Some Thoughts on the "Les Miserables" Movie

So I saw the movie last night with my friend Alex and I wanted to get out my brain spew before the inevitable occurrence of talking to other people happens and I am bombarded with opinions other than my own. Right now, my brain is fairly fresh as I think the only things I know are that I am vaguely aware of the movie's rotten tomatoes rating (somewhere in the low 70%?) and I know that a lot of people on my tumblr dashboard who love the musical were very, very upset but my friends who love it seemed to think it was okay.

Confession time: I haven't actually seen the FULL stage show. I saw the shortened stage show that is actually practically the same length, the 25th anniversary concert, parts of the 10th and I know the music by heart learned through repeated listening to the original London cast recording years ago. I have also read the book and it is one of my favorites with Victor Hugo being one of my top two favorite authors as a whole (Kurt Vonnegut is the other one; in case you are trying to figure out what the hell those two authors could possibly have in common, they're both humanists). So that being said, I would say that overall, I liked it. I probably give it 3.5/5 stars which is generally the rating I used for "I liked it. It was good" with 4 being great, 4.5 being awesome, and 5 being flawless. The reason for the rating is because I found that there were things I really, really liked and things that really, really bothered me with very few things not on that strict binary.

What I loved wholeheartedly was the art direction and costumes. The sets were gorgeous and really evocative of the time period and feel of the stage show. I felt like the book was coming to life for me in a way that didn't occur when say, I watched the Liam Neeson non-musical version of "Les Mis." I absolutely love things that they included like Gavroche's elephant and the church interiors were all beautiful. As for costumes what sticks out the most is the Thenardier's three costumes changes, each very different and clearly showing both their station and their bombastic flair. From a visual standpoint alone, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

I also loved all the attention to detail and little callbacks. When Javert is singing "Stars", he is shown walking along the edge of a roof, a scene that is evoked again when when he is singing his suicide song and teetering on the edge of the bridge with an intent to jump. When Cosette is talking to her father in his bedroom, the silver candlesticks the bishop gave him are prominently displayed on a side table. There's also the inclusions from the book that according to my only available authority on the matter at the time (Alex) aren't in the stage show. Marius' grandfather appears and their relationship is given a brief albeit informative back story. The scene with Lamark's funeral being the start of the rebellion is included and given a bit of reasoning. Alex also told me that everything after Valjean and Marius escape from the sewers is more clearly laid out. Also, I have to mention the ending scene. As Valjean was dying, I started wondering how they were going to do the ending reprise of "Do You Hear The People Sing?" and they did it excellently with Valjean essentially entering a heaven where there is a giant barricade across Paris. While I am sometimes not happy with "showing heaven after death" scenes, this one didn't feel contrived. It also perfectly tied in the themes of hope so well with the song lyrics combined with the symbolic barrier. Hugo would have been happy with it, I think.

I was okay, perhaps leaning more towards pleased, with the way the songs were ordered and what was cut. Eponine sings "On My Own" earlier than she does in the show which actually cuts the bit where she talks to Cosette herself and this was one of the things I would have been more unhappy about had I not developed a desire to not have Amanda Seyfried sing more than she had to. Same with how they cut "Dog Eats Dog" entirely. I would have been more sad if I hadn't been okay with the fact that Sasha Baron Cohen is not a singer, but plays the role well. The one thing I actually was kind of missing was "Little People" solely because it makes Gavroche singing it when he dies collecting gunpowder feel more random than like a dark reprise which is what it actually feels like in the show. However, they shorted "Castle On A Cloud" which was good because that song is boring and I love that they moved forward "One Day More" and pushed "Do You Hear The People Sing" to the scene where they actually start the riot. In the show it has always felt unnecessary to me to have "Red and Black" and "Do You Hear The People Sing" back to back even though both songs are absolutely necessary to the show at large. There where a couple times where lines were flip-flopped and it messed up the rhyme scheme which irks me but I can deal with it, particularly because there were also times when lines were changed to be more descriptive than the previous ones so it balances out. The inclusion of the new song "Suddenly" was not offensive or anything, just unnecessary. I don't have any feelings about it.

The thing I was displeased with was the direction. I loved Tom Hooper's directing of "The King's Speech" but here it was clear that he was out of his element. To quote Alex, "Directed by Tom Hooper, guest directed by Steven Soderbergh". It was very clear that there were some things he could do and some that he could not. All the choral songs were wonderfully directed. "At The End Of The Day" had a lot of quick cuts but it really had great movement and felt natural with the song. "Turning" was a nice slow pan out of women cleaning up the blood on the streets as they sang. All the war scenes and large crowd scenes were great as was the final song of Valjean's death. The problem mainly appeared when it came to shooting solos. Almost every solo, especially every really heartfelt tear-jerking solo was shot in the same exact way: close up of the actor's face slightly to the right of the scene with negative space to the left. By "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" I was screaming, "ENOUGH." The only solos that were well shot were Javert's which actually had life and movement and composition (there was one lovely shot in particular of Javert on the ledge in the right part of the frame and Notre Dame in the left; reference to other Hugo books?). I get that he wanted focus on the actor's reactions over all else but when the same technique is used that many times, it loses all meaning. There were also other directional decisions that were really odd. There is one quick shot of Valjean and Marius talking that has a tilted camera for absolutely no reason at all except to make the audience tilt their head in both confusion and to see the scene better. When the camera pans up on Gavroche's dead body, it looks like he's slipping out of the frame. Sometimes an actor would move and the camera would seem to be a few seconds late in catching up to them. Then there was the brief but memorable shots of extreme shaky cam when the boys are running into the cul-de-sac that made me so motion sick I had to shut my eyes for a second.

Aside from the shots themselves there was another particular directorial decision I have to address. There were a lot of actors who did the, "unable to sing properly because I am overcome by emotion" thing which was mostly effective but there were a few times when it got absolutely excessive to the point where it was a real hindrance on the actor's volume, diction, and rhythm. Actually, especially rhythm. At first I thought this was just a thing Anne Hathaway was doing which is smart because she is an actor first and not a singer but then where I realized that absolutely everyone was doing it, I decided that someone told them to do this and there were a lot of times when it should have been toned back. The scenes in particular that come to mind are when Fauntine is hallucinating Cosette, a lot of Valjean's solos, and the first half of "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables."

Now we get to the actors specifically, the quality of which works strictly on a person by person basis and occasionally even a song by song basis. Now, I am not going to get super hung up by the fact that half these people are really not Broadway voices because it really doesn't matter for most of the parts of this show and it's a movie anyway that, like I said in the previous paragraph, chose to put acting performance above traditional quality of singing. But I will call shenanigans when I see it. I'm going to try to go based on time of appearance but it might be a bit looser than that.

Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean was fine. Just fine. I had no real expectations of him but during "What Have I Done?" I started to get sincerely worried. I felt better as time went on although his "Bring Him Home" could have been better. I think that song is really the test of a Jean Valjean. If you can nail that, you can probably nail everything else. A lot of his songs had very odd rhythm that didn't follow the music well and this was a constant annoyance. Overall, fine.

Russell Crowe gave a poor performance of Javert. He couldn't act and sing and the same time and didn't really do either anyway. The word that comes to mind is flat: flat performance and singing that literally didn't stray from about one and a half octaves. He was bland as bland could be and the part really should have been recasted.

Colm Wilkinson as the Bishop was obviously perfect although the second he started singing I was like, "Holy crap! It's two Jean Valjeans!"

Anne Hathaway as Fauntine was actually surprisingly great. I didn't have doubts about her like other people I know did but I was pleasantly surprised. She has a good voice and her performance itself was really moving. I almost started tearing up during "I Dreamed A Dream" and I never tear up from that song because it is practically a cliche at this point but her acting was just so powerful, I couldn't help it. I think she's working for that Oscar.

Isabelle Allen as Young Cosette was fine. She was only in it for a second and she sung perfectly fine.

Sasha Baron Cohen as Monsieur Thenardier was the right casting choice from an acting perspective no doubt about it. Thenardier isn't really a "singing" part so there was no real pressure for him to do particularly well there. He just had to be funny and he succeeded. The one problem I had with him was that during "Master Of The House" he adopted this weird semi-French accent that sounded more like Borat than anything and was so incongruous since everyone else has either a British-ish (usually cockney) accent or has no accent because they are singing and that usually diminishes an accent.

Helena Bonham Carter as Madame Thenardier . . . well, it makes sense from an acting perspective but goddamn if I'm not sick of hearing her try to sing. I think she somehow was even less impressive here than in "Sweeney Todd". She needs to learn how to project and her diction could use so much work. If I didn't know the lyrics, I would have no idea what she was saying during her bit in "Master Of The House" (although side note: I love the staging for her bit in that song with her flirting with the guy as she robs him).

Amanda Seyfried as Cosette was notably not good. Her acting was fine, I guess. There's not much to act in the role of Cosette really. Her vocal tone was fine too. The problem was that she missed the correct note about half the time. She was frequently sharp and it was painfully obvious. She didn't even really have any moments when it could be blamed on being overcome with emotion.

Eddie Redmayne as Marius, like Anne Hathaway, was a surprising standout. Prior to seeing the show I had heard him sing "Heart Full Of Love" and I was really worried but when I actually heard him sing other things, he was really good. I had a bit of a problem with the first half of "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables" because he sang it so softly without any real buildup so when it actually gets to the big belting moment, it came out of nowhere but I may be a bit critical because it's my favorite song. His voice also had a really interesting, unusual tone which went well with his unusual looks.

Aaron Tveit as Enjorlas was obviously fantastic. It's funny how much his voice stood out as a Broadway actor over the regular actors.

The same could be said of Daniel Huttlestone who played Gavroche and was great. No surprise that he has played the role before.

Samantha Barks as Eponine was very good but I felt like she was holding back a bit. I feel like her performance at the 25th anniversary concert had much more of a punch to it although she still got me a bit choked up during "A Little Fall Of Rain". Perhaps she was hungry. Seriously, her waist is terrifying in that dress. Give her a cheeseburger.

Everyone else mostly did fine: the ABC Society, the factory workers, the whores, that guy who says, "You have no friends". The convicts were mostly unintelligible though. The loud sounds of the crashing waves did not help. It was another reason I was worried about the movie in the first couple minutes.

As I said, overall, it wasn't bad. I liked it. It could have been better but it could have been worse. I think a lot of the negativity that I am finding towards the show comes from people who had very high expectations, people who think it can't live up to the stage show, or people who are expecting to be floored by the singing and these are all bad ways to go about it.

*Life Tip Of The Day: Always go into something expecting nothing. Especially movies. I saw "Django Unchained" on Christmas and all I knew about it was that Quentin Tarantino directed it. I loved it. Just saying.

And now, off to ruin the purity of my thoughts on the movie by looking at what other people think.

**UPDATE: Flixster (72% tomato rating in fact) shows a distinct difference between people who loved it and people who were notably disappointed. I'm a stand alone as a 3.5/5 rater. Oy, the internet debates that have probably been going on.