LES MISERABLES

Les Miserables (2012)
Grade: A
Directed by Tom Hooper

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Barks, Aaron Tveit, Isabelle Allen, Daniel Huttlestone, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter

Premise: Ex-con Jean Valjean seeks redemption from a life of selfishness even while concealing his true identity in the midst of the French Revolution.

Rated PG-13 for violence, blood, sexual material and intense emotional content

Maybe you have to have a passion for performing arts, like I do, or maybe you just have to have a certain excitable personality; whatever the case, as Tom Hooper’s tremendous Les Miserables drew to a close, I couldn’t wait to clap—just as if I was watching a performer on stage throwing themselves into the last few notes of a song that had moved me. True, the ending is one of incredibly powerful images of love and unity, bringing together nearly every character viewers have beheld during the previous two-and-a-half hours, and it’s also the big payoff for a sweeping, dramatic, emotionally-powerful movie, but, still, I wanted to clap very badly. Maybe, though I wasn’t moved enough to cry, I felt the need to express myself in some outward way. Thus, when the screen when black, I led the theater audience in a round of applause that started even before the first credits appeared.

Les Miserables—based on the musical play that was adapted from the 1863 Victor Hugo novel—is the rare movie that deserves to be called art. That’s an easy thing to say, yes, because nearly the entire movie is sung, but I mean it. The camera captures amazing images, from a man of powerful conviction walking a precipice by moonlight with a sprawling, sleeping city in the background to a young woman smiling contentedly as she dies because she’s in the arms of the man she loves. The music surges and hums and soars, and a cast of actors acts and sings with full-hearted passion in a way that’s really impressive to behold. Supposedly the first movie musical ever to be sung entirely live on camera as opposed to recorded in a studio and then lip-synched, this latest adaptation of the classic story immediately enters the annals of the best movie musicals of all time.

PLOT

Imprisoned as a young man for stealing bread, Frenchman Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) gets out of jail and promptly ignores his status as a parolee in his quest to make up for the time he lost. This unwise decision naturally puts him back in the crosshairs of the local law enforcement, particularly stern government officer Javert (Russell Crowe), who makes a point to keep track of the case of Jean Valjean. However, after being shone some touching kindness by a priest (Colm Wilkinson), Valjean decides to drop his law-breaking ways and sets out to do some good in the world. In a few years, he’s a successful businessman and a leader in his community, and he’s able to do some serious good when a young single mother (Anne Hathaway) loses her job and, with it, her ability to support her young daughter (Isabelle Allen). Valjean takes the child in and raises her as his own. Still dogged by Javert, Valjean is forced to change locales every few years until one move threatens to break up his household, because his now-grown adoptive daughter (Amanda Seyfried) has fallen in love with one of the local rebellion leaders (Eddie Redmayne). Still very tempted to act in his own interests, Valjean is torn between his desire to keep his daughter (and himself) safe from harm or make her happy by letting her be with the man she loves. But Javert is hot on his trail and the city is on the verge of exploding as tensions between the rebels and government troops come to a head.

What Works?

Unlike many musicals, Les Mis stays interesting the whole time. Where many lengthy shows’ second acts are composed largely of reprises of the first act’s best songs and tired romantic clichés, Les Mis is constantly offering new action, new characters, new songs, and new looks—in this it probably benefits largely from being a movie, where the camera can draw in and out and around the actors and sets to keep things fresh, rather than the audience’s being forced to see everything from one viewpoint the whole time as they would at a musical theatre. Speaking of which, it’s obvious what an undertaking making this movie was, from costumes and sets to acting and getting groups of hundreds to sing the same song. It’s a sprawling, important, dramatic epic, and it’s done well.  Despite the considerable length, the pace rarely lags, and even though this show spans nearly 20 years and contains about a dozen major characters, the audience is able to maintain interest and affection for each.

Of course, a lot of that has to do with the actors, and director Tom Hooper has assembled a cast of bold actors who can not only sing well but are willing to go above and beyond, to act and sing with raw emotion in ways that are not always movie-star glamorous. The one you’ve probably heard about is Anne Hathaway, who sings one of the show’s biggest numbers, “I Dreamed A Dream”, in uncomfortable close-up, her haggard appearance, quivering voice and yearning eyes making the performance not only an impressive vocal display but an almost disturbingly real appeal to the heart. In those four/five minutes, you can see why the filmmakers opted for their actors to sing on camera, because it’s obvious the emotion of the moment and the setting and the character’s fall from grace enable the actress to make it so astonishingly vivid. While Hathaway’s the most likely actor to receive attention from year-end awards shows, she’s hardly alone in doing impressive work in Les Mis. Though best known as Wolverine from the X-Men franchise, Hugh Jackman validates his second reputation as a musical talent with waves of emotion and impressive vocal range. Though he becomes less the focus as the film moves into its second hour, he remains affecting. Then there’s proven screen actor Russell Crowe, who sings at least two of the show’s best solo numbers in an eye-opening performance. Eddie Redmayne has an emotional musical number (“Empty Chairs At Empty Tables”, an ode to dead rebel allies) nearly on par with Hathaway’s. The luminous Amanda Seyfried and sincere Samantha Barks make memorable impressions as well, as do child actors Isabelle Allen and Daniel Huttlestone.

Les Mis is the rare musical that has a bigger goal in mind than a romantic happily-ever-after, and another impressive achievement by the film is that despite the fact that all these things are conveyed through music, the morals of love, redemption, unity, sacrifice and faith all stick. Finally, the cinematography is also phenomenal (bravo head photographer Danny Cohen), going from those emotion-grabbing close-ups to sweeping panoramic views to create a visual experience a play never could.

What Doesn’t Work?

When it comes to musicals, be they on stage or on film, you have to make some sacrifices as a viewer. First, you have to believe two people could fall deeply in love after a few seconds of eye contact. Also, after two and a half hours, you do get a little tired of people singing, you’re also worn out by the constant emotional peaks and valleys. Les Mis does feel long—probably fifteen minutes could have been cut without compromising the movie’s quality—and, in keeping with musical tradition, there are a pair of supporting characters on hand mostly for comic relief that prove rather distracting. While they do have one amusing gag (the constant mispronunciation of a major character’s name), they’re so much less interesting and heartfelt than the other major players that you feel they could have been done without.

Content

What’s generally going to keep people either from seeing Les Miserables or from enjoying it are its length (a little over 2.5 hours) and its main idea (it’s a musical; ergo, it’s pretty much all singing). But there are some obvious innuendos and some partial nudity derived from skimpy costumes and scenes near a brothel, but these are largely contained in the film’s first half hour. And there is a fair amount of blood and a few minutes of intense warlike violence (the audience will see a number of people get shot at close range).  For the most part, though, it’s fairly light by today’s movies’ standards.

Bottom Line (I Promise):

I can’t stop humming a few of the melodies, does that help? It’s long and pretty heavy, but Les Miserables is an admirable and impressive movie with an exceptional cast, a grand scope and some important themes. Like all great shows, it earns its applause handily.

Les Miserables (2012)

Directed by Tom Hooper

Screenplay by William Nicholson; Based on the musical play written by Claude-Michel Schonberg (composer) and Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel (lyrics); English lyrics later added by Herbert Kretzmer

Originally inspired by the novel “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo

Rated PG-13

Length: 157 minutes