Les Misérables
Occupy
– The Musical!
After
wowing global audiences for close to three decades, the musical based on Victor
Hugo’s classic tale of crime, punishment, revolution and redemption finally
makes the jump from stage to screen.
Spanning
the period from 1815 to 1832’s anti-Orléanist June Rebellion, Les
Misérables
is the tale of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), an ex-convict at war with the world
after spending 19 years in prison (for stealing a loaf of bread!) who, after an
act of kindness, resolves to redeem himself by becoming a better man. He reinvents himself, assuming a new
identity and becoming a successful factory owner, pillar of the community and
mayor of a small provincial town.
In doing so however, he breaks his parole, earning the implacable enmity
of dogged policeman Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), who swears to bring him
to justice.
When
his actions inadvertently result in the ruin of factory worker Fantine (Anne
Hathaway),
Valjean pledges to care for the dying woman’s young daughter, bringing the
child up as his own. As Cosette (Amanda
Seyfried)
grows to adulthood she falls in love with idealistic young student Marius (Eddie
Redmayne). But as Paris spirals into revolt and
Marius takes to the barricades to protest against the injustice and poverty
that permeates French society, Valjean and Javert find their paths finally
crossing…
If
the thought of Wolverine, Catwoman, Gladiator, Borat and Bellatrix Lestrange teaming up to sing Susan
Boyle‘s
back catalogue makes you want to scream a scream rather than dream a dream you’re probably a smug,
jaded, cynical, sarcastic film snob who’s going into the movie having already
decided your position on Tom Hooper’s big screen adaptation of Cameron
Mackintosh’s
Victor Hugo-based musical juggernaut, Les Misérables. You’ve probably
already thought up all the nasty comments you’ll use (like that “scream a
scream” quip) as you pick holes in the film. And there are holes to pick. Plenty of ‘em.
Not least of which is the casting of a velociraptor (Eddie Redmayne) as the young romantic
lead. But Hooper’s done the one
thing no other filmmaker (Alan Parker and Bruce Beresford among them) has managed to
do in the 28 years that the show has conquered theatre stages on both sides of
the Atlantic; he’s breathed vital, cinematic life into the box office behemoth
and dragged it kicking and screaming onto the silver screen where it
irrefutably belongs.
With
its toothless, syphilitic whores, filthy beggars and unromanticised poverty the
film is perhaps grittier than most audience members will be prepared for,
particularly in Valjean and Marius’ escape through the rivers of excrement that
are the Parisian sewers. Hooper
doesn’t stint on the filth and squalor but what’s most surprising and
satisfying about his vision of Les
Misérables
is just how intimate he’s made Hugo’s epic tale of love, honour, justice,
faith, tragedy and redemption.
While there are a few big money shots (an opening where Jackman’s
Valjean and his fellow convicts toil in a very wet dry dock as Crowe’s Javert
keeps a watchful eye on them, Javert prowling the night-time Parisian rooftops
like a 19th century Dark Knight) and some ropey-looking CGI, Hooper
wisely plays to his well-honed TV strengths, choosing to shoot much of the film
in close-up, often using multiple cameras, allowing the actors to sing live
on-set, giving their performances a rawness, an urgency and truth absent from
the perfect post-synched sound and multiple takes of most filmed musicals.
Seasoned
song-and-dance man Jackman dominates the film as the haunted, passionate
Valjean, finding redemption through selfless love, while Crowe is the best he’s
been in years. Long derided for
his singing pretensions, Crowe’s gruff delivery ideally suits Javert and his
voice is at least David Essex good.
Redmayne, one of those saurian posh-boy actors indistinguishable from
one another (be honest can you tell the difference between Redmayne, Tom
Hiddleston and
Laurence Fox? They’re like a thespian hydra) and Amanda
Seyfried
are blandly boring as drippy young lovers Marius and Cosette, Helena Bonham
Carter and Sacha
Baron Cohen
provide broad comic relief as panto villains the Thénardiers.
In
what amounts to little more than 15 or 20 minutes of screen-time, Anne Hathaway’s
tragic Fantine haunts the film. In
what could almost be a metaphor for life under the Con-Dems, she loses her job,
is forced to sell her hair, her teeth and her body, finding herself being
pumped in a coffin by a sailor before contracting consumption (or some other 19th
century disease) and dying.
Hathaway is simply brilliant and her astonishing one-take rendition of I
Dreamed a Dream
is an angry, melancholic heartbreaking lament of defeat and desperation that’s
sure to see her gracing this year’s awards ceremonies. But perhaps the best
thing about the film is former reality show contestant Samantha Barks (who came third on the
BBC’s I’d Do Anything. Third!) as Éponine whose desperate, unrequited love
for Marius leads to her death.
Barks is phenomenal, bagging the musical’s other big song (On My Own) and giving a quietly devastating
performance.
Whether
you like musicals or not is immaterial; Les Misérables simply doesn’t care! It’s an emotional sucker punch that’ll
leave you reeling.
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
William Nicholson, Victor Hugo,
Alain Boublil,
Herbert Kretzmer, James Fenton,
Jean-Marc Natel and Claude-Michel Schönberg
Produced by:
Starring:
Hugh Jackman,
Russell Crowe,
Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway,
Eddie Redmayne,
Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Barks and Sacha Baron Cohen
Genres:
Drama, Musical
Language:
English
Runtime:
2 hours 37 minutes
Certificate:
12a
Year
2012
UK Cinema Release Date:
Friday 11th January 2013
Rating:
4/5
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