Les Miserables!

Here it is, my as-short-as-I-can-make-it review of the movie musical Les Miserables!

Cute face...you only see it for three minutes.

First, I have a confession to make…I’ve never seen an actual production of this show. I am extremely depressed about it. What I have experienced in Les Mis is: the 25^th anniversary in concert pseudo-production, various soundtracks, especially one with Colm Wilkinson as Valjean, and the Liam Neeson/Geoffrey Rush/Uma Manface non-musical film version. I’m dying to see a full production of this show, but unfortunately I haven’t yet been able to. The split second it comes to my area, though, it is happening.

I confessed this because this is the reason I’m not doing a Movie vs Musical installment for Les Mis. I have a great knowledge of the material, the songs, the performers of the musical, but I haven’t actually seen an honest-to-deity version of it and therefore can’t judge it. But I will be comparing the movie to the assortment of Les Misiness I have seen.

Sooooo, here we go.

I have to say, I cried when I first saw the trailer. I was a Freudian hysterical woman; I cried out, tears started streaming down my face, and I hugged myself to keep from jumping up and down in sheer excitement. Holy fuck, they’re doing it! They’re doing the movie. The musical movie! They have actors who can sing! Holy fuckity fuck! And when I saw the trailer where they were bragging about singing live rather than to a pre-recorded soundtrack, like any other musical movie, I about leapt out of my skin. Hooooooolyyyyy fuuuuuuuck!!! Elation! Finally, a musical movie without that unavoidable awkwardness of the actors lip syncing! This is going to be beyond awesome.

When I finally saw it on Christmas Day with my baby brother, I came out of the theatre a wee bit disappointed, but no more disappointed than any other movie I’ve hyped up forever and ever in my mind for an extended period of time (cough, cough, Rises…). I’m going to try to make this as short as I possibly can, more of a Rises review than my ridiculously long Sweeney Todd one. All right, point-by-point quick bit review, andiamo!

Here are the main points for me of good things or problems:

Pacing: This was by far the biggest disappointment for me. This film was so rushed. So rushed. It’s understandable; they crammed a 3+ hour show into a 2 hour movie. Why The Hobbit gets three movies and they couldn’t even break Les Mis into two, I’ll never know. There were no scene shots to get our bearings, there were very few moments for actual character development, etc. My brother, who isn’t very familiar with the musical or the story, said it best when we discussed it: “I barely got to know the characters before they died.” The movie moved so fast through so much that we didn’t really feel connected to anybody because we’re being thrown so much at once, and then, naturally, being in Les Mis, the characters die, and we haven’t connected to them. I can’t imagine going into this movie with no knowledge of at least the storyline. It must be one of the most confusing films of all time in that instance.

Camera angles: I had to talk about this because it was by far the weirdest part of this movie for me. What the hell were with the camera angles? In the beginning of the film, we open with a gigantic epic shot of a French ship being pulled into the harbor by prisoners. It was beautiful.

            And it was immediately followed by the shakiest camera I’ve seen since Blair Witch.

            Dude, I thought I was going to be seasick. From Valjean’s release to his big revelation in the church, it was like the cameraman was experiencing a personal earthquake. I actually had to close my eyes for a few minutes or I would’ve yarked Skittles all over my brother.

            Finally, the camera calmed down, but they were replaced with shots of the actors so close that I spent some supposedly very emotional moments counting Hugh Jackman’s grey beard hairs, Anne Hathaway’s pores, and Russel Crowe’s moles (think I’m kidding? Crowe has three moles. One on the left side of his face, and two on the right, though one is buried in his beard. Bitches.) Apparently Tom Hooper is notorious for these kind of close personal angles, and I totally understand and appreciate his reasons for using them; they’re jarring, uncomfortable, and force you to feel the actor’s every emotion. However, again, so many closeups for so long. The movie’s most-anticipated scene for most, Fantine’s I Dreamed a Dream, was a single unchanging angle of Anne Hathaway from top of head to clavicle, slightly camera right. It was beautiful…for half of the song. Then I got bored. And I know it wasn’t just me. Yes, the song was beautifully done, but I wanted to see more than Hathaway’s pores in that scene. I needed to breathe. A sweeping shot of wherever the fuck she was (a ship, I think?) would have worked. She was in a very interesting bed that I would’ve liked to have gotten a better look at, or even her dress, which was painstakingly distressed. I appreciate the art behind the shots, but Jesus Christ, you can only stare at someone’s face for so long.

            During the battle…if you could call it that, we’ll get to that…the shaky cam happens again, but it’s appropriate this time. I get that they used it to show that the world is turned upside down for the actor, but it works far better with blood and explosions and shrapnel and chaos. The contrast between the two camera styles is really jarring.

Overall Look: This was amazing. Extremely odd quirk of mine: I am always happy when I’m watching an historical movie where the actor’s teeth are appropriately nasty. I know that’s really weird, but when I’m watching something that’s supposed to be set in Shakespeare’s time, or medieval times, and everybody has beautiful sparkling white dentist-enhanced teeth, I get pissed. Les Mis went to great lengths to look gritty. Not just gritty…dark. Hugh Jackman looked nasty in the first scene. They didn’t hold back. He had gashes in his head, nasty teeth, dirt and grime, sea salt in his hair…dude, he even had blood around his irises. He looked awful, and it was awesome. The breed pair Marius and Cosette were still pretty and clean, of course, but everybody else looked good and grody. However, the camera angles never gave the audience any time to take in the hard work they put into the set, the costumes, or the rest of the atmosphere. Zoom out, for Chrissake!

            I think I know why they may not have zoomed out as much as they could have and shown us the world they created. What we saw of the world they created looked like…a set. Everything was very set-like, especially the “barricade”.

            I have a problem with the barricade. In the previews, we saw this gigantic pile of furniture, carriages, doors, and rubble with hundreds and hundreds of people cheering and shouting, with flags billowing in an epic wind before a sweeping view of Paris. In the movie, we realize that that shot was from the end of the movie, when (spoilers) Valjean has died and Fantine has taken him to…heaven?...anyway, the actual barricade during the rebellion was…tiny. It was a tiny pile of furniture, doors, and rubble and seemed to be barricading the 19^th century version of a cul-de-sac. Not exactly threatening. I feel like filmmakers used all of their budget on the makeup and the A-list actors and the sets suffered as a result. That was really disappointing for me, because one of the biggest things I love about seeing beloved musicals onscreen is that film really brings what were normally musical sets to stunning reality. It didn't really do that this time.

Those gashes...awesome.

Singing live: It was wonderful. It really brought the emotions to the forefront. That said, seeing as the singers and not the musicians were controlling the songs, the pacing was off in a few of the songs. But it was a miniscule pacing difference, barely noticeable. If you love Les Mis for the music, though, I would expect to be unhappy with the way the actors perform the songs. They most definitely sacrifice voice and melody for emotion, which I love, but many musical fans do not appreciate.

            Oh, and this isn’t really about singing live, but what the fuck was with that random piece of song when child Cosette and Valjean are driving through Paris in a carriage? What the hell? That wasn’t needed! It certainly wasn’t in the musical. Just how much essential stuff did you assholes cut to put that crap in there?

Actor Performances/Character Portrayals

All right, super quickly, the actors:

Hugh Jackman: 

Dude, he was working his ass off. You could tell this was just a dream role of his, and with his Broadway experience, I think we all were expecting a lot from him. And he was…good. He was. He was a good Valjean. His voice struck my ear wrong, for some reason. It wasn’t that he was off tune or anything, it just wasn’t the kind of voice I liked. He did sound a wee bit strained during Bring Him Home. As far as his acting goes…honestly, something was lacking, and I don’t know what it was. Like I said before, it was obvious he had his whole heart in this role. I guess I was just expecting him to really take the role and define it, grab it by the balls, but he didn’t somehow. His performance isn’t remarkable, and it joins a veritable sea of mediocre Jean Valjeans.

And random question…what did Valjean actually die of? He seemed fine enough to haul an unconscious 20-year-old boy through the sewers of Paris, then suddenly he has a bit of trouble with a trunk in his carriage (easily mistaken for emotional agony) and he’s dying…just out of nowhere. He died from…plot?

Anne Hathaway: 

Loved her. She was beautiful in her suffering, and I Dreamed a Dream was as exceptional as everybody expected it to be. But honestly, due to the rushed pace I’ve already mentioned, they cut Fantine’s part down to damn near nothing. She and Valjean had absolutely no time to bond. Pacing in the whole movie was a problem, so I could be wrong about this, but the way it was cut, from the point where Valjean (literally) picks her up off the streets to him learning about the man arrested in his place, to him confessing in the courtroom to being the real Valjean (which was unintentionally hilarious because it was a literal split-second scene…he just runs into a crowded courtoom and says, “I’m Jean Valjean this guy’s innocent I’ll be in the hospital with my hooker bye!”) to Fantine dying seems like only a few hours have passed. He gets to hospital, and she dies. Bam, like that. In the non-musical movie, comparably, they have time to bond and fall in love, which I liked very much. I’m not sure of the actual pacing of the musical, but I know the song of her death is longer, at least. I loved Hathaway, but I wouldn’t give her the Oscar that I think she might end up getting for the role, not because she wasn’t brilliant, but because she didn’t really add to the role (same with Jackman) and she was in the movie for maybe 20 minutes altogether.

Cosette: 

Child Cosette was great, though she had pretty much a 30-second part. I was not impressed with grown Cosette, though in all fairness, this could be because I’ve always found the character herself to be boring and stale, just another fluff love interest with no character unto herself. Her high notes were nice, but she couldn’t hold them for very long. They kind of petered out awkwardly in places, most notably during the…holy fuck, I’ve forgotten the word…trilogy, trifecta…trio! During the trio of Marius, Cosette, and Eponine.

Marius: 

..........fish liiips!

This guy surprised the hell out of me. When I first saw him, and I know this is judgmental, I went, “whoooa…he’s got weird lips…ewww”, but weird lips and strange facial expressions aside, Marius was fairly competent but unimpressive…until he sang Empty Chairs at Empty Tables. Ho. Ly. Shit. This guy fucking rocked that song, the atmosphere, everything. I was trembling, I was so moved. It’s one of my favourite songs in this whole musical, and I’m usually very unimpressed with performances of it, but I loved how he did this. It was passionate, heartbreaking, haunting, he did everything right. His expression just forced tears to my eyes. Just beautiful. Everything I could have wanted in a performance of that moment in the show.

Eponine: 

This is another character I’ve never liked. She reminds me too much of the whiny unnecessarily emo phases a lot of my friends went through in their teenaged years (and they worshipped her as the one character who “understands my pain!”) And though her character didn’t change much, this girl rocked it. You could tell she’s been doing it for years on Broadway. She was still the character I don’t like—he’s not into you, get over it, grow some balls and stop being a pathetic puppy shadow, woman!—but her pain was well performed. I didn’t much like the slight changes made to her story…like the way she dies… “Marius is about to get shot! I shall literally grab the muzzle of the gun and shove it into my own gut in an almost comical fashion! For love!” But I can absolutely say that this was the only time I actually liked listening to On My Own.

            Yes, yes, I hear all of you freaking out like when I said I hate the chorus of Sweeney Todd. I get that this is one of the most popular songs from the show, but I’m sorry, I hate it. It’s juvenile and whiny. And almost everybody who sings it sings it in a juvenile and whiny fashion. But this girl managed to give it some credibility, especially during the belty part, and ironically, the whiniest lyrics: A world that’s full of happiness that I have never known! I’ll probably still skip it on the soundtrack, but she nailed it.

The Thenardiers:

Fail...rage...raaaage...!

 i.e, Master and Mistress of the house. I have to admit, when I saw who they had cast for these two outrageous characters, I cringed. The memory of Helena Bonham Carter apathetically butchering Mrs. Lovett, my favourite character role in all the musicals of the land, was (is) still a very fresh wound. But I tried to remain hopeful. After all, Sacha Baron Cohen did very well in his role in that bad-ish Sweeney Todd; he could do the same for the Master of the House.

Aaaand…no.

I know that most people liked the Thenardiers in this movie. Friends of mine have raved about the hilarity of the scene. But honestly, I didn’t like it! I didn’t! I loved the idea of it—how smoothly they stole things from people had some serious potential…but it was so nonsensical, and so far from the tone of the rest of the film. In the musical, Master of the House is a showstopper. It’s like a huge party where everybody’s drunk and jovially cynical, bowing down sarcastically to the Master, whom they all know is a drunken thief. It’s like a neighborhood poking fun at the community drunk. It’s hilarious. But this movie just took it to a ridiculous nonsensical degree. Bonham Carter was dull and apathetic, painfully reminiscent of her Mrs. Lovett. Baron Cohen was funny—I liked how he came into the scene having been asleep drunk behind the kegs the whole time—but they were way too out there. And I’m sorry to be harping on this, but ugh, Bonham Carter! One of my favourite parts of the show is when the Mistress of the House starts chewing out her own husband and brazenly, drunkenly shouting out snide asides, Master and a half! The film turned it into some…stupid, fake, awkward seduction sequence, all with Bonham Carter’s apathetic, shitty, breathy voice. Cazzo!

The ending of the characters was also extremely disappointing to me. In the musical, Thenardier has this wonderful song boasting about his new rich life that he acquired from stealing riches from the bodies of the victims of the rebellion. It’s a song that glorifies scavengers as the only true victors of war, and it’s dark and simply wonderful.

The movie Thenardiers are last seen sneaking into and getting kicked out of Marius and Cosette’s wedding.

Fail.

…

…….

Fail.

Gavroche:

Love! love love love you!

 Oh, my fucking God, I am in love with this kid. Who is he? Can I keep him? Holy fuck, I’m sorry, but for me, this kid stole the show. He could sing and act beyond his years. He was hilarious and heartbreaking. (Spoiler) when he died, I fucking lost it. We’re talking tears, gasps, damn near Phantom-level tears. Seriously, I just want to clip all of the scenes with Gavroche in them and have them embedded in my brain on a loop. And I’m extremely proud of the filmmakers showing a dead, bleeding, open-eyed kid. Almost every movie tends to shy away from the dead kid. Even if one dies, it’s off camera, or crumpled over, back to the camera, bloodless. This film needed that moment of sheer horror, and they delivered. If you’re not thinking of going to see this movie, see it for Gavroche if nothing else. It is worth it.

Javert:

".....why was I cast...?"

……………..ugh. 

Russel Crowe.

Russel Fucking Crowe.

What the hell are you doing in this movie?

Look, I heard a rumour that filmmakers were (appropriately) apprehensive about casting Russel Crowe as Javert, the antagonist, the blind pursuer of black and white justice, the long arm of the law, but after Crowe somehow proved his dedication to the role, they cast him. That’s what I heard. After seeing this movie, I know it’s a fat heap of bullshit. Russel Crowe, dedicated to a role. Are you kidding? Look, I heard Crowe’s band, I knew going in he wasn’t much of a singer. During the movie, I could tell he’d probably gotten a vocal coach, and it was painful to hear him, but it wasn’t utterly unbearable. The worst part of Russel Crowe being Javert is his acting style…of not acting. Javert is supposed to be this hyper-focused super cop, seeing his world utterly in black and white, to the point where he is destroyed when he realizes that it simply isn’t a black and white world. Russel Crowe seemed like he couldn’t possibly care less that he was acting, like he had far more important things to do than humour all those silly cameras following him around. His overall apathetic shittiness was particularly terrible during his scenes with Hugh Jackman, whom in contrast couldn’t have cared more about his role. He was acting his heart out, and Crowe, in contrast, just looked pathetic.

To see an example of a fantastic Javert, see the non-musical film version where Geoffrey Rush has the role. Yes, the movie has its problems, and a lot of musical fans didn’t like it. But nobody can deny that Rush is fucking amazing. I can’t even describe it. I’ve ranted about it before, but you seriously have to see it for yourself. He owns the part, he brings something to the role that even Hugh Jackman couldn’t do for his in this movie. See it, and erase Russel Crowe from your mind, because Inspector Javert is an amazing character and Russel Crowe in it is a cruel joke.

And (spoiler) dude, how brutal was his freaking death! CRACK!!!!! Holy shit, was that necessary?! I mean, the non-musical movie Javert’s death was kind of anti-climactic (:splash:…no surfacing…hey Javert…are you made of rocks or something?) But damn, him hitting the concrete was just…again, brutal! The entire audience gasped in the theatre. I about leapt out of my seat before snapping into a Dee Ball. Fucking…ouch.

All right, my last bit for this review…because it’s long…is my biggest pet peeve. Dude, the actual rebellion was so flat. It was so flat that I seriously considered doing a vlog so I could do an impression of it. It started out promising…the soon-to-be rebels start whispering the awesome rallying song, Do You Hear the People Sing, and it really builds the tension as the funeral procession passes, packs of guards riding on horseback all around the hearse, and then…the rebels gently sidestep the railings, stroll to the hearse, climb on, and wave their flags as if it’s no big deal. The packs of guards? They just trot off into an alley. And that’s it. Seriously. No fighting, no guards knocked off their horses, no flinging of the hearse driver, nothing. It was so lackluster that my brother actually wondered if people had been allowed to climb on top of the hearses back in those days. Utter film fail.

The Nostalgia Chick, whom I love, once said that the non-musical movie version of Les Mis was more like Les Meh. I would say that of this movie, for the most part. It definitely wasn’t the Oscar Gold Blockbuster I had been expecting after all of the buildup. But worth seeing? Absolutely. I mentioned Gavroche, whom I am planning on kidnapping and adopting, but even though the movie is disappointing, it is still lovely to see the musical in this medium, and it is entertaining.

That is, if you can stomach Russel Crowe.

Yeahhh!!!!...this is not the actual barricade! Viva la fail!