With the burden of expectation higher than any other screen
adaptation of a stage musical, Tom Hooper (The
King’s Speech) has attempted to marry what until now have been two very
different faces of Les Miserables. One, the gritty drama that unfurls from the
pages of Victor Hugo’s epic 19th novel and the other, the soaring
score of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boubli’s
musical adaptation. There have been screened versions of Les Miserables, the
story, before. Most notably in the
context of this film is the 1998 film starring Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush as
Jean Valjean and Javet respectively. Filmed fifteen years earlier, it is in my
opinion a beautifully shot film that captures that epic sprawl across the years
of Valjean’s journey to redemption. The wintery landscapes and the poverty stricken
Paris of the 19th Century are beautifully rendered and the woefully
outnumbered students are decimated with visceral musket and canon fire. The
performances are rock solid and not a single note is sung.
Hooper, with
Cameron Macintosh along as producer has made a film that visually looks little
different but make no mistake, this is the musical version. Where Hooper and
Macintosh has strayed off the path and become cinematic pioneers is the unprecedented
step of recording the actors singing their parts live with an ear piece linked
to nothing more than a rehearsal pianist just off camera. The orchestration is put
in afterwards to the rhythm set by the performer. This radical move was to
allow the performers the space to give their lines the full emotional weight without
worrying about being always on the beat. A bold move.
So, let’s get the
‘who’ out of the way before we return to the ‘what’.
Hugh Jackman as
Jean Valean: emotionally convincing at every turn if a little out of his depth
vocally.
Russell Crowe as
Javet: Nothing can prepare you for how bad he is. Every time he opens his mouth
it’s like a decrepit tug boat fog horn. His steely introspective interpretation
falls flat and there is nothing good you can say about him in this whatsoever.
Anne Hathaway as
Fonteine: Nothing short of devastating. Finally I Dreamed A Dream has been snatched back and reclaimed from Susan
Boyle in the most heartbreaking and dramatic of fashion.
Sasha Baron-
Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the Thenadiers: I’m going to paraphrase a
friend of mine performing on Broadway (not in Les Mis) here: “Sacha Baron Cohen
needs to go away. Period. Helena Bonham Carter needs to do something other than
big hair and goggly eyes”. On paper they should have been great in these roles.
They really weren’t.
Samantha Barks as Eponine: proves to perfection why she had
the role on the West End, in the 25th Anniversary concert and why
she deserved to reprise the role here in the film.
Eddie Redmayne as Marius: In sharp contrast to my screening
companion, I really liked him. I thought he sung well and was a very competent student
idealist with both anger and love in his heart.
Amanda Seyfried as Cosette: Let’s face it, it’s a wimpy
nothing role but she hit the notes and looked pretty.
Aaron Tveit as Enjolras: Decent performance as the enigmatic
leader of the students if a little on the wimpy side. Only Slightly though.
So, with the celebs and their characters out of the way, it’s
time to say did this brave feat actually work? On balance, I’m going to have to
go with no.
Cinematically it looks great. The opening sequence with the
hundreds of convicts hauling a war ravaged tall ship into a dry dock as they
sing and get pounded with waves is spectacular in its vision but a good example
of why the film ultimately fails. It’s the music. Or to be more precise, the
lack of music. Les Miserables is widely touted as the ‘the musical for people
who don’t like musicals’. For those of us who love this show while disliking
most other forms of the genre is because the music is big, muscular and just
downright epic. Look Down has huge
bass notes, robust horns and bass voices chanting in a testosterone fuelled
chorus of sweaty convicts. It’s an impressive opening. But here, and sadly in
much of the rest of the film, where the music should be loud and bold, it’s
toned right down and what should have been a deafening chorus of hundreds of miserable
convicts metaphorically and almost literally “standing in their graves” ends up
being quite underwhelming musically and vocally.
The same can be said of Master
of the House. The jovial syncopation of the beat in this ale house drinking
song is where the humour and even warmth of the ghastly Thenadiers comes from.
On screen it’s barely there as the actors “act” their lines vaguely to something
approximating the song. Which brings me nicely to the unique singy-acty technique
pioneered in this film. Hathaway’s use of it in I Dreamed a Dream is the perfect example of it as a brilliant device.
She shudders, she pauses, she sobs and sings her guts out. It is nothing short
of heart wrenching and shows just how clever a technique the live recording can
be. That being said, it doesn’t always work. The aforementioned Master of the House is one of many
examples of it. It feels clunky when Jackman does it when he decides to cast off
Valjean and open a new chapter in his life, though it does get there by the end
of the number. Barks uses the technique sparingly and to good effect in On My Own.
The other thing to mention when talking about the singy-acty
thing is that I’m sure most orchestra conductors would take umbrage with the
notion that by singing the song, the actors somehow aren’t allowed to ‘act’ and
paint a complete emotional picture. There’s a reason the conductor stands on
their box so that the orchestra can see them and they can see the actors. They’re
not human metronomes. They conduct
around the actor’s performance and let them hold a word longer and speed some
up for urgency. Also, it’s not a play, it’s a musical and each song has been
carefully designed and crafted to tell a story within a story that has in built
rhythms and cadences that unfurl an emotional ebb and flow.
So, does it look good? It mostly looks great but some of the
grand sweeping vistas of Paris look like CGI. Are the performances good? For
the most part yes but it’s a real mixed bag. If you love the musical should you
see it? Probably, but you’ll most likely come way thinking that simply seeing
it on stage is better. Will it reinvigorate the franchise? Again, probably. It’s
been playing for a long time now and this may pick up sales slightly. The Australia
tour this year will no doubt benefit from interest generated by the movie, if
for no other reason than seeing it on stage can’t be topped.
For a show that mostly relies on one major set piece and an
atmospheric lighting design, Les
Miserables really is all about the music. So it’s baffling then that the might
of the orchestra is so sorely missing from most of the mix in this film. Yes,
19th century France is authentically realised in the set and costume
design but it was in the 1998 version too. It seems that the two faces of Les
Miserables may in fact be mutually exclusive and that if you want Vajean
scaling the walls of Paris, grimy cobblestones, scary woods, impressive battle
scenes and actors giving well rounded performances to complex characters then
go for the Neeson/ Rush Film. If you want the driving percussion, boisterous
chord progressions and lets face it, I
Dreamed A Dream, then go see the show.
