Les Miserables
Man, those were some miserable people.
Okay, now that my terrible pun is out of the way, onto discussing Tom Hooper’s epic, emotional adaptation of the acclaimed Broadway musical. Though the story, based on Victor Hugo’s historical novel, has been filmed many times before (the only time I’ve seen being the 1998 version with Liam Neeson), it took over 30 years to bring the musical to the screen. Who would have guessed it would finally be brought to film by Hooper, who only two years ago won an Oscar for his drama, “The King’s Speech?”
In the end, Hooper seems like a logical choice. His background in period dramas like “Speech” and the HBO miniseries, “John Adams,” shows him to be a meticulous filmmaker when it comes to the necessary details to bring those worlds to life, and his vision of 19th Century France is no different. I’ll admit that his use of the camera in places feels a little too “arty,” for lack of a better word, but there’s nothing else that feels artificial about what we see on-screen.
That believability helps ground things considerably when the musical set pieces get started, and that’s almost immediately. What seals the deal is Hooper’s audacious decision to have his actors sing the songs live, on set, with piano playing in their ears. The choice gives the performances a dramatic and emotional weight that we’ve never seen in a movie musical before, although the vocal performances in Tim Burton’s criminally underrated “Sweeney Todd” film come close. This turns the film into a living thing, without the sense of artificial staging that hampers even the greatest movie musicals.
The actors are up to the task, starting with Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, who was imprisoned for almost 20 years for stealing a loaf of bread, and disappears after he is granted parole by the policeman, Javert, played by a surprisingly-assured Russell Crowe, in his best performance since “American Gangster.” After his escape, he commits himself to God to redeem himself for his past sins, which will eventually lead him to adopt Cosette (the lovely Amanda Seyfried), the young daughter of Fantine (Anne Hathaway), who, after being fired from a factory job, sells anything and everything to provide for her daughter. Hathaway, in a small role, is a revelation, especially when it comes to her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream,” which will reduce even the most cynical viewers to tears. Her performance casts a shadow over the rest of the film, being the embodiment of all the sadness and romantic melancholy within the story as a whole.
There’s so much more to tell about the story, set during the French Revolution, that I could take a few paragraphs to go into everything. Once you know the information above, however, I’ll let Hooper and his sterling cast take care of that. Admittedly, there was a little too much of Sascha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter (as Cosette’s scheming con-artist adopted guardians), but both are superb in outrageous roles. My main issue is that, after their first scenes (before Valiean takes Cosette), they don’t have much purpose to the story as a whole, and throw off the tone a little too much. No matter, however; fueled by Hooper’s imaginative ideas of what a film musical can be, and anchored by a tour de force turn by Jackman, “Les Miserables” is inspiring cinema, and remarkable storytelling.
