So my wife and I saw Les Miserables earlier in the week. This is one we’ve both wanted to see for a while, her being a fan of musicals, and me being a fan of the original story by Victor Hugo.
Note: There are spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it, or read the damn book, you’ve been living under a rock!
So when I first heard they were making the musical into a movie, I was cautiously optimistic. On one hand, the musical play is without a doubt the best retelling of the original book. However, this was going to be a theatrical interpretation of a musical interpretation of a book. History has shown us that when you make a copy based on a copy, in almost all things, the latest copy is usually a corrupted, faded, unclear mess. So while I was excited to see it, I wasn’t really expecting much.
The other piece of history you also have to consider in deciding whether or not to see this movie is the fact that there have been at least three other theatrical releases of this movie and the only one that came the closest to being a classic movie, true to the book was the 1935 version starring Charles Laughton, and even that had to cut down a lot.
So if the book was so great and such a classic, why then has it been so difficult to portray in theatrical form? Well… for one, the book is more than 510,000 words long, one of (if not the longest) novel ever written and contains complete stories, character developments, themes, and lives of several characters. You could easily make about 6 movies off of the book based on the individual stories.
Now, with this understood, how does Les Miserables the musical movie fair? To be honest, very well. The songs are the original very memorable pieces that are beloved by all, the characters were well cast (very surprising in some cases), and the scenes were beautiful and quite graphic. You really felt what each character was going through and went through it with them. I can honestly say that, besides the book, this is the first time that has ever happened.
Let’s examine the cast:
Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean… I had to approach this with caution because, while I was familiar with his background in musical theater, I had never really seen him sing. I see Hugh Jackman, I think Wolverine. So while I never would have picked him to play Valjean, I was honestly surprised by how well he did. The emotion was there, the guy who usually plays a badass showed an emotional side not seen before on the big screen and it worked very well.
Russel Crowe as Javert… yeah… um… He tried to have a singing career and it died long before it was born. This was why I thought I’d hate this movie. Javert is the perfect tragic/villain of circumstance. He is someone who in any other story would have been the good guy, but because the movie portrays the criminals and the revolutionaries as the good guys, the loyalists who maintain peace, order, and protection are the baddies. I really didn’t think this was something Russel Crowe could deliver on and I still hold that someone else could have done a better job. That said, I was happy to be proven wrong. While not a perfect fit for the role, he did a very good job of it. The singing was there, he hit the notes, and he emotes (meaning he showed very little emotion as was the role) very well.
Anne Hathaway as Fantine… This is the role that is getting her critically acclaimed. Sure we’ve seen her in Batman and a bunch of easily forgettable teenie bopper movies, but I think we can expect to see her in a lot more serious movies going forward. This was the character you felt for as you suffered through her turmoil with her. Even after Valjean rescues her, she still has to suffer through her own mental anguish before she dies.
Samantha Barks as Eponine… Who is Samantha Barks, you may ask. Well to be honest, I didn’t really know who she was until a few years ago. But her name quickly became synonymous with the role of Eponine. Samantha portrayed her and brought this character to center stage in the 25th Anniversary casting. In my opinion, they did the right thing taking her from the play and putting her in the movie. She was gold on stage, and she was gold on the big screen.
Amanda Seyfriend as Cosette… she’s about what you’d expect for the blonde ‘princess.’ I was neither surprised by her casting nor performance. She emotes well… but I did feel her singing lacked any real significant power behind it. Though she didn’t really have much of a part early on and even later in the movie she was more there for other characters to react to, so I guess I can’t complain too much.
Now for all the good that was this movie, it did have it’s fair share of problems. The afore-mentioned beautiful sets and scenery were wonderfully done (see the scene of Javert singing in front of Notre Dame), but they didn’t utilize them very well, opting instead to do close-ups to the people singing. When Anne Hathaway belted out her tragic story, you were… almost uncomfortably right in her face. This is done quite often and I would argue way too much throughout the movie. It’s something you’ll probably get annoyed by.
Another issue I take with this movie… there is no way to cover a 520k word book in 2.5 hours. That didn’t stop this movie from trying. I respect the film makers for trying to cram all aspects of the story into the movie, and you could argue that the fact that they at least touched on everything made it the superior film, I really felt like everyone in the movie seemed like supporting roles and there really wasn’t any focus on a main group of characters. Everyone had a story, and everyone’s story had to be told. As a result, it was harder to really follow what was going on and a lot of the character’s motivations for what they were doing and how they each ended up in their individual situations was lost. Someone who didn’t have the advantage of reading the book before the movie might get a little lost here.
Finally… this movie had a few anachronisms that anal retentive history buffs like myself simply cannot ignore.
1. The opening scene… so we open on Valjean working at the shipyards helping to pull a damaged war ship into the dry docks. This ship, and the nearby three are all supposed to be French Warships, they’re not. If you look closely at the ships’ colors, as well as the design of the hull, and stern, they are identical to the HMS Victory. Why no one wants to spend the time to do the research and get the ship design right as opposed to throwing an easily recognizable one into your multi-million dollar movie is beyond me. You could have easily just thrown in a shot of the USS Constitution if you wanted to play it easy, I doubt any of us historians would be any more pissed or anyone none-the-wiser would have cared less.
2. The funeral music played before “Do you hear the People Sing” during General LaMarche’s funeral was written in 1848… this scene supposedly took place on June 5, 1832.
So if you can get past these things that I can not, this was actually an enjoyable film that does respect the classic. Is it worth a view? Sure. But I would seriously read the book and maybe even watch the 25th Anniversary Musical on DVD before seeing this, otherwise you may get lost along the way and the experience really is improved with a point of reference.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1707386/