Over the past few year musical adaptations have started to become a fixture in the schedule of cinema releases, however it’s time to sweep aside modern glam rock tributes and stories based on the songs of ABBA as the king of the theatre musical; as Les Misérables has finally been adapted for the big screen.
Following the evolution and life of petty thief turned successful entrepreneur, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman, Real Steel), we track the man’s complex rivalry with committed lawman Javert (Russell Crowe, Robin Hood) over the years. After saving the tragic Fantine’s (Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises) daughter Cosette, and raising her as his own, Valjean must deal with a secluded life to avoid suspicion. In his later years, Valjean has to cope with the elder Cosette (Amanda Seyfried, In Time) falling in love with revolutionary student Marius (Eddie Redmayne, My Week With Marilyn), just as he and his comrades decide to hold a violent stockade in the Parisian streets.
With an all-star cast mixed in with top stage and theatre professionals, it would have been so hard for this motley crew of quality performers to fail, and yet they excel so much; whilst the A-listers like Jackman and Hathaway will draw the crowd in, there’s no one here that does anything memorably awful; such is the professionalism of this group.
Jackman puts in an emotional performance over the course of Valjean’s life and it’s no surprise to anyone that he picked up the Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical in a rather sad but worthwhile life. Jackman is the perfect modern-day actor who can go do something totally Hollywood like Wolverine and Real Steel but isn’t afraid to go back to his acting roots and put in a shift like he does here. Top job. Expect him to clear up awards season on the back of this.
Hathaway’s role is limited as Fantine but that’s part of the character. However she does an exceptional and really brings the heartbreak of her character’s story to life. It’s all so deliciously tragic that Hathaway can’t help but get wrapped up in the role. Easily deserving the Best Supporting Actress award, she even does a better performance of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ than Susan Boyle could ever imagine doing herself.
Oddly enough, the usually excellent smarm of Crowe is missing here; you can tell he’s concentrating so much on singing (to whit he does quite a good job), he forgets to put any emotion into his performance. It comes across as one note and one expression. It’s hard to call it disappointing since Crowe has clearly risen to the challenge of singing and captures Javert’s character very well as the honour-bound lawman, but whilst it is perfect casting on paper, Crowe doesn’t live up to expectations, and is surpassed by those surrounding him.
It’s hard to understand how Seyfried managed to sneak in with fourth billing here, when her role as the elder Cosette has the least screentime of the main cast. The character herself is treated more like a macguffin everyone is fighting over and her performance reflects that with a struggle to say anything about her performance – she’s just there. Redmayne as Marius doesn’t inspire much either but is marginally better and not as anonymous since he’s quite important in the final third.
The two are outshone completely by Samantha Barks (BBC’s I’d Do Anything, and the West End production of Les Misérables) in her big screen debut as Éponine; she’s the third wheel in a hasty love triangle plot between her, Cosette and Marius which leads to tragic consequences. Out of all the hastily introduced characters at the end, she means the most by a country mile, and is more likeable compared to Cosettes due to her mistreatment by Marius. Barks looks a complete natural on screen and is not upstaged at all by anyone with more experience. One to look out for.
Making up the comic relief from the bleakness as the husband/wife pairing of Madame and Mister Thénardier, played by Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen (both of whom appeared in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd musical). Cohen is such an underrated comedy actor, as his characters have bore the brunt of his career on a wild scale of quality, but his serious work on big productions has never been anything less than great. His turn as the wonderfully scummy Thénardier is marvellous and breaks up the depressing scenes rather well. Carter is near typecast but she stands out as good as Cohen compared to some of the other characters you couldn’t care less about.
Looking at Les Misérables as a period piece, it excels; all the costumes and locales of post-Napoleonic France are captured as well as the mood with the peasants living in squalor, forced to look down whenever any officials go by afraid of being detained. The near attack on the rich later highlights some sort of evolution to build towards the final uprising. The singing and sound editing is very well done and the music accompaniment is terrific, and definitely captures all the temper of the scenes.
There’s not much warning before we’re plunged into the revolution plot in the final third; it just happens. There’s a casual introduction to Marius and we’re right into it, without any knowledge of the politics really. Their story is a real tragedy sure, but we’re not really given much of a clue what their real intentions are. As the last stand, they excel as the underdog with various army battalions surrounding them as the last resistance group standing up to the man, who are overkilled with cannons going up against their wooden barricade.
The transfer from stage to screen is not without faults however. The film adaptation of Les Misérables suffers massively from the poor pacing from the original stage version. After an excellent opening third with tight speed hitting all the major plot points fast and effectively, we slump into a clumsy run to the credits. There’s too many near pointless or lately introduced plot points and characters for scenes to breathe. There was an opportunity here to clean it up and make a superior version, but twas not to be.
As much as I hate to deride a brilliant piece of entertainment, I’m not a fan of the continuous singing. It’s simply far too much for an audience to take in with no let up at all. Granted they all link in and intersect with each other fine without any disjointed feeling at all, but it would have been nice to have a couple of scenes just to break up the intensity since I doubt a lot of casual cinema goers would have suffered a similar situation before. There are some breaks but they can only be four or five lines of one-off dialogue which are a second apiece. Factor that four seconds into a two and a half hour runtime and there were more than one or two yawns in the audience during the screening I was in. Too draining for comfort.
The runtime is not a problem by the way. The fact that everything from the musical is crowbarred in with little thought to polishing it up, making it tighter, for a cinema audience is. Despite being well made and getting the best possible performance out of everyone involved, director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) does not do a great adaptation for the big screen. It’s a good copy/paste from the stage but there’s not much to make his own statement on the revolutionary spectacle. There’s too much to pander to the musical theatre fanbase, just to appease fans of that format, instead of making it into it’s own movie.
As much of an annoyance the above is, it’s only a minor stickle compared to the rest of what is a top quality film of one of, if not, the most famous musicals ever made. Essential viewing for anyone who has even known of Les Misérables and still essential viewing for those who haven’t, the cast and performances are mainly of the highest draw and richly deserve the success they have. Must see.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
