Les Misérables (2012)

This is the second time I've seen this movie and the third time I've heard it; my sister watched almost the entire thing in the backseat while I took the wheel on a family road trip last summer. It is the second distinct Les Misérables movie I have seen. I have seen both a professional rendition and a high school rendition of the musical. I have seen two separate "Les Misérables in concert" blocks on PBS, one from the mid-'90s and one from a couple of years ago. The entire original soundtrack to the musical is in my iTunes library and several of the songs appear in my "Top 50 Play Counts" custom playlist. I have read Victor Hugo's original 1400-page novel. I am, in short, ridiculously and intimately familiar with this production and its story on nearly every level. I'm not even a big theater guy, and while plenty of people are more into Les Misérables than I am, I suspect very few of them love it as uniquely and specifically as I do.

I had anticipated the movie - a film version of the musical, I mean - for years and years. First came the years where I hoped it would one day be made. Then came the years it was rumored to be in pre-production. Then came all the casting news and the various disappointments and sighs of relief that accompanied them. Then there was close to a year of filming news, sneak peaks, and eventually advertising. And finally, a day I had anticipated for close to a decade had arrived, and "Les Misérables the Musical, the Movie" was a real thing. Given all that hype, there were only two outcomes possible when it came to my personal reaction to such a project. The movie could meet every lofty standard I had set for it in my head, or it could fall horribly short and disappoint me in so many ways. Of course, it did neither of those things. I saw it, digested it, reflected on it, and came out thinking that it was just fine. Not excellent. Not a travesty. But just kind of fine. And then I barely thought about it again for an entire year and then I recently watched it again, trying this time to figure out what exactly made it so blandly passable for me. And I think I figured it out on this second go-round. I'll try to state this simply and carefully.

What I wanted this movie to be was a faithful film adaptation of the musical. I wanted to hear all of my favorite songs, but to witness their power in a new way. I had already seen plenty of talented singers belting out the stirring and emotional lyrics in different ways, and I knew there would always be new renditions of those songs to discover or look forward to seeing one day. As a point case, take "I Dreamed a Dream." This is a song about how far Fantine has fallen from a lifetime of idyllic summers and passion and love, to a destitute fired factory worker unable to provide for her own daughter, and it's arguably the entire production's most representative number. I have heard singers more talented than Anne Hathaway just nail this one; what I wanted, in a film version, was to see flashbacks, for instance, of Fantine's pleasant memories of her life with her former lover; I wanted to see a montage, I guess, packing all kinds of visual information in for the sake of the character and her history in a way the stage version is unable to do. In general, I wanted a more visually rich version of an already wonderful story. I understand through her lyrics that Fantine has suffered greatly, but now that there's this big budget movie, show me. "Don't tell; show." That's what I wanted.

What this movie turned out to be was the musical itself, with impeccable production value and set and costume design, played back to me in close-up tracking shots. Many of the most emotional songs were sung in single takes, always by the actors themselves with no dubbing whatsoever. And while this was impressive and a great display of true singing ability and all, and while Anne Hathaway won an Oscar more or less entirely because of that single-take performance of "I Dreamed a Dream," I simply didn't want to see actors face-acting their way through these songs. Anne Hathaway sure can sell anguish, but I would have preferred for the movie to let the song itself sell that anguish; we got that much in the musical, and no one comes away from that song wondering just how anguished Fantine is, even before we could see the pain on her voice or hear the gasping imperfections in the song's performance. There's a song late in the production called "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," in which Marius, the sole survivor of the battle at the barricades, laments the loss of so many friends. It's totally powerful stuff in the musical, especially when his fallen comrades filter in behind him under an intense spotlight, looking totally ghostlike and just sort of lingering there. It's a simple, easy stage trick, but it helps sell the point - so many young lives lost! - a great deal more than a solitary shot lingering on an actor's face

So, yeah. the details were impeccable and the scope was enormous, but ultimately the movie didn't quite deliver me what I had hoped for. I suppose now I can go back to spending ten years hoping for another film adaptation of the musical. That's all it took for a Spider-Man reboot, right?

A few more thoughts, mostly positive, and then I'm done.

• I loved that Taylor Swift was not cast as Éponine. That's the singular most endearing character in the musical, and one you're just completely capable of falling in love with. Taylor Swift can sing and maybe she can act, but she doesn't have the necessary pathos for such a tragic figure. A Taylor Swift Éponine would have found a way to throw some sassy attitude into "On My Own" and given it some independent woman vibes. There's a place for those - most places in this world, really - but Éponine's signature performance is not one of those. Furthermore, I loved that Samantha Barks was given the role. She absolutely knocked the part out of the park in one of those aforementioned PBS concerts I'd seen a few times, and I could think of no person better suited for the movie.
• I also appreciated the way the movie tweaked the order of the songs so that they flowed more naturally as a story. For example, in the original musical, "I Dreamed a Dream" is sung after Fantine is fired, but before she resorts to prostitution. The movie flips it around so that "Lovely Ladies" comes before "I Dreamed a Dream," which makes so much sense that I don't know why the musical does it the other way. Maybe it's got something to do with the real-time, real-space aspects of a stage production, and certain set pieces needed preparing, or certain performers needed adequate breaks, or something.like that. I don't know. Similarly, in the movie they've bumped "Do You Hear the People Sing" to come immediately before the battle at the barricade, rather than coming on the night before the battle, and prior to "One Day More." It also makes sense to stick "On My Own" in front of "One Day More," since Éponine shares the same sentiment in both songs, and why not use her solo performance to establish those feelings before repeating them in the cast-wide collaboration later? Frankly the biggest improvements made here were based on the order of different performances.
• I did not care for the movie adding a new song, "Suddenly," to the show. The song itself is fine, but one beautiful aspect of Les Misérables is the subtle and symbolic repetition of so many little strings and chords and melodies. To bring in an entire new song that shared no elements with any other number just felt unnecessary to me, especially given how drastically they reduced so many other songs for time-related purposes.
• Seriously, where's the four-hour extended cut where we get every song in full? Don't tell me they never even filmed significant chunks of some of those songs. Even if they knew they'd be cutting them, they must have filmed them, right?
• Casting is a sticky issue here. Obviously the studio went for big name screen actors who can sort of sing in most cases, fleshing out the main ensemble with small time stage actors who can really sing. That's fine by me, and given that what I wanted all along was a movie version of the musical, I suppose in a nutshell I preferred having great actors with non-excellent voices instead of tremendous singers with limited screen acting talent. But, given the way the movie was shot and edited - long shots on faces, with songs in single takes - some of the actors' singing shortcomings were really put under a spotlight. He's taken a beating for it already and I don't need to pile on, but this was especially true for Russell Crowe's Javert. That's just such an authoritative role of unwavering absolutes, and the movie really could have used a stronger performance on that front. Javert shouldn't be so utterly outdone by Valjean, especially when Valjean is just Hugh Jackman. Elsewhere, Jackman and Seyfried were passable, Hathaway was great, and Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter were fine in a vacuum but made for a tonally inconsistent pairing between his hammy sleaze and her dark edge.
• For all of my complaints about the lost opportunities that came during all the powerful solo songs when the available screen space was wasted on long shots zoomed in on singing faces, I need to give credit where it's due, which is on most of the ensemble pieces. Never has "Look Down" been more amazing than it was taking place with hundreds of people amid stormy weather and rough waves. And establishing songs like "At the End of the Day" are greatly served by a camera jump-cutting from gritty downtrodden extra to gritty downtrodden extra. Still, nothing tops the way the finale, a reprise of "Do You Hear the People Sing?" was shot, using the barricade as the gates of heaven with all the fallen characters singing joyously and waving flags. Powerful shit, guys! Potent stuff.

Okay, last minute final note. I realize as I read over this whole post that I sound fairly blasé about this movie. Make no mistake - it's a solid B execution on an A-plus production, for an overall A-minus. Pretty good! Pretty, pretty good.