At the End of the Day, It's a Good Movie: Les Misérables

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Note: This review contains a few plot spoilers near the end.

Oxford grad Tom Hooper is an exceptional director who has brought off some great stuff, mostly for television. His breakthrough directorial film effort was 2010’s extraordinary Oscar winning The King’s Speech, with Colin Firth in the role of George VI. He has also directed some very fine recent miniseries  (John Adams, Elizabeth I and Prime Suspect). His ability to create superior character pieces with a strong supporting cast in convincingly textured environments makes him one of the few complete directors who grasps the entire range of the work at hand.

Given Hooper's level of artistry, what wizardry can he bring to a legendary stage musical such as Les Misérables? Mind you, this is not one of those charming productions, alá Rogers and Hammerstein, where "normal" lines and acting are interrupted as the cast breaks into show stopping song and dance. Les Mis is one of the rare non-opera specimens featuring wall-to-wall music. It also just happens to be an iconic production that began in Paris, moved to London, crossed to Broadway, went back to the West End, then burst onto the world at large. Clearly Hooper faced a difficult challenge.

Stage aficionados should recognize immediately that the expectations for theatre and film diverge widely. There’s a level of energy and spontaneity on the stage that film can never achieve. The “frame” for theatre is the theatre itself, modified by set, sound and lighting. If you are one of the fortunates who caught a West End or Broadway showing of this particular production, then you have a pretty settled Holy Grail image in your mind and memory that probably no film is going to match. That, of course, doesn’t mean that a film version, with its potential to expand the visual scope and to capitalize on the acting, may not also be a solid work of art in its own right.

Fortunately Hooper played to his strengths in Les Misérables. He chose generally to direct the musical primarily as a film without trying to invoke the stage. Indications are that he resorted to live recording of the song track rather than canning it first or blending it in with post-production audio re-takes. Live piano played into singers’ earpieces and followed the pacing of the actor/singers, helping them hit the notes. The orchestral music was edited in afterwards and was also tailored to the performances. This method freed the actors to “act” as they sang. Hooper’s direction is nearly impeccable here and the actual performances are so convincing that technically imperfect singing comes across as somehow "right."  Particularly moving are the performances by Jackman, Hathaway, Samantha Barks (Eponine) and the astonishingly good Eddie Redmayne (Marius).

While Amanda Seyfried does justice to the role of Cosette, she had the misfortune of landing the most poorly developed part in the production—a classic ingénue of the worst kind. It’s really hard not to root for Eponine at Cosette’s expense. But maybe that’s what we’re supposed to do.

Hooper made use of many West End regulars to fill in the extras on the cast (Barks is the only headliner taken from the stage production). Most notably, Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean, makes an appearance as the priest.  Naturally, many believe his version of “Bring Him Home” is definitive. Perhaps it is. Judge for yourself in this clip from an anniversary concert.

The standout for worst performance, as many feared, is Russell Crowe as Javert. (One wonders what Hugo Weaving, Gary Oldman and Ralph Fiennes were up to). Rumor has it that Paul Bettany was considered for the part. While it's hard to see Bettany in the role, he would probably have been better than the plodding, unresponsive Crowe who looked to be concentrating too hard on his earpiece and forgetting he was supposed to act. Classic depictions of the darkly neurotic and obsessive inspector are shot to pieces by Crowe’s beefy attempt at pathos.

As a film, Hooper’s version contains some great moments, especially in the first act when we’re treated to wonderful French scenery. After that, things begin to move steadily toward contained locations, though the scene selection is generally strong with brilliant attention to symbolic detail. This strength was wasted a little by the overuse of close-ups during many of the key numbers. While the tight camera brought out emotive aspects of the music on a previously untapped level, it could just as easily have helped tell the “story” in these songs with just a little more shot variety. As a for instance, a few more angles were used to wonderful effect in Marius’ “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables,” and might easily have been employed with some of the other songs in which the close-up was the primary vehicle. At the opposite extreme, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter with her tossed salad coiffure were almost drowned by their  scenes. Each time the running gag villains get screen time, they seem to be inundated by their environs. As creative choices maybe these were the right ones, but they leave room for doubt.

At the barricade

Given the cinematographic qualities elsewhere in the film, the claustrophobic barricade set looked suspiciously stage-like, even with some of the lighting. The original cast of hundreds shrank to the handful one might see on stage as well. Perhaps Hooper wanted to achieve a theatrical homage as well as convey the hopelessness of the student heroes of the June Rebellion. While the set did not take full advantage of the film medium, the approach may have achieved a certain level of dramatic tension that served to heighten the final tragic moments of the handsome young intellectuals, at least one great moment in the movie impossible for the stage to match.

A flaw in the original that carried to the film is the inexplicable rapid aging of Jean Valjean between the close of the rebellion and the marriage of Marius and Cosette.  It has the effect of rushing to bring things to a close. You would think Hooper might come up with a convenient time device to create better continuity, but no; he let it go, too. 

I regret to have to mention the finale. If you haven't seen the film, read no further. The finale especially plays up the difference between the stage and screen. I wanted that swelling moment that polished off the production for me at the Queen’s Theatre in London back in 2005. The film moment just didn’t quite get there and it left me feeling a little unfulfilled.

In summary, Hooper turns out a terrific and in some places daring piece of work studded with many wonderful individual performances. It may not be the incredible film people were hoping for, but it’s definitely a great viewing experience worth catching at the theatre rather than waiting for the DVD. Give it four out of five of your preferred emoji.

Taking the Unexpected Journey: The Hobbit

I’ll never forget when I first met Bilbo Baggins. It was the mid-70s, I was thirteen years old and my classmates and I were reading from an Open Court classics anthology. One of the stories was a bizarre but gripping tale called “Riddles in the Dark.” Few things I have read have seized my imagination so completely and irrevocably. Instantly I wanted to know more about this story and more about its author with the funny name, JRR Tolkien.

At my first opportunity to get to a library, I found hardbound copies of The Lord of the Rings. I don’t recall whether The Hobbit was unavailable or what exactly prompted me, but I began reading The Fellowship of the Ring and, before I knew it, I was lost in Middle Earth. I didn’t end up reading The Hobbit until I was finished with LOTR. Only then did I realize my mistake. It was enormously difficult for me to appreciate the childish tone and style of The Hobbit after having been seduced by the grand and heroic style of LOTR.

Perhaps Peter Jackson suffered from a similar problem. Early reports were that he did not originally plan to attempt The Hobbit. Surely he was just exhausted after filming the Tolkienic epic that took so many years and so many nearly sleepless nights. Be that as it may, he did finally decide to take The Hobbit along the same filmic journey as the other books. Initial rumors had Pan's Labyrinth's Guillermo Del Toro directing. It would have been a wonderful thing, but it was not to be. In the end, Jackson came back to complete his work. The single film quickly expanded to two, then to three movies. Thus the filmic body of work, when it’s all done, will be about 24 hours long. That much Tolkien is a little hard not to get all geeked up about.

This review comes after The Hobbit movie has been out for a week and I have had the chance to see it twice in 2D and at the lower frame rate. So if you are looking for comment on the 3D or 48 fps versions, or to hear another take on the great frame rate debate, I’m sorry to disappoint.

At the outset I want to say that I was centrally interested in the “Riddles” portion of the film, primarily for nostalgic reasons, and was willing to tolerate a good deal of Jacksonian silliness so long as he got that scene right.

The good news is that he did get it right, at least in my estimation. I found myself luxuriating in the unhurried length of the scene. Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis (who richly deserves some kind of Oscar nod) were spot on. The touch of dramatic foreshadowing with Gollum's split personality adds humor and dimensionality. When the scene concluded, I uttered a contented sigh and, like the Divine surveying Creation, saw that it was good.

As for the rest of the film, I have read the negative reviews. Most agree on the Bilbo-Gollum duet. But many reviewers take issue with the film’s pacing, with the additions to the book from other parts of the Tolkien opus, with the sometimes ham-fisted CGI and with the scenes that have a theme park, roller-coaster feel and with the perceived focus on Thorin Oakenshield. Some decry the conversion of a happy little book into a “plodding epic.”

As for me, I have certainly coughed hairballs over Peter Jackson’s bloated graphic-action fare. In the Fellowship, I was aggrieved to watch the gripping scene in the Mines of Moria converted into a rocky trapeze act. Nevertheless, enough was preserved and enough brilliance added, particularly in the immortal “You shall not pass!” line on the bridge of Khazad-dum, that the overall effect teetered toward the positive side.

The Two Towers, on the other hand, contains a large helping of unforgivable tripe. I have expounded elsewhere on the many travesties and the true violence I feel Jackson did to the middle part of the trilogy. This was redeemed somewhat by the March of the Ents, a magnificent filmic moment that gives me chills every time I see it. But in the Return, Jackson continued his absurdities with the laughable signal fires on ridiculously impossible peaks, culminating in the Circus of Pelennor Fields, another one of those scenes beautifully fixed in my mind from the novel and brutalized by Jackson’s super-hero gymnastics and off-the-scale FX.

Given the good, the bad and the ugly of the first three films, it’s a little difficult to comprehend how current reviewers, who appear to be amnesiacs, are eager to flog The Hobbit for flaws that troubled the first three films as if this one suffers somehow in comparison. Perhaps Elijah Wood’s dreamy blue eyes mesmerized them. The greatest blemishes in all of these movies can be traced directly to the bombastic flourishes in Jackson’s directorial and visual style. The truth is that one has to take them or leave them. There really seems little point anymore in belaboring them.

With regard to extra material, we knew once we heard that the more or less linear tale in The Hobbit was going to get a three-part treatment that Jackson and his team would dip into the “extras” of Tolkien’s larger story. While some see these elements, such as the expanded role of Radagast the Brown, as distracting, these added elements might just make the story more coherent as a prequel to LOTR. To be fair, the bare bones children’s story that sprang originally from Tolkien’s imagination was scarcely a fit vessel to contain the seeds of the Ring of Power story. Ironically, the Ring is too big for the smaller tale, and to keep that tale so small, while it might have done fitting homage to the original story, would not have done justice to the larger work. We are willing to agree with Jackson on the need to enlarge the scope of the story.

The grousing about the film’s pacing and focus puzzles me. Once again, if we are comparing this film to The Fellowship, for instance, Hobbit surely comes out ahead on both of those? Of course, now that we have the expanded versions of the other movies, complete with all the DVD add-on treasures, talk about pacing may be entirely irrelevant. One wonders how another hour added to this film could possibly be a good thing.

What is wrong with this movie? Basically the same things are wrong with this film as are wrong with the earlier films - with a bonus unconvincing villain. One understands Jackson’s need for a more robust bad guy in the absence of the All-Seeing Eye. But the Pale Orc Azog, while he might have been a good thought, doesn't measure up. Had he been a ranging Maori with fantastic prosthetics like the Uruk Hai chieftain in Fellowship, things might have gone much better. But one has to admit that Jackson’s lame attempt to pull a Jessica Rabbit out of his hat with a poorly executed animated brute is possibly the film’s greatest disappointment.

In balance, Hobbit rates on my scale as almost equal to Fellowship of the Ring, the best of the earlier trilogy. Even with the animated villains (count in the goblin king as well), the crazy rock-em, sock-em stone giants and the Disney-ride escape scenes, the overall quality came across as a step beyond the previous films and the story combined enough light and dark to give the plot a richer texture. Finally, add to the balance the superior acting performances in this film. Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis are truly remarkable. Ian McKellan is obviously having the time of his life. And the dwarves, notably Richard Armitage as Thorin and Ken Stott as Balin, are simply terrific. Aiden Turner as Kili is, of course, more of a video game elf than a dwarf, but we’ll turn a blind eye to that one in the interest of holiday generosity.

Four stars out of five: Don’t let the trolls keep you away.