not something I really had the language to describe, but I definitely had that off-kilter "shouldn't I be crying?" feeling while watching it.
* The solo numbers are all right, albeit all shot the same way - extreme close ups, with long or even single takes (presumably to preserve the continuity of the live singing performances). Which was effective, if rather repetitive, since my mom said that this was the first time she really felt the "miserableness," which sometimes gets lost in the grandeur and pageantry of the stage show. There's definitely a plus side to being able to see the actors' facial expressions, and I think it worked best for "I Dreamed a Dream," where you get to see the depths of Fantine's misery and pain.
* The rest of the songs, on the other hand, are full of painfully jarring cuts, which aren't timed with the music and frequently create an unfortunate emotional distance. For example, I don't think Marius and Cosette are ever actually in the same shot together in "A Heart Full of Love" - it just goes back and forth between close-ups of each of them, occasionally cutting to Eponine, who might as well be in a completely different place. Marius/Cosette is a weak love story under the best circumstances, so killing the romantic chemistry with bad editing is doubly unfortunate.
* That sort of thing is bad enough in love songs, but it totally kills the momentum of the big climactic numbers. I mentioned this as a concern when I saw the clip of "One Day More," and that is by far the worst, but it pretty much holds true for the rest of the big numbers. I did like this take on "Do You Hear the People Sing," with the students taking over the funeral procession and that leading directly into building the barricade, even if they had to seriously shuffle the song order to make it fit. The cuts felt more natural there, because we were cutting between the students scattered in the midst of the crowd, with the tension building until they made their move and converged on the procession.
* There are a significant number of music and lyric changes. Nearly every major song had a verse omitted, presumably for time, which I can't fault them for because the movie was effing long enough as it is, but as someone who loves those songs, it kind of made me sad that whole chunks of them were missing. The one place it made a substantive difference is with the Thenardiers. They lose quite a bit of their edge without "Dog Eat Dog" or "Beggars at the Feast" cynically showing how they manage to survive through it all, like human cockroaches.
* If I understand this article correctly, the connective tissue in between the main songs was converted from sung-through to dialogue and then back to sung-through. I'm not entirely clear on why they felt the need to write new dialogue and then set it to music, particularly since in most cases the new lyrics don't really change anything or bridge the gaps better. It just made for clunkier lyrics.
* My mom did say that she was able to follow the plot a lot better, though. Whereas the musical, to her, is mostly just pretty songs strung together by some vague "this guy is chasing that guy for some reason and there's a revolution?" plotty thing in the background, here she was able to really understand why the characters were going where they were going and doing what they were doing. I'm not sure why that is exactly, since I've known the plot intricately for so long that I can't remember what it's like to not know it, lol.
* I was extremely underwhelmed by the new song, "Suddenly." It's pretty bland and unremarkable compared to the existing music, and it doesn't really add much to the story. My mother didn't even notice they'd added a song.
Anyone else seen it? Thoughts? Feelings? Recriminations?
