Les Misérables (2012)

Les Misérables is amongst my very favourite books, if not my favourite. It is also likely my favourite musical. This is often a surprise to lovers of the book, as so many hate the adaptation – as well as being very sick of musical lovers who pretend they have read the book then are revealed to only know the story in the musical – but as a matter of fact I enjoy both as very different properties. I keep them separate and enjoy each for what it is, though admittedly with every fresh adaptation like this one, a part of me hopes Gavroche will be transformed to his more thoughtful, vulpine, brotherly form from the novel rather than the irritating little cliché of the film. But hey, the familiar story goes that it was the Artful Dodger who inspired the adaptation to happen at all, so…

Anyway, this version I was not particularly looking forward to. The trailer stirred no emotional response from me at all, other than thinking Fantine did not sound very powerful, and Russell Crowe could not sing. Well, on the former point I was admittedly very wrong – though I’m afraid the latter stands. Overall, though, I ended up liking this far more than I’d expected.

There was much brouhaha before the release about the way actors sang live on camera – and not in the way of the old musicals, essentially filmed like a modern-day concert with less cranes, but with the sophisticated cuts and angles of modern filmmaking. Well, I find myself sceptical that all the vocals were recorded during what we saw on screen, partly because multiple cuts would totally change their flow and be a nightmare to mix, and partly because I really don’t believe Hugh Jackman was singing as he and Javert were fighting with sword and wooden plank with no effect to his breathing. But what we did get were some truly remarkable sequences where a single shot was held – when Valjean first decides to turn his life around, when Fantine has fallen to her lowest and when Marius sings of the empty chairs at empty tables – and we have something quite unique, something that cannot be captured in a musical, and which completely justifies the technique and the hiring of film actors rather than singers: close-up performances where every nuance is clear and every breath, every sniffle, every waver is caught. It works rather brilliantly.

Most of the cuts to bring this down to an appropriate running length are good, too, snipping here and there and thankfully making the only song I dislike, ‘Little People’, not much more than an aside. It was a shame ‘Castle on a Cloud’ was snipped a bit, as the young Cossette really doesn’t get much to do, and the lack of ‘You broke a window pane’ in ‘Look Down’ changes the perception of Valjean’s initial crimes in a way I didn’t like, but otherwise things proceeded nicely.

I definitely think there were a few poor casting choices, though. Crowe is certainly the most prominent. It’s impossible to watch him and not to think of him simply as Russell Crowe struggling, never as Javert. He delivers ‘Stars’ like he’s just singing along to himself in private, and when he switches from his gravely voice to a higher line he sounds absurd. The crucial chemistry between Valjean and Javert thus never properly forms and his complete mental confusion at the end is nowhere to be seen. The girl playing adult Cossette is bland and not very likeable, which makes something of the emotional centre of the film – that more or less everything Valjean does is for her – go missing. And yes, the kid who’s Gavroche is the perfect musical Gavroche…but I still did hope for the gamin of the book, the one with the fierceness of that famous Delacroix painting. There’s also no sense of the book’s M. Bienvenu, but the musical does render him plot device priest #1.

For every miscast, though, there are numerous that are spot-on, and bring that aspect far into a positive light. Jackman, who we all know by now can sing superbly, does a fantastic transformation, carries the role with gravitas and in fact doesn’t miss the barrel chest of most Valjeans. He does seem to affect an odd quasi-Northern accent at the start, though. Hathaway, who got so much negative press before the film was finished, was a superbly damaged, sympathetic Fantine, perhaps the most miserable of the misérables, and made some excellent decisions to foreground suffering over bombast, making her very believable even in an inherently artificial art form. The girl playing Éponine’s tragic love was delicately delivered and she did a lot with very little, making me care more about her than almost any of the others in the cast, and her parents the Thénadiers were brilliantly done by Sasha Baron-Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, repeating some elements from their Sweeney Todd appearances but stealing the show every time they were on and ad-libbing superbly. Cohen’s ‘How dare you?’ was perfect.

Eddie Redmayne, who plays Marius and who I last saw in My Week with Marylin, was likeable and delivered a very moving ‘Empty Chairs at Empty Tables’, though when he sang falsetto I must admit I was reminded of Kermit the Frog and was glad when the song moved to its main register. I can’t shake the feeling I passed him a few times in University, perhaps in Hall or the bar or even at the ADC, but this may well be false memory syndrome based on recognising him from My Week with Marylin.

Overall, it wasn’t perfect, and if asked whether it was as good as the musical I’d have to say better in some places and not in others, and of course the book is the best overall experience, but it was very good and at the very least it showed me some things I haven’t seen before – which is remarkably unexpected for an adaptation of an old musical based on a very old book.