You're going to be hearing a lot about Anne Hathaway's
rendition of I Dreamed a Dream over the coming months, so perhaps that's the
best place to start with this film version of Les Misérables. It's true that
Hathaway's performance of the musical's most iconic song is the highlight of
this film; a highlight that comes far too early. The scene occurs when her character Fantine is at her lowest ebb,
having been forced into a life of degradation as she attempts to provide for
her young daughter, and Hathaway imbues her performance with a raw emotion which feels true in a way that little in this film does. Perhaps it's telling that
the film's most resonant scene is also one of its simplest; I Dreamed a Dream
is filmed in a single shot, with the camera holding on Hathaway to catch every
tearful quiver in her face. It's as if Tom Hooper realised that this was his
movie's big number and decided he'd just better get out of the way.
Sadly, the Hooper touch can been seen all over the rest of Les
Misérables, with the director's smudgy fingerprints visible on every
inexplicable canted angle, every extravagant aerial shot, every scene in which
both sound and visuals are turned up to 11. The film opens underwater, looking
up at a tattered French flag, before the camera breaks the surface and
continues to climb, allowing us a view of a mighty warship being pulled into
the dock by hundreds of convicts. One of these is Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman),
whom Hooper's camera locates by swooping in from the sky for a close-up, before
we look up again and find Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) glaring down at his
prisoners. "Look down / look down" the condemned men chant in unison
as waves crash, the boat creaks and torrential rain hammers down.
This cacophonous introduction sets the tone. Les Misérables attempts to beat the audience into submission by pitching almost every musical number at
the same level of intensity. The film's over-the-top, melodramatic tone is
coupled with an attempt at grimy realism in Hooper's use of handheld cameras and the
artfully squalid production design, all of which suggests that the director isn't
really sure how to play it. His artistic choices are a consistent horror – all
leering close-ups and skewed angles – and watching performers sing as if
they're attempting to reach the back of the balconies while the camera sits
inches from their faces is a draining experience. The big innovation of this
Les Misérables (although the technique has been used before) is the decision to
record the singing live on set, which helps bring across the emotional weight
of the actors' vocal performances. A nice idea in theory, and it certainly works
a couple of times (notably in the above-mentioned Hathaway showstopper), but too
often we can hear the strain in these voices as the technique distracts from
the content. The one cast member who matches and even threatens to overshadow
Hathaway is the exceptional Samantha Barks, who has the benefit of being
familiar with the role of Éponine from her days on the West End stage.
As a veteran musical performer, Jackman handles all of this
better than most leading men would and he throws himself into the role of Valjean
with admirable gusto. It's a shame he doesn't have a more worthy adversary than Crowe,
who never looks comfortable in his part and whose flat vocal range is particularly
damaging in his musical duels with Jackman, which often threaten to become
shouting matches. Crowe is also hurt by the fact that his role is so
poorly conceived. By the simple fact of having to compress an enormous novel
into a sub-3 hour story, the narrative of Les Misérables often feels rushed and
insubstantial, and the characterisation is sketchy. Javert's obsessive decades-long pursuit of Valjean on a minor charge just
seems silly, and later on, when the teenage Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) falls in
love at first sight with young rebel Marius (Eddie Redmayne), we don't believe
in the depth of their feeling because it develops in such a hurried manner.
I guess you have to keep things moving if you're going to
get through 50 songs in less than three hours, though. Seriously. Fifty songs! There were 49 in the stage version and the addition of another is very revealing of
the filmmakers' true motives: "We've gotta make a play for the Best Original
Song Oscar, never mind if it's an unnecessary burden on an already overstuffed
production!" Wall-to-wall songs might be well suited to a stage (where there are
natural breaks for applause, stage movements, etc.) but it's a killer for this
movie, which continually struggles to find a natural segue from one number to
the next and ends up feeling very disjointed. Will fans care? If all you want
is a faithful translation of the musical you saw and loved on stage then perhaps this
is the film for you, but if you want an adaptation that works as cinema you've
come to the wrong place. Les Misérables is an aesthetic disaster and a
torturous wall of sound, simultaneously tough on the eyes and the ears. Do you
hear the people sing? I did, and how I prayed for them to stop.