★★★★☆
Four Stars
Nominated for eight Oscars, this adaptation of the stage classic is directed by Tom Hooper and stars an ensemble cast led by Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, and Amanda Seyfried. The film tells the story of Jean Valjean, a former prisoner who becomes mayor of a town in France. Valjean agrees to take care of Cosette, the illegitimate daughter of Fantine, and must avoid being captured again by Javert, a police inspector. This blockbuster cost an estimated $61 million to make, but has already broken the record for opening weekend box office sales for a musical.
I can’t act. And I certainly can’t sing. So for me, at least, the magic of musicals is that some people can. They really can. And, if you’re lucky enough to be sitting in a theatre, these people are belting out those songs right before your very eyes.
I can vividly recall seeing Les Mis in the West End, but it isn’t the faces of the characters which I recall but the spine-tingling ohdear-lord-I-think-I’m-going-to-cry moment as they start to sing ‘One Day More!’ Never have I wanted to be able to sing more than at that moment. And never have I been more relieved to be sitting in a darkened room where no-one can see me sneakily weeping.
Unfortunately, there was no surreptitious sniffling from me in the cinema. Some of the magic was missing. Whether it was actually being able to see Anne Hathaway’s face (daubed in something amusingly akin to plaster of Paris) as Fantine lies dying, or seeing the revolutionaries’ barricade put in perspective amidst the backdrop of the city, blocking merely a side street instead of dominating the whole of the stage: something just wasn’t quite as powerful.
Despite some dramatic helicopter-shots across the French alps as Valjean makes his penitential pilgrimage homewards, and scenes swooping through the labyrinthine streets of 19th century Paris, somehow the grandeur is missing; and against such a backdrop, the characters struggle to assume the epic proportions of the stage.
Nevertheless, there are moments which are all the better on the silver screen. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are fantastic as the swindling innkeepers; The ‘Master of the House’ scene is a jaunty cacophony of trickery. Madame Thernadier spins from table to table, nabbing hats, purses and even the odd glass eye, whilst the Master cheerily serves up a pint of piss. Their reappearance at the wedding – Cohen in a fetching pin-striped yellow suit – is a welcome relief from the focus on the semi-boring Marius and Cosette.
Focus on the solos is occasionally tedious (Russell Crowe’s voice is plain boring, even if he is teetering on the precipice of a tower for ‘Stars’);however, Eponine’s ‘Little Fall of Rain’ and ’On My Own’ are touching, even if a little bit of a soggy sentimentalist cliché (girl is sad; cue rain).
Hugh Jackman as Valjean makes a miraculous transformation from a mangy inmate to a rather dapper, high-collared gentleman (I would), and Gavroche has all the chipper, alright gu’vnor gumption of the Artful Dodger. I’ll let you in on a little secret, though. I might have welled up at ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’. Both times.
