Movie Review: Les Misérables (2012)

Okay, we’ll start off with the bottom line:  I liked this movie. A lot.

Les Mis is not a perfect show by any means. It’s an intentional tear-jerker full of treacly romance and soul-wrenching tragedy and improbabilities galore, with a dollop of slapstick thrown in just to keep people from slitting their wrists by the middle.  Every one of those flaws shows up in this movie.

Part of what makes up for all of that is the amazing, almost-impossible-not-to-sing-along-to music, and that’s the movie’s greatest strength and greatest weakness.

So in the interest of honesty, let me talk a bit about things in the movie (trying to avoid spoilers) that bugged me — and how some of them didn’t bug me enough to take away from the overall product.

First off, Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman were asked to sing songs above their range — Crowe, in particular, and early on in the film, has trouble with this.  Part of that stems from the range of the songs themselves. Part of it is that while stage productions somehow encourage and tolerate theatrical, even falsetto, singing, it strikes a viewer as odd in a movie musical.

At the same time, there’s a charm to the rather daring step of recording the music live on the set, rather than lip-syncing it in — and in having the music follow the singer, not the other way around.  It adds a naturalness (even when the above problem occurs), it encourages the occasional speaking of sung lines (in a way that feels right, not in a Rex Harrison or Richard Harris “I can’t really sing all that well” kind of way), and it makes some of the long, sustained notes seem all the more remarkable.

Perhaps a greater sin is that Crowe’s music style, as Javert, is all too often sloppy, with scoops a-plenty. This is particularly so in his key song, “Stars,” though he redeems himself a bit in his finale — and I think, despite that, Crowe does an overall a good job in his acting in one of my favorite stage roles.

Some folks have criticized the use of many, many, many close-ups during the singing (bearing in mind that almost all the show is singing).  This didn’t actually bother me. At first, I thought it was a nice contrast to a stage production, where the actors/singers are so far away.  I came to realize that it actually echoes the stage experience in some ways, by focusing on the singer and the song, and not on the luscious cinematic visuals all around.  This isn’t The Sound of Music with big, swooping aerial shots or gorgeous backdrops to the songs.  Those kinds of things are in the film, but not so much when people are belting out a tune.  Then it’s about the singer, and a focus on the words, not a distraction of the amazing Paris, etc., being portrayed.  I thought it worked, and added still more life and meaning to the way the music was handled.

I’m not a big fan of the Thénardiers in Les Mis, and this movie didn’t change that.  They’re the comic relief one finds in a lot of Shakespeare, but they tend to take center stage too much here, and their scenes tend to be everything the rest of the musical isn’t — schtick, fancy footwork and staging, and just plain conventional. As well, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter just didn’t cut it for me as the larcenous couple.

But they were among the few actors who didn’t nail their roles. Hugh Jackman does a great Jean Valjean (and is barely recognizable in his early prisoner guise, where he’d lost 30 lbs. and went on a 36 hour water diet to come across as more emaciated). Though there were a few “Hey, Wolverine!” moments for me midway through, as well as a few times as he aged where he began to look oddly like Mel Gibson, I thought he did a spendid job.

I already mentioned Crowe. Anne Hathaway’s Fantine is tortured and exquisite, and her “I Dreamed a Dream” is an excellent rendition; she lost 25 lbs. for the role, and it paid off. Amanda Seyfried does a decent job with the older Cosette (Isabelle Allen’s younger Cosette is spot on).  Samantha Barks’s Eponyne is perhaps a bit too glamorous-looking, but she carries the role well. Eddie Redmayne starts of well enough as Marius (a kind of goofy role), but then brings down the house with his “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables” number. And all the supporting cast members — peasants, whores, revolutionaries — do a good job as well.

The pacing of the movie gets a bit hinky in places to be sure. Scenes abut one another sometimes abruptly, without the transitions that a stage production would have. There’s a decent effort to provide some historical context (visually and with a short introductory scroll), as well as flag how time is passing, but, as with the original show, it’s sometimes tough to keep track of where and when one is.

Overall, though, the music, the production values, and the quality of the actors, carry this one off.  I can understand where folks might not like it as well as I did — but I plan on picking it up on disc when it comes out, as I think it will bear rewatching multiple times in the future.