Les Misérables (2012)

I’m of two minds regarding Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables, the Oscar-bait adaptation of the long-running musical.  There are good things to say about the film, but the delivery of the movie’s technical aspects is so distracting that I came away feeling a bit disappointed.

You know the story, adapted from Victor Hugo’s sprawling epic about French justice and revolution:  Former convict Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is doggedly pursued by Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) for breaking parole after serving 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread.  After experiencing God’s mercy, Valjean builds a new life for himself, raising the daughter of his late employee Fantine (Anne Hathaway).  The film reaches its third act when the daughter, Cosette (Amanda Seyfried), falls in love with brave young revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne), embroiling Valjean and Javert in a conflict larger than themselves.

Preliminary disclaimer:  I’d never seen the musical version before, though I’ve read the novel and seen the mostly successful Liam Neeson/Geoffrey Rush film version.  I’m aware that the following “Why is there so much singing in a musical?” is a bit like bemoaning a Superman film for too much flying.

But the singing in the film doesn’t always work.  It’s been my custom to review musicals by musical number, of which there are two kinds in this sung-through musical:  full and distinct pieces, and interludes where the dialogue is sung.  Consequently, a movie where nearly every word is sung is difficult to break down in paragraph form.  There are some standout pieces, to be fair; Hathaway is heart-breaking with “I Dreamed a Dream,” a despairing ode that would drive even the stone-hearted Pharaoh to tears and will likely garner her an Oscar nod – if not a win – come February.

In the scene-stealer category, we have a surprisingly delightful “Master of the House,” featuring Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as crooked innkeepers.  As the Thénardiers, Cohen and Carter recur throughout the film (always unexpectedly, always agreeably) but take center stage in this giddy revelry in corruption, reminiscent of their deliciously evil turns in Sweeney Todd.  Their enchanting abilities were never truly in question, but the unanticipated levity their presence brings helps to alleviate some of the grim and unsuccessful elements of the film.

The film’s bleakness isn’t inherently a fault; truth be told, Hugo’s novel is a depressing one.  Les Mis conveys that quite well; in spite of the distracting talk-singing, Jackman and Crowe are both quite good in their roles as tortured and torturer, conveying a wide range of subtle emotions and conveying characterization past the singing that would tell rather than show.  Indeed, the greatest success of the film is that Jackman and Crowe manage to emote past their distracting tendency to sing every word; it’s almost as though there’s a better movie in here somewhere, if only the singing were reined in or at least less operatic.  I wonder, for example, why you cast someone like Russell Crowe, who plainly can’t sing, opposite Hugh Jackman, whose musical theater pedigree is significant and self-evident.

What the film doesn’t do well is provide the counter to the tragedy; though Hooper isn’t wallowing in sadness, the purported ray of sunshine falls flat.  Yes, the Thénardiers are a delight each time they appear, but the film offers as its source of optimism the uncompelling relationship of Cosette and Marius.  Seyfried is squandered as Cosette, reduced to nothing more than a pretty face on which Marius pins his hopes – hopes which he quickly abandons in favor of his duty.  Marius, too, gives voice to the meaninglessness of his comrades’ deaths (a moment when less singing would have meant more emotional weight), but the saccharine wedding scene that follows feels forced and unconvincing.  Redmayne clearly has love in his eyes when he looks at Cosette – leading me to wonder when this actor’s “moment” will come – but Cosette doesn’t requite it as well as I’d like.

Which gets me back to the central problem of Les Mis – the sense of imbalance.  Hooper’s direction is quite distracting in moments, as when he rapidly zooms in on a soloist like the end of the line on a roller coaster.  These disorienting moments felt more at home in the grand guignol surrealism of Sweeney Todd but never quite fit in this mostly realistic piece.  In short, the movie is too theatrical, too operatic, to work within the confines of a film.  Like Danny Boyle with Frankenstein, perhaps Hooper would have been better served by moving his production to the stage.

I don’t like being the guy who pulls apart a multimillion-dollar movie from behind a hundred-dollar laptop, but there are things that work in this film and there are things that don’t.  Perhaps this film is not made for someone like me (buzz indicates it’s certain to clean up at the Oscars), but for my money the film does not succeed in the same way that Sweeney Todd did.

Les Misérables is rated PG-13 “for suggestive and sexual material, violence and thematic elements.”  Prostitution is implied during the story, and we see one exchange with no nudity.  The June Rebellion is depicted with several deaths by gunfire, some with bloody sprays (though nothing on the order of Django Unchained).  I have yet to know what “thematic elements” are.