Movie Review: Les Misérables

Date: 2012

Director: Tom Hooper

Summary: After serving nineteen years of a prison sentence, Jean Valjean gains his freedom, but the papers he carries identify him as a criminal and he cannot find enough work to survive.  Bitter and angry, he determines to live like the criminal people think he is, but a chance encounter transforms his life.  Now a man of God, Valjean adopts the orphan of a dying woman and raises her as his own.  A student revolution, however, brews in the streets of Paris and soon nothing will be the same.

Review: Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables gained a lot of early buzz because the actors sang live on camera, rather than prerecording their songs.  This technique provides to the film a realism sometimes lacking in screen musicals.  Awareness of lip-syncing does not detract from the story; the characters seem to live and breathe onscreen.  However, the actors still had to compete with all the singers who have portrayed the characters of Les Misérables throughout the years.  Colm Wilkinson, for example, has made the role of Jean Valjean his own—how would Hugh Jackman compare?  Although some of the performances were not as strong as they might have been, overall the cast provides an emotionally charged rendition of Les Misérables.

Anne Hathaway stands out from the rest of the cast with her stirring portrayal of Fantine, the woman forced to sell her body order to provide for her young daughter.  Her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” generated early talk of an Oscar nomination; rather than belt out the song, Hathaway chose to sing it with a broken voice, reflecting how emotionally and psychologically bruised her character feels.  Both this song and her death scene, in which Fantine hallucinates the presence of her daughter Cosette, brought tears to my eyes.  Hathaway has a gorgeous voice and it was a pure delight to listen to her sing.

My only complaint about Fantine lies with the costuming.  She initially dresses in pink, even though everyone else in her workplace wears more somber attire.  Presumably the costume designer wanted Fantine to look conspicuous so audiences could pick her out, but Fantine should thematically function as simply another face in the crowd.  She also had gorgeous hair, unlike every other woman in the room.  The effect made it seem as though Fantine must have more money than the rest of the workers, which is simply not true, as subsequent events will prove. 

The rest of the characters seemed to wear more appropriate costuming—most notably Éponine, who at one point dresses as a boy.  I have only seen concert versions of the musical, in which audiences must accept that wearing a long coat makes a girl indistinguishable from a male.  In the film, Éponine actually binds her breasts and hides her hair under her cap, presenting a much more realistic disguise.  I also really liked her dresses; though poor, Éponine knows how to accentuate with a nice belt.

Though Samantha Barks, being relatively unknown compared to the rest of the cast, received little attention before the release of the film, her portrayal of Éponine is my favorite.  She performed the role in the 25^th anniversary concert and made it her own.  She brings to the character a charming wistfulness that makes her story all the more poignant.  It seems remarkable that one who has seen so much poverty and so much wrong could maintain the hopeful outlook she has on life.  She also retains a beautiful soul, sacrificing her own feelings for the man she loves.  Hooper’s version unfortunately changes this part, however—Éponine no longer delivers Marius’s letter to Cosette, but makes a different sacrifice, one that I would argue is infinitely less moving and even suggests a certain despair.  Regardless of what her character does, however, Samantha Barks shines.  I really hope that this film proves her big break and that audiences will see—and hear—a lot more of her in the future.

If the changes made to Éponine were not well-advised, those made to Marius certainly were.  Eddie Redmayne’s interpretation of the character brings him to life in a way I have never envisioned.  No longer merely a boy hopelessly mooning over a girl he bumped into on the street, Marius shows himself a dedicated revolutionary full of fire and prepared to make sacrifices so that he does not live off the work of others.  Perhaps for the first time, I really liked Marius.  His interactions with the rest of the students are especially nice.  They share a great camaraderie and I could really believe Aaron Tveit as a friend of the boys—not merely a manic revolutionary.

The rest of the cast did well, but I felt that their performances were not as strong as the others’.  Even though Hugh Jackman has received a Golden Globe nomination for best actor, I just do not like him as Jean Valjean when I compare him to singers like Colm Wilkinson and Alfie Boe.  Russell Crowe as Javert seems too emotionless to me.  Perhaps he meant to interpret the character in that way—it would be an appropriate reflection of Javert’s too strict devotion to duty—but I find it hard to believe a man could sustain a manhunt for something like eighteen or nineteen years without feeling some passion.  Amanda Seyfried as Cosette perhaps had a disadvantage from the start as her character has little development and functions mainly as a convenient love interest.  She does little to bring more personality to the role, however, and her voice in the beginning seems weak, though her performance improves by the end. 

To criticize the singing of Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen as the Thénardiers may be unjust.  Baron Cohen sings well, so far as I know, but I do not feel that he brings anything special to the role.  Bonham Carter seems a little weak on the vocals at times, but whether she intends to sound that way remains unclear.  Mostly likely the two were not chosen for their singing, but to bring a certain comedic over-theatricality to their roles.  I suppose they were successful in that, but their outlandish costumes and the illogicality of their business operations distracted me from their performances most of the time.

My final criticism of the film deals not with performances, but with the background on which they were set.  Hooper provides some lovely and some realistic settings for his characters; my favorites are the bishop’s house and the convent, where audiences can see some beautiful Christian art.  However, the film is too self-aware of its own epic potential and when Hooper tries to zoom out to give a large-scale depiction of France, the CGI becomes unbelievable.  The story of suffering individuals is a large and epic story in itself; if the film had focused on that, instead of trying to impress viewers with its own magnitude, it would have been more successful.

Despite some weak performances, however, the film as a whole proves a strong version of a classic musical.  Memorable and stirring performance are given by many of the actors, and the screen brings France to life in a way that the stage cannot.  Beauty, suffering, passion, and pride combine to present a story that will always be relevant: a story about the transformative power of love.

Content Note: Les Misérables deals with a lot of heavy themes, including the toll poverty, imprisonment, and unjust laws have on people.  One character turns to prostitution to survive and the film includes some sexual activity.  Violence is also depicted, as part of the story is set during the Paris Uprising of 1832.