After a prolonged journey from stage to screen, the international smash Les Misérables has finally gotten the Hollywood treatment. It's a saga that at times felt like it would drag on as long as the French Revolution. Or even as long as the play itself, which boasts a running time of approximately three hundred thousand million hours (and thirty-eight minutes).
Director Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), clearly high as a kite on Oscar glory, was the man to finally bring the beast of a musical - which spans decades and calls for battles, bridge jumps, and hoardes of flea-bitten background players - to movie theaters. Early in the process of doing so, he made a bold decision that might very well have saved the project from being yet another bloated adaptation of a beloved Broadway hit (cough!The PhantomoftheOpera!cough!): he was going to let the actors sing live on-set.
In movie musicals as we know them, the actors pre-record their songs in a studio somewhere (sometimes a different person even does the singing for them!) and then they lip-sync their lines as the cameras roll. This allows for zero improvisation and severely limits creativity on set (where much of the performance-related magic of movies generally happens), and usually results in a product that feels more "canned" than it should.
The decision, it turns out, was a brilliant one: by recording the actors singing live on-camera (aided by teeny-tiny earpieces providing a sort of "guide track") and then adding the orchestration later based on the natural cadences of the actors' performances, Les Miz may have broken the movie musical curse forever. Unhampered by the veil of artificiality that has always plagued the genre, the film achieves a sense of intimacy and authenticity that is at times absolutely staggering. The actors are allowed to build a performance in a single uninterrupted take - to go from a whisper to a scream in unblinking, heartbreaking close-up.
This radical approach pretty much saved Les Miz for me - it actually improved on what I've always felt were the show's failings. Instead of constantly playing to the balcony (which can result in a prolonged screamfest of bombast), the actors are allowed to use every weapon in their arsenal, and the story takes on a much richer texture. I mean, sure - the show's two gorgeous ballads do still signify that a pretty brunette is probably going to bite it soon (spoiler alert: PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE DIES), but at least we get to look into their eyes and hear their stories first.
As our carb-happy hero Jean Valjean, Hugh Jackman is expectedly excellent - so much so that you'll likely find yourself marveling at the fact that this man who can so completely commit to a tear-stained and perfectly-pitched performance in a very challenging musical is also the gruff, hulking brute from the X-Men films. He's a magnificently talented man, and watching his performance here is like seeing him for the first time.
Pound-for-pound, Anne Hathaway may pull off an even more impressive feat as Fantine, the tragic catalyst of the film's overarching redemptive (and, appropriately enough for the season, hella Catholic) theme. True, the role is any actress's dream - but hot damn does she nail it. I challenge anyone to make it through her heart-rending performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" with dry eyes. I'd be thrilled to see Hathaway take home a prize for this performance - but more than anything I'm just happy that Susan Boyle's reign of terror is finally over.
Throaty-voiced local fave Eddie Redmayne (Savage Grace) also impresses with his sensitive take on heroic young revolutionary Marius - his intimate requiem ballad "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" also reaps the benefits of the film's unorthodox filming method.
As the disgusting "Master of the House" and his equally vile wife, Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter turn in dependably solid performances, and relative newcomers Aaron Tveit (Gossip Girl, Howl) and Samantha Barks are the prettiest darn revolutionaries you've ever seen (and heard).
Not faring so well with the format is Russell Crowe, whose approach to playing the sadistic, obsessed Javert is to wear the sullen glare of a 5-year-old who has just been told he can't have a second cookie for the nearly 3-hour running time. It's not just a bad performance, it's an embarrassing one. His voice - while not exactly pretty - isn't the problem; it's that he looks absolutely Les Miserable every second he's on screen.
Maybe he wasn't comfortable with the demands of singing on camera, or maybe he wasn't happy with the role, I don't know. But if he'd brought even a hint of the maniacal glee that he brought to The Man with the Iron Fists, it would have saved his performance and elevated the overall film considerably - as it is, it's almost like Hugh Jackman dedicates his character's entire life to defending a little girl from a sack of flour in a Napoleon hat.
Sure, Les Miz is kind of a mess: it's overlong, bloated, and wildly melodramatic. But when it works, it really sings - and for the first time in the history of the genre, it sings live. That should be music enough to any Broadway fan's ears.
Les Misérables opens in theaters on Christmas Day.
