Les Misérables

Les Misérables

A Review

For some reason, throughout my entire life, have managed to completely avoid Les Misérables. I haven't read the novel, nor seen the musical or previous movie. I stepped into the cinema completely fresh and unbiased by nostalgia. It should also be noted that I mirrored my brother's feelings on Les Mis when lining up to see the film. Someone would say "Le Mis", and he would say "Lame as". Teehee, still makes me laugh..

[spoilers ahead]

While many of you will be familiar with Les Misérables, I think it may still be great to outline the plot and characters (for all those knuckleheads like "moi").

Le Mis follows part of the life of Jean Valjean (played by Hugh Jackman), a slave who has broken parole to start a new life for himself, while evading capture by the persistent Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). Jean Valjean manages to build himself into a position of high and wealthy stature under a fake name. Here, Jean finds out that a worker in his factory, Fantine (Anne Hathaway), is sending money to her illegitimate daughter. Jean's foreman fires Fantine from her job, and is forced into prostitution. Inspector Javert enters the scene and attempts to arrest her, but Jean intercedes, and in the process Javert discovers his true identity. Jean is forced on the run again, and this time finds his way to Fantine's daughter Cosette, housed by the crooked Thénardiers (Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen), and takes Cosette under his care. Nine years later, the French Revolution is gaining momentum. Cosette has grown (into Amanda Seyfried), and develops a relationship with Marius (Eddie Redmayne). Later, Jean mistakes an attempted robbery of his house as Javert being on his tail again, and so is forced to flee once more, tearing Cosette from her lover Marius. The next day, Marius and his band of students start the first assault of the Revolution. Word finds its way to Jean that Marius is leading this battle, and so goes to protect Marius for Cosette. In the meantime, the students had captured Inspector Javert and had been holding him behind their walls. Jean finds him, and frees him. Unable to piece together Jean's generosity and his own civil and moral beliefs, the Inspector commits suicide. Following on, most of the students leading the battle had been killed, with Marius injured badly, and so Jean drags him to safety to heal. The story develops further to Jean's own death, led to Heaven by the spirit of Fantine, and joins the fellow dead for a spectacular uplifting ending. 

The plot as described sounds big, and is indeed quite massive! The original novel, written by Victor Hugo in 1862, was divided into five volumes with multiple books, for a grand total of 365 chapters. It is considered to be one of the longest novels ever written, and it REALLY shows in translating this to film. With the main plot straying into subplots of intertwining characters, the story feels far too epic to be contained within one movie. So much so that alot of potential story is sacrificed to fit within the 2 hour and 38 minute running time (which is still a huge movie), and the each scene is introduced and explored way too fast. In saying that, Les Misérables is filmed as a musical, and a damned good one at that. It simply wouldn't make sense (financially, creatively and practically) to divide the film into the five separate volumes, or into a conventional trilogy, for example.

Les Misérables really puts its cast to work, with most (if not all) of the dialogue is sung by the actors. Typically, the soundtrack for a musical film is recorded months in advance, and the actors mime the performance during filming. On this film however, Tom Hooper (director, The King's Speech) recorded the live performance of the actors singing on set in order to catch the actor's spontaneity, as opposed to having to concentrate on lip syncing perfectly. The actor would wear an ear piece with a live feed of a piano playing the song, to keep the singing in key. Hence, due to the nature of the performance, the piano player was forced to follow the pacing of the actor, not the other way around as usual.

Another great move by Tom is the use of many continuous close up shots of the actor's faces during their singing performances. This is definitely something that would be missed in the stage show, and the opportunity to do so is really take advantage of in this film. The camera captures every subtle facial movement, and really adds to the emotional weight of each scene. Also, the use of long, sweeping shots have been taken advantage of sometimes to introduce a scene. For example, the very first shot in the film flies in to Hugh Jackman's character, and in the process shows the rest of the slaves, under the Inspector's command, pulling in a massive ship on dangerous waves. 

However, despite the praises given to this film, throughout I found myself tiptoeing between fidgety and entertained. The "Landlord scene", where we're introduced to Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter (henceforth known as SBC and HBC), was sorely needed. It is the funniest scene in the whole movie, and dang did it take a while to come. And although it made me feel like Les Mis should be crossed with Sweeney Todd, SBC and HBC give the most entertaining performances in the whole film. And I love their little tidbits given throughout the rest of the film, giving much needed comedic relief.

In watching Les Misérables I couldn't hope but notice and take note of the themes. These ones have been taken directly from my notes (very quickly skimming over):

• Religion and Christianity: there is a strong presence of the church and references to God's forgiveness.
• Differing views of God: Jean Valjean views God as the ultimate forgiving "second chance" God, whereas Inspector Javert views God as fully backing up his plan to bring down Jean (the "judgemental God").
• Poverty: everywhere.
• Social class: the wealthy have all the power in this age. Les Misérables explores different social statuses: slaves, crooks, the wealthy...
• Oppression: the government's oppression on the people, the employers on employees, slave masters on the slaves...
• Freedom: Jean Valjean's freedom from slavery, Cosette's freedom from the Thénardiers.
• Sacrifice: Fantine works tirelessly to provide for Cosette, and sacrifices her own life for her.
• Forgiveness: Jean's forgiveness of Javert, where he has the chance to kill Javert but instead lets him free.
• New chances and hope: Jean + Cosette's hopes for better lives, ultimately delivered to them.
• Love and Romance: Not only romance between Marius and Cosette, but also the fatherly love of Jean and motherly love of Fantine towards Cosette.

There'll be a few more themes not noted, I bet, and I think this movie will make for a great high school English class study. Each of the themes noted above could be expanded and have paragraphs written about each!

Summing up, this film really worked for a lot of people. While I didn't feel the emotion of every song and situation, others around me were sniffling, snorting and crying. Don't get me wrong - the movie does pull on your heartstrings, but I think the overload of singing took away the magic of each situation. While it was entertaining, I loved the songs, each actor's performances, and the timeline development throughout the film, it just didn't work for me.