Do You Hear the Actors Sing?

Review: Les Miserables

There was a time when musicals were in style, when tone-deaf actors were dubbed, when stage actors became legitimate Hollywood stars. These days have faded; I'd argue the last great movie musical was Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972). Les Miserables is respectable, neither subservient to every note of its source nor trying to reinvent a beloved property. But working with a smart adaptation and mostly game cast, director Tom Hooper kills some of the goodwill he dreamed.

For a romantic and bombastic poperetta like Les Mis (Miz?), the film alternates between sweep and intimacy. Hooper loads the opening sequence, following Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) as he leaves prison on parole, steals from a Samaritan, then atones for his sins, with disorientingly fast cuts and handheld camerawork. Later, he calms for Anne Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream," effectively repositioned after Fantine gives in to prostitution. In one unwavering shot, Hathaway effectively marries vocals and performance, starting fragile, ending angry. But Hooper's approach to this soliloquy -- an overbearing camera, mouth wide, tears tears tears -- is the same he uses for the other actors. The second female power ballad, "On My Own," is strangely truncated, and poor Samantha Barks as Eponine must sob through while the camera forces her down onto the rain-soaked pavement.


Les Mis has always slighted its women. Both Eponine (whom Barks rescues from her usual whininess) and Cosette are characterized only by their feelings for Marius. Even Fantine, who has much more to cry about, is rushed to her death. The film inevitably points out flaws like these from the stage musical. Valjean's many chance encounters with Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) start to feel overly coincidental and exhausting. Crowe's stiff, passionless take on Javert fades into the background. Why, I wondered, does he obsess over Valjean for so many years?

From the camera gimmicks to actors singing out of their range, the film's look and sound can be hard to overcome. Someone should have lowered "Bring It Home" for Hugh Jackman. But ragged voice aside, Jackman is strong as Valjean. He handles Les Mis's unapologetic emotion with confidence. On screen, the outlandish money-grubbing Thenardiers (a wonderfully droll Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter) are better integrated, grounded in the dirt of their surroundings. And the 1832 rebellion's ineffectiveness is clearer: Marius (an excellent Eddie Redmayne) and the students are hopelessly young; their ramshackle barricade is futile. We hear that audiences won't accept full-out singing on film, but I'm glad Hooper let this musical be a musical. Just don't buy me the soundtrack.

For Your Consideration: William Nicholson, et al (Screenplay).