BelfastBoy
Posts: 450
Joined: 30/11/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: AxlReznor
The opening of the movie is a bit all over the place, but it picks up as soon as Anne Hathaway first appears on screen. Every good things that's been said about her performance is absolutely correct. One of the things I've always disliked about stage musicals is that the actors always seem to sing the notes of the song, but they don't actually sing the feelings. They're more concerned with being technically perfect than convincing people that they are actually feeling what the song is about. Not so with this movie, where you can tell the pain the characters are going through just by listening to the soundtrack. And nowhere is this best exemplified than in Anne's astonishing performance of 'I Dreamed A Dream'. I was actually quite disappointed with how little screentime she had, but the other performances from that point on were all strong. A lot of criticism has been leveled at Russell Crowe, but I think it's a side effect of his character just not getting any of the good songs.
I haven't been able to get 'Do You Hear The People Sing?' out of my head since the first time it was sung. And at multiple points I had to struggle to hold back tears... but then, I'm speaking as the person who cried during two Batman movies, so it doesn't take much.
You beat me to it, and more eloquently than I'd be able to manage! Where the Les Mis film really scores highly is in the brutally closeup solo song performances, where the performers are totally lost in their characters and (for the audience) life seems to stop for a few minutes at a time. When I read the Empire review I questioned Helen O'Hara's comment that Hathaway's version of I Dreamed A Dream is definitive, but I'm happy to concede that I totally missed the point. When performed on stage, or on Elaine Paige albums etc, the performer is concentrating on delivering a technically proficient vocal for the listener or everyone in the audience. Hathaway's performance wouldn't work on stage, but set in the dramatic context with Fantine physically and emotionally broken, and with the camera right in her face, then she really is astonishing.
Overall, I was blown away by the film. I'm not even going to comment on the plot, because it's wafer thin - is Javert the only vaguely competent policeman in France over a period of several decades? Doesn't he age? What tyranny are Enjolras, Marius etc revolting against in 1832? (France had a revolution in 1830 to eject Charles X, but he was succeeded by 'Citizen King' Louis Philippe, generally a popular monarch until bloodlessly overthrown in 1848.) But none of that matters! I don't do full reviews but here's some impressions:
- In an earlier post I criticised Hugh Jackman's singing on Bring Him Home. Technically, I don't think he has the correct vocal range to play Valjean, but his performance is magnificent. I've never seen him so commanding and physical on screen - I haven't seen Lincoln but Daniel Day Lewis would have to really deliver to be better. Set in context, Jackman really delivers the emotions necessary for a complex but ultimately good character - on Bring It Home, the vibrato ceases to be obnoxious when his face and throat are cracking and straining, for we're watching the character of 'Jean Valjean' singing as if his life depends on it, rather than Hugh Jackman performing.
- I guess the film isn't to everyone's taste. The sung-through nature is occasionally clumsy, and there's a few places (in the stage version too) where a little bit of spoken word dialogue would be forgiveable. I saw the film on Friday afternoon and there wasn't a huge audience there. Of those who stayed until the end, pretty much everyone had been visibly crying, myself included. However, shame on the four people who walked out - especially the couple who departed during Samantha Barks' spinetingling On My Own! That's like leaving a football match during a penalty shootout! Anyone who doesn't shed a tear for the last two scenes of the film - one tragic, the other thrillingly euphoric - truly has a heart of stone.
- I suspect Russell Crowe's take on Javert is that of an almost robotic slave to duty and order. I thought he'd be the weak link but he was better than I thought, to be honest. He's a good singer but theatrical songs aren't really what his voice is suited to. The role requires someone with a big projectable voice. (It's comparable with when Nick Jonas played Marius. I may be in a minority in defending Jonas, for I don't think he was 'bad' as such. His singing voice just wasn't strong enough to compete with the bigger voices in the ensemble. Crowe is the same, just miscast rather than awful.)
- I've never seen Eddie Redmayne before but I was very impressed by him. Aaron Tveit delivered the showier role of Enjolras superbly but, picking up the pieces afterwards, Redmayne's gutwrenching solo Empty Chairs And Empty Tables was great. I know there's a DVD screener of the film out there already but Les Mis really should be seen on a huge screen - huge, unflinching, starkly-lit closeups of the performers' faces really sell the emotions of the story. The Marius-Cosette-Eponine 'love triangle' is somewhat unconvincing, but it seems tacked-on in the stage version too. I've seen Amanda Seyfried criticised in places, but I don't know why. Cosette is simply a minor, pretty passive role, and Seyfried is fine in the scenes she's in. Hopefully the exposure will lead to bigger things for Samantha Barks too - could you imagine Taylor Swift playing Eponine, because apparently that was a genuine possibility at one point?!
- The Thenardiers don't have to be technically spectacular singers, which is just as well as Sacha Baron Cohen (with his occasional Allo Allo-esque French accent) and Helena Bonham-Carter really can't sing! She seems to have walked straight in from Sweeney Todd as well, costume included. The one positive thing I would say is that, in the stage version or concert performances, the Thenardiers can come across as comic relief, but in the film, they do project the correct air of underlying and sinister unpleasantness.
Like I said, Les Mis won't be to everyone's tastes. It deals in big, primary colour emotions, but the musicality is so overwhelmingly powerful that to submit is to open yourself to perhaps the best array of theatrical songs in a single production. The film's final scene is so musically inspiring that the song in question is still in my head a day and half later.
EDIT: A swift bit of Wikipedia-ing reveals that Marius and Enjolras are fictional participants in the genuine 'June Rebellion' of 1832, a short-lived urban uprising. I suspect Victor Hugo's original novel examines the causes and courses of this more completely than the musical and film are able to.
< Message edited by BelfastBoy -- 13/1/2013 10:20:15 AM >
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Printable Version
Les Miserables - 
it was great and best of all , no singing!
) & young Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche. 
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