Les Misérables
By Charlotte Dekle
Image Source: Amazon UK
logline: After 19 years as a prisoner, Jean Valjean is freed by Javert, the officer in charge of the prison workforce. Valjean promptly breaks parole but later uses money from stolen silver to reinvent himself as a mayor and factory owner. Javert vows to bring Valjean back to prison. Eight years later, Valjean becomes the guardian of a child named Cosette after her mother's death, but Javert's relentless pursuit means that peace will be a long time coming.
oh yeah there’s a revolution too lol
Travel back to the early to mid-1800s(after the French Revolution) to France, where everybody has thick British accents. You know the time frame because there are convenient time cards sprinkled throughout, giving us historical context for the historical-fiction epic of Les Misérables. Arguably the most famous musical of all time had an equally epic movie adaptation with at-the-time competent director Tom Hooper (Cats...bleh) at the helm. The movie is 2 hours and 38 minutes long, so brace yourselves for a lot of singing - there is no dialogue in Les Mis, thus no dialogue in the film adaptation. As an avid Les Misérables fan, I was excited to watch the movie, seeing that it garnered multiple Oscars and critical acclaim. I had seen the show live and adored it and promptly memorized the entire score, but I was worried because it’s hard to adapt an extremely difficult vocal musical with Hollywood A-listers. The critical acclaim it received could be due to the ploy of getting all of the actors to sing live, and sing they did, to varying degrees of success. On one hand, you have the phenomenal Anne Hathaway with her heart-wrenching performance of “I Dreamed A Dream” and on the other, you have Russell Crowe who adequately performs each song with the screen presence of a piece of paper. Those are just the two extremes - most of the actors are more toward the Anne Hathaway side of the spectrum, including Hugh Jackman’s irritating vibrato and Aaron Tveit’s luscious voice as Enjloras, the young revolutionary leader. But this gimmick leads me to be proud of most of the actors in their valiant effort to stay on tempo and pitch with nothing but a small piano in their ears which must’ve been extremely awkward on set. This pride usually manifests itself in me screaming “YES HUGH” during Valjean’s Soliloquy when his veins are popping out of his forehead, or saying “NO ANNE” during Lovely Ladies when she is being sold into prostitution. Les Mis has a lot of ground to cover, with a story spanning 15 years of redemption, love, death, death, and more death. I usually refer to Les Mis as a “dramatic power ballad followed by immediate death” because almost every character has a soliloquy and then promptly perishes(I’m won’t spoil anything because there’s a lot to keep track of). Getting back to Tom Hooper’s direction: the film is extremely gritty to show us the tough lives of the impoverished in the most British part of France, with extreme close-ups that make me scream “BACK UP PLEASE.” As much as I adore all of the actors, we don’t need to be THAT close to Eddie Redmayne or Amanda Seyfried’s face, or get that many crane shots. He did win an Oscar so I give credit where credit is due but please, I don’t need to see Eddie Redmayne’s sweat molecules to know that he’s a great actor, nor do I need to see the entirety of France in one prolonged shot. It’s no secret that he gets a little carried away. This musical is about suffering and wants you to suffer along with them, and you do. You’re either suffering through the runtime or through the entrancing performances, either way, you’re suffering. In this lengthy movie about rebellion and revolution, you are still hazy on what they are rebelling against. Do you hear the people sing? You better, they’re doing it for 2 hours and 38 minutes.
My Favorite Characters:
Anne Hathaway as Fantine: I'm really preaching to the choir here. She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year with only about 20 minutes of screentime, but she is phenomenal in those 20 or so minutes. Not only does she give a powerful rendition of one of the most famous songs in musical theatre history, she also goes through every possible emotion with a deft touch. From elation to depression, healthy to sickly, Hathaway continues to impress me with how talented she is. She goes from factory worker to prostitute to ghost in a matter of minutes, that’s what I call range. I mean if you aren’t moved by her performance, do you have emotions? She’s mesmerizing and there’s no other way to put it.
Eddie Redmayne as Marius: He appears about an hour into the movie and steals our hearts as sweet and naive Marius. He falls head over heels in love with Amanda Seyfried’s Cosette at first sight and their romance blossoms. But he slowly becomes jaded as he watches all of his friends die - I mean, you would too. Everyone is aware of Redmayne’s talent as an actor (aka Oscar winner for the Theory of Everything) but not many people know of his beautiful singing voice. He’s actually amazing. During Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, instead of belting like other Marius’s, he uses his lovely falsetto which conveys so much emotion and you feel for him. The transformation from hopeful revolutionary to jaded moderate is so perfectly portrayed that I want Redmayne to do more sweeping musicals.
Samantha Barks as Eponine: we can all relate to having a crush on someone and the feelings not being reciprocated. But not everyone has a famous ballad to sing - Eponine has the overdone audition song, On My Own. She performs it with fervor and life in a song that is surprisingly hopeful given the lyrics. Samantha’s stage background comes in handy because she has one of the strongest voices in the cast. Eponine has unrequited love for Marius and SPOILER ALERT dies saving him, while Marius remains ignorant to these feelings. But Eponine pines for him throughout the movie and Samantha Barks is amazing in it. She’s a fan favorite stage Eponine and she gets an amazing film debut as the tragic lovelorn girl stuck in the friendzone.
Something I Liked: The music in the show is probably my favorite part because it is all sung-through and these songs do not disappoint. They have every type of song - anthemic ballads, depressing ballads, soaring ballads, humorous ballads. There are motifs that are sprinkled throughout and it sounds like a cohesive musical, mostly because they reuse music. These are the highlights from the movie adaptation:
Rated PG-13 for suggestive and sexual material, violence and thematic elements.
Where to Watch:
IMDb and Reddit Thread(spoilers, of course):
