Official Reviews (Spoiler Alert)

[jo]

From MSN --

Les Misérables

3 of 5 stars


Jackman and Hathaway save flashy 'Les Miserables'

By Glenn Kenny, Special to MSN Movies


Quite a few years ago, a colleague of mine recounted how he, at the behest of a spouse, had gone to see the Broadway stage production of the mega-musical "Les Miserables." Having been able to procure only relatively inexpensive seats, the pair was situated in an upper balcony of the theater, from where, he reported with some bemusement, the spectacle looked like "a football game in which the players were wearing early 19th-century French costumes."

Were my friend inclined to catch up on the show again (which he's likely not, even out of base curiosity) the new motion picture version of it might be less alienating on a certain level. Director Tom Hooper, whom we last saw receiving a Best Director Oscar for the "distinguished" and somewhat popular "The King's Speech," brings the action right up to the front, as it were. And what action!

This musical is, as many of you know, based on an epic novel by Victor Hugo, who was to the depiction of suffering French people what Charles Dickens was to the depiction of suffering British people, and between poverty, fomenting revolution, corruption and personal obsession, there's plenty of suffering here. Suffering with singing! The huge cast apparently did all of their own singing on the set, and their commitment shows. But commitment goes only so far in certain respects. Only Hugh Jackman, who plays the story's hero of a thousand economic conditions, Jean Valjean, and Anne Hathaway, who plays the unfortunate factory girl turned working girl, Fantine, bring real musical-theater chops to their efforts. Russell Crowe, who plays Inspector Javert, who watched over the imprisoned Valjean and is incredibly vexed to encounter him as a successful civil servant many years later, once sang in a kind of pub-rock band, and it shows: Whenever he opens his mouth, he brings to mind the gruff ambition of one of the rock singers on the original recording of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Also, singing seems to take up so much of his concentration that he really isn't able to do anything too much about his character. Not so Jackman, who should get a Nobel Prize for the way he carries pretty much this whole undertaking on his shoulders, so protean and virile is his singing and acting throughout.

Hooper was, I gather, similarly impressed by Jackman, and by the rest of his cast, because he quite often brings his camera quite close to them. During many of the songs, in which this character or that might be confiding to someone unseen his or her hopes and fears and despairs, Hooper frames that character in a medium close-up that begins in a stationary position and then backs away as the singing character walks forward, for some reason. Maybe the character is putting across his or her point by being in motion while singing louder. Hooper pulls this move an awful lot, and its effect is interesting maybe once, and then it gets to be a drag. (I was reminded of Joshua Logan's disastrous strategy for handling Cinemascope dimensions in his movie version of "Camelot," which was to fill up half the frame with a gigantic close-up of the singer/actor's face with a kind of undifferentiated field of castle-brown in soft focus taking up the other half of the screen. OK, Hooper's signature shot isn't nearly so awful, but the fact that it reminded me of Logan says something.)

I admit here that it's somewhat doubtful that anyone who's cherished the stage musical, or the cast recordings of it, or the cover versions of "I Dreamed a Dream" and such by Susan Boyle and no doubt many others are going to be particularly bothered by this cinematographic filigree. It's quite likely that they'll be highly impressed by the largely gargantuan production design and costuming and by the fact that the large cast does all of its own singing and that the singing was largely performed live. I myself was a little miffed that the production design was bolstered by a lot of CGI effects and that the first shot of Inspector Javert looked literally like an outtake from last year's motion-capture-animation "Tintin" movie. I was also undelighted with a chase scene in which Valjean and his adopted daughter Cosette elude Javert in a chase around "the north gate of Paris" that is so bereft of credible spatial relationships that it might as well have been enacted in the rafters of that theater in which much of the newfangled screen adaptation of "Anna Karenina" is largely set.

And it is not as if my film-critic carping is any match for the innate sweep of the story, or for the ever-building grandeur of the score and the songs (the music is by Claude-Michel Schönberg, no relation whatsoever to the 12-tone guy), or, again, the commitment of the performers. Still not to be a Johnny One-Note about it or anything, but as someone whose taste in show tunes is more aligned with the era of Ziegfeld and the Schuberts than that of the super-productions of Cameron Mackintosh (this and "Miss Saigon" are two of the theatrical impresario's biggest), I don't get much out of the songs that are, all production value aside, the things that have to sell this iteration of Hugo's epic.

But such is merely my own darn taste. Most of the show's partisans I've encountered have been pretty high on the movie version. But I do wonder if the rousing choir that asks, "Will you join in our crusade?" is going to be able to win many further converts.



Glenn Kenny is chief film critic for MSN Movies. He was the chief film critic for Premiere magazine from 1998 to 2007. He contributes to various publications and websites, and blogs at somecamerunning.typepad.com. He lives in Brooklyn.

[njr]

"Russell Crowe, who plays Inspector Javert, who watched over the imprisoned Valjean and is incredibly vexed to encounter him as a successful civil servant many years later, once sang in a kind of pub-rock band, and it shows: Whenever he opens his mouth, he brings to mind the gruff ambition of one of the rock singers on the original recording of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Also, singing seems to take up so much of his concentration that he really isn't able to do anything too much about his character."

I totally agree with this.

Nancy

[mamaleh]

I recommend skipping Charles Isherwood's piece in today's NY Times. He savages Hugh in particular. I truly think he and too many others don't appreciate that Hugh enacts an AGING character, which is reflected in the vocals. He sounds appreciably younger early on; later, in his "and I am old" phase, he sings with an older man's voice, decidedly less pretty.

Don't get me started!

Ellen

[wildfire]

I just saw it again today with a friend who thought it was magnificent. There was clapping and sniffling at the end and a nice size audience for a Thursday afternoon show. My friend thought the actors and the movie and set director, etc. should all get Oscars, as this movie is the kind not made anymore.

[jo]

The UK reviews are coming in ( there were some initial reviews after the movie premiered - and they were generally very favorable). This one is very good reading because it analyzes the live singing approach pretty well.

www.frontrowreviews.co.uk/reviews/les-miserables-review/20833

Les Miserables Review

By
Nat Smith
Published: January 5, 2013

Time is valuable, so let’s save you, the reader, some time right now. Do you like musicals? If so, keep reading. If you don’t like musicals, stop reading now. Nothing to see here. You’ll get half an hour into Les Miserables, then start wanting it to end. Then you have two more solid hours of singing. About everything. Singing about revolution, singing about love, singing about death. Everything is sung, and whilst it is all very impressively done, your tolerance for people singing their emotions will be stretched to the point that you will just want everyone to hurry on to their inevitable deaths. Even the most dedicated Les Mis fan will be longing for an interval. So got that? If you don’t like musicals, go and watch, um, Gangster Squad or something, which is out on the same day. This is long, and every inch a musical. However, if you do like musicals, read on, and you can learn a bit about why this is one of the best musicals ever put to film.

Les Miserables is, by now, part of the public consciousness. Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s weighty tome has become one of the iconic institutions on the West End, popularised by anniversary concerts, Susan Boyle and rousing, memorable songs. It’s easy to forget, therefore, that the plot is baffling and complex to the uninitiated: there’s revolution, prostitution and restoration; one man is a convict, a mayor and a philanthropist all in one; for some reason everyone keeps singing. It’s easy to get lost in dense narrative, so a quick précis for the novices may be necessary. The story, at its most basic level, is that of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a convict who, after experiencing the compassion of a bishop, attempts to reform himself through adopting the illegitimate daughter of a prostitute, Fantine (Anne Hathaway), all whilst constantly fleeing from his nemesis, the law-obsessed policeman Javert (Russell Crowe). There’s also a love triangle, a student uprising in Paris and a comic relief couple of con artists just looking to make some money from it all. It’s a dizzying, decade spanning story, fuelled by a moral and social conscience, as well as by the underlying themes of forgiveness, compassion and reconciliation.

Faced with such a vast, sprawling narrative, director Tom Hooper (also responsible for The King’s Speech) somehow has to make it both accessible and cinematic. Astonishingly, he achieves this. A few key choices affect this success. Firstly, he remains remarkably faithful to the stage play, just rearranging the order of one or two songs to make it flow more naturally, and adding a few lines of dialogue here and there to keep the audience clued up as to what is going on. Also, the much praised decision to have everyone singing live (as opposed to most film musicals, which pre record the songs, then mime) really does pay off, as it gives the actors any number of ways to deliver their lines. It helps to convey the passion, anger and confusion that runs through the lyrics; in short, it makes the singing inherently dramatic. Yet Hooper makes an even more audacious decision with the way he shoots the songs. By choosing to frame the majority of solos in close up, Hooper gives the actors an intimacy with the audience that is not afforded to stage performers. The director understands the power of a person’s face in cinema, and so lets them do most of the talking. Occasionally this means that the look of the film becomes rather dry and repetitive, but when it works, as with Hathaway’s unforgettable rendition of ‘I Dreamed A Dream,’ it works with unrivalled power. It also means that when the camera finally pans out, most notably to scenes of revolution, the wide shots are lent an extra significance; the final scenes are sure to take your breath away.

The other result of Hooper’s decision to consistently shoot in close up is that he is fully reliant on the actors and their singing voices to do most of the work. Hooper’s unshowy direction leads some actors to excel, and others noticeably struggle under the pressure. Jean Valjean is a difficult role to play, not only because the actor has to convey a man in constant turmoil and anxiety, but mostly because Boublil and Schönberg wrote his songs with loads of sustained high notes. Hugh Jackman, thankfully, uses his experience on Broadway to great effect and manages really well with the most challenging part to play. Perhaps acknowledging that he doesn’t have the voice of West End stalwarts Alfie Boe and Colm Wilkinson, his approach to playing Valjean is that of an actor, rather than a singer. It means he is a lot less polished and a little more raw, but as he chokes back some notes and almost whispers others, he lends Valjean a dramatic humanity that would be lacking if he just belted the songs out. Russell Crowe seriously suffers in comparison, struggling to capture most of the nuance behind Javert, and forcing out the songs with noticeable discomfort. Just because Javert is famous for being inflexible, this does not mean that Crowe’s voice should be. Elsewhere the cast is uniformly excellent – Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter just do their usual shtick, but as they are comic relief it kind of works, whilst Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried achieve the impossible by giving the dullest characters a much needed vitality.

The show stealers, however, are the two actresses given the most iconic songs (both, incidentally, about the pain of rejection). Newcomer Samantha Barks seems like a natural fit for the big screen, confidently playing Eponine as if she has always been acting, and delivering a powerful rendition of ‘On My Own.’ Yet somehow it is all about, and always has been about, Anne Hathaway. She plays Fantine, a woman who has been despised and rejected by the world, and we meet her just as she hits the lowest point of her life. It’s a rather unremittingly miserable role, but in her hands Fantine becomes unforgettably human. Her version of ‘I Dreamed A Dream,’ the song butchered to wild acclaim by Susan Boyle, thrills with emotion, capturing heartache and anger, warmth and sadness. It comes fairly near the start of the film, and whilst there are plenty of rousing songs that follow it, it is her hymn to the fickleness of love and the pain of rejection that you will remember most when the credits have rolled.

With such a talented cast at his command, Hooper creates a musical that is bursting at the seams with emotion. There may be no campy show tunes, no real dance sequences and many of the characters do end up rather deader than when they began, but Les Miserables emerges as one of the most mature, passionate and exciting musicals ever captured on film. Yes, it’s so long it makes you wish they had an interval. Granted, sometimes you wish they cut one or two songs just to speed everything up a little bit. Yet what it achieves is quite incredible: it makes a film full of people singing about their emotions, even as they die, both very human and very believable. It may make for the most gloomy singalong ever, but Les Miserables will also shed tears and stir hearts; in short, it is a remarkable piece of film making.

>>>The other result of Hooper’s decision to consistently shoot in close up is that he is fully reliant on the actors and their singing voices to do most of the work. Hooper’s unshowy direction leads some actors to excel, and others noticeably struggle under the pressure. Jean Valjean is a difficult role to play, not only because the actor has to convey a man in constant turmoil and anxiety, but mostly because Boublil and Schönberg wrote his songs with loads of sustained high notes. Hugh Jackman, thankfully, uses his experience on Broadway to great effect and manages really well with the most challenging part to play. Perhaps acknowledging that he doesn’t have the voice of West End stalwarts Alfie Boe and Colm Wilkinson, his approach to playing Valjean is that of an actor, rather than a singer. It means he is a lot less polished and a little more raw, but as he chokes back some notes and almost whispers others, he lends Valjean a dramatic humanity that would be lacking if he just belted the songs out.<<<


Jo

[birchie]

Nice review from the Daily News site:
www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/movie-review-les-miserables-article-1.1224460

Generally speaking, moviemaking is a formulaic endeavor — even if you’re working with the highest-caliber components. So let’s give Tom Hooper credit for breaking out of his safety zone in such bold fashion.

Just last year, Hooper’s reserved drama, “The King’s Speech,” earned a Best Picture Oscar. Next Tuesday, his extravagant “Les Misérables” will become a leading contender for the 2013 Academy Awards.

To be clear, this is an adaptation of the venerable stage musical, not the original Victor Hugo novel. Hooper has chosen to embrace the theatricality of his project — in which there is almost no spoken dialogue — with full enthusiasm.

After all, how many fans of Cameron Mackintosh’s long-running landmark are looking for tasteful restraint?

As every Times Square tourist knows, the story begins in 1815 France, where Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) vows to start a new life after years in prison.

Perpetually chased by the cruel Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), Valjean recreates himself as a God-fearing factory owner and mayor. He also promises the dying prostitute Fantine (Anne Hathaway) he will rescue her daughter, Cosette, from two grifters (Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen, going all out as our comic relief).

Years later, the now-grown Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and Valjean move to Paris, but their lives are far from settled. Javert is on their trail, and Cosette has fallen in love with a revolutionary (Eddie Redmayne).

At 157 minutes, the film is overlong, but how else to pack in so many songs and stories? Fortunately, this sprawling epic is well-anchored. There cannot be a better big-screen showman than Jackman.

Valjean must be so many different men over the years, and the actor does an outstanding job in transforming himself repeatedly. Crowe, alas, is less successful. He is so outmatched by the musical requirements of his role, and imbues Javert with so little passion, one wonders why he was hired.

As for Hathaway, she devours the screen in her brief appearance, as if the picture were hers for the taking. Many will be impressed by this forceful approach, though others may detect a brash — and likely successful — Oscar grab. (If that assessment seems unfair, watch the film and ask yourself this: Do you genuinely see a weak and pitiful outcast, or do you see Anne Hathaway?)

The rest of the cast meshes together well, from the children (including Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche) to stage vets like Samantha Barks (who plays the lovesick Éponine).

Singing live on camera, the major players make the most of their anthemic moments. There are a few missed notes, but the songs elicit the emotions required. We gasp, we sigh, we cry.

Subtlety, in other words, is not a priority. The artificiality of the sets, the insistent closeups, the broadly choreographed showstoppers are all designed for maximum impact.

And because this outsized spectacle is tempered by Jackman’s humane complexity, it works. Who could blame Javert for following him to the ends of the earth?

In just a few words she did a lot to capture the essence of Hugh's great performance. I also like the statement about Tom Hooper. Not enough has been said about how masterfully he created this work of art!
Sue

[jo]

Have you noticed that in some of the more insightful reviews that there is no mention that Hugh Jackman has not lost himself in the character? It is his many transformations into the Valjean character arc that is usually praised. No mention either that his acting is an obvious " Oscar grab"

[jo]

I will put this insightful piece among the reviews because the writer, though not a film critic, provides an analytical and intellectual view of why the movie is relevant!

www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/07/why-all-the-hate-for-les-mis.html

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Why All the Hate for Les Mis?
by Megan McArdle Jan 7, 2013 3:27 PM EST



I might as well just get this out of the way: I loved Les Miserables.


I loved it on Broadway, where I saw it for the first time in 1989, with Colm Wilkinson, "The Voice of God", playing Jean Valjean. I loved it in London in 2004, where I saw it again. And so I was prepared to love it again in the movie theater. Which I did, extravagantly. I happily sobbed for the last half hour of the movie, while my husband, a movie critic, kept uncomfortably leaning over to ask if I was all right. I listened to the album all the way back to Washington D.C. from Boston, where we'd been visiting my father. I sang "At the End of the Day" and "Master of the House" while I made the first meal in my new pressure cooker. I haven't enjoyed a movie so much in years.


I am not oblivious to its faults. The singing in the film is very uneven (though Eddie Redmayne was a very pleasant surprise as Marius). Russell Crowe was badly cast as Javert, though I understand why the producers needed a star in the part. On the other hand, I do not understand why on earth they cast Amanda Seyfried, who was completely unequipped for a role meant for a strong soprano. Her already thin voice soared to the top of its range, and then onward into a series of heart-rending squeaks that made you very angry at the director who had inflicted this shame on a naive young actress. Hugh Jackman, a baritone singing a tenor role, was also overmatched; it was hard to tell whether the questionable singing choices were actual choices, or compromises he'd been forced into by the limits of his voice.


For all that, I loved it; the filming gave the story both an intimacy, and a scope, that it could never have on stage. That is not to say that it was better than the play; the singing was certaintly worse. Rather, it was different, in a way that added as much as it subtracted. I know that I will happily watch it again.


In that, I am not alone: the $61 million film just passed the $100 million mark at the box office. But the critics are not so enamored. The nicer reviews damn with faint praise and read like extended sighs, usually ending with a reluctant acknowledgement that I suppose people who liked the musical will probably like the movie too. The less nice reviews—well, I think David Denby speaks for most of those critics:


Didn’t any of my neighbors notice how absurdly gloomy and dolorous the story was? How the dominant blue-gray coloring was like a pall hanging over the material? How the absence of dancing concentrated all the audience’s pleasure on the threadbare songs? How tiresome a reverse fashion show the movie provided in rags, carbuncles, gimpy legs, and bad teeth? How awkward the staging was? How strange to have actors singing right into the camera, a normally benign recording instrument, which seems, in scene after scene, bent on performing a tonsillectomy?


Hugh Jackman, as the aggrieved Jean Valjean, delivers his numbers in a quavering, quivering, stricken voice—Jackman doesn’t sing, he brays. Russell Crowe as Javert, his implacable pursuer, stands on parapets overlooking all of Paris and dolefully sings of his duty to the law. Then he does it again. Everything is repeated, emphasized, doubled, as if to congratulate us on emotions we’ve already had. The young women, trembling like leaves in a storm, battered this way and that by men, never exercise much will or intelligence. Anne Hathaway, as Fantine, gets her teeth pulled, her hair chopped, and her body violated in a coffin box—a Joan of Arc who only suffers, a pure victim who never asserts herself. Hathaway, a total pro, gives everything to the role, exploiting those enormous eyes and wide mouth for its tragic-clown effect. Like almost everyone else, she sings through tears. Most of the performances are damp.


The music is juvenile stuff—tonic-dominant, without harmonic richness or surprise. Listen to any score by Richard Rodgers or Leonard Bernstein or Fritz Loewe if you want to hear genuine melodic invention. I was so upset by the banality of the music that I felt like hiring a hall and staging a nationalist rally. “My fellow-countrymen, we are the people of Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin! Cole Porter and George Gershwin, Frank Loesser and Burton Lane! We taught the world what popular melody was! What rhythmic inventiveness was! Let us unite to overthrow the banality of these French hacks!” (And the British hacks, too, for that matter.) Alas, the hall is filled with people weeping over “Les Mis.”


… Every emotion in the movie is elemental. There’s no normal range, no offhand or incidental moments—it’s all injustice, love, heartbreak, cruelty, self-sacrifice, nobility, baseness. Which brings us to heart of the material’s appeal. As everyone knows, the stage show was a killer for girls between the ages of eight and about fourteen. If they have seen “Les Mis” and responded to it as young women, they remain loyal to the show—and to the emotions it evoked—forever. At that age, the sense of victimization is very strong, and “Les Mis” is all about victimization. That the story has nothing to with our own time makes the emotions in it more—not less—accessible, because feeling is not sullied by real-world associations. But whom, may I ask, is everyone crying for? For Jean Valjean? For Fantine? Fantine is hardly on the screen before she is destroyed. Indeed, I’ve heard of people crying on the way into the movie theatre. It can’t be the material itself that’s producing those tears. “Les Mis” offers emotion… about emotion.


But, you say, what’s wrong with a good cry? What harm does it do anyone? No harm. But I would like to point out that tears engineered this crudely are not emotions honestly earned, that the most cynical dictators, as Pauline Kael used to say, have manipulated emotions with the same kind of kitsch appeal to gut feelings. Sentimentality in art is corrosive because it rewards us for imprecise perceptions and meaningless hatreds.


But, you say, what’s wrong with a good cry? What harm does it do anyone? No harm. But I would like to point out that tears engineered this crudely are not emotions honestly earned, that the most cynical dictators, as Pauline Kael used to say, have manipulated emotions with the same kind of kitsch appeal to gut feelings. Sentimentality in art is corrosive because it rewards us for imprecise perceptions and meaningless hatreds.



I am not a critic. Indeed, I barely even see movies anymore, which is a side effect that they don’t warn you about when you marry a movie critic. So it’s rather presumptuous of me to disagree with the likes of Anthony Lane and David Denby, when I have neither the breadth of movie knowledge, nor the critical background, to join in any sort of high level critical conversation.



And yet. I think the critics are badly wrong about stuff like Les Misérables. I mean, they’re right that they don’t like it. But disliking stuff like this seems to be some sort of requirement for becoming a critic. And it seems to me that this misses something fundamental about the role of stories in our lives.



Compare the critical reaction to Les Misérables to the reaction to The Grey. I pick them because they are sort of neat inverses of each other: critics liked The Grey much better than the audience did, while that is reversed for Les Misérables. (Critics also, it sort of goes without saying, liked The Grey better than Les Misérables.) But I also pick them because of the effect they had on me. Both of them stayed with me for days—Les Misérables in a lingering sensation of oceanic emotion, The Grey with the sort of leaden horror that I imagine to have pervaded Stalin’s personal staff offices.



Les Misérables is, to state the obvious, a plot-heavy melodrama. People are forever being unjustly persecuted, struggling with their conscience, risking all to do the right thing. The Grey is a story stripped down to its barest elements: it is, I think no accident that while Les Misérables comes from a thousand-page novel, The Grey was adapted from a short story called “Ghost Walker”. In it, some men who survived an Alaska plane crash try to make it to civilization while being pursued by a pack of wolves. Nothing particularly remarkable happens except that—SPOILER ALERT!!!—all of the men find some moderately dramatic way to get themselves killed. There is some character exploration, in which we learn that they haven’t much.



The subject matter of both movies is, by and large, people losing precious years of their lives to an unjust fate. There’s a whole lot of dying. But there the similarity ends, because while the people in Les Misérables are struggling for virtue and meaning, the people in The Grey are losing meaningless lives to unhappy accident; the meaningless universe doesn’t even care enough to kill them deliberately. One could practically hear Kurtz whispering “The horror! The horror!” in one’s ear. It was dreadful. I deeply regret having forced myself to see the end of it.



It is notable that critics found this considerably more admirable than the life-affirming, panoramic saga of Les Misérables—found it more admirable precisely because it is tedious and small and offers the “message” that life is meaningless and rather horrible and yet nonetheless, all too short. This seems like a rather stupid criteria for enjoying art. I mark myself as unsophisticated for having liked Les Misérables—but what is more adolescent than the notion that futility and horror are the secret truth of life? Certainly the majority of life is anything but; no one spends most of their life thinking or acting as if they believe that all this is truly insignificant. If anything is the secret truth of life it is hope: grandiose, impractical, and with us to the last. Yet critics valorize the films which celebrate its destruction, over the ones which celebrate its triumphs. There’s a moderate exception for films in which some oppressed minority wins a legal (or occasionally physical) battle against the forces of oppression—but even these fare less well with the critics than bleaker fare.


This seems to me like an odd cultural choice. It may not be odd in an individual critic—the main asset a critic has is his or her personal aesthetic, and who am I to tell them what that aesthetic should be. But it’s odd that nearly every single critic seems to have the same set of aesthetic preferences. What is it about bleakness and tedium that are so attractive, other than the fact that most people instinctively recoil from it? By which logic, scorpions are superior to puppies.



The sort of movies that one prefers—or wants to prefer—say something about the culture one lives in (or wants to), the person one is, or wants to be. When films decide to eschew the gauzy-halo’d bride and the heavenly choir singing in the birth, and reassign the halo and the choir to the last moment that you saw that guy you had the weekend fling with in Prague, they are telling you something fairly important about the culture of the filmmakers, not to mention their emotional lives.



It seems to me that a culture that valorizes the values of Les Misérables would be a better place to live than one which preferred The Grey, as would an individual life. Why does seemingly every critic except Mat Zoller-Seitz disagree with me?



That’s not to say that I think there there’s some sort of moral requirement to like Les Misérables. As one friend remarked, when I confessed that I liked Wagner, “Megan has an unusually high tolerance for bombastic swill”. De gustibus non est disputandum.


But I do object when disliking Les Misérables becomes some sort of litmus test for thinking intelligently about art. Especially since over the centuries, stories like Les Misérables have a great deal more staying power than stories like The Grey. It’s easy to imagine Les Misérables still being watched 80 years hence, just as Gone With the Wind is now. It’s very difficult to imagine our great grandchildren making a special effort to watch a movie where the main message is that people in 2011 were afraid of dying. Almost all of the stories that survive the centuries are plot driven and super-dramatic, even melodramatic, filled with archetypical characters wreaking physical and emotional havoc on the lives of the people around them. Doesn’t that tell us something important about what stories are for?


The reaction of Denby et al seems perilously close to dismissing the movie precisely because it’s the sort of thing that really resonates with ordinary people—those sentimental fools. I find it interesting that in his piece, Denby speaks admiringly of the musical comedies of yesteryear—he endorses the music as more innovative, and its pleasurable escapism as somehow more authentic. Did Denby’s historical counterparts praise all that musical innovation and pure escapism when it was new? Or does middlebrow entertainment become appealing only when it has aged into a minority taste?



Even now, after deciding to write a long-winded defense of Les Misérables, I am fighting the urge to demonstrate that I read Proust and listen to Schoenberg—that I am not, in short, the sort of mouth-breathing morlock who just likes it because she doesn’t know any better. When the point of the essay should be that even mouth-breathing morlocks can have a point. Art that’s just for the eloi is an art disconnected from the motive power of its own society.


Can you hear the morlocks sing?



Megan McArdle is a special correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast covering business, economics, and public policy. A former senior editor at The Atlantic and writer for The Economist, Megan has a diverse work history including three small startups and a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero.



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[jo]

Some UK reviews are just coming in ( the film opens on Jan 11) - I think you will find this review fair and puts things in perspective , including Hugh's importance in the entire film.

www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/10/miserables-review

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Les Miserables – review

Tom Hooper's film is a colossal effort – after 158 minutes, you really have experienced something. It's just not clear what
4 of 5 stars

Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian, Thursday 10 January 2013 15.01 GMT

Like a diabolically potent combination of Lionel Bart and Leni Riefenstahl, the movie version of Les Misérables has arrived, based on the hit stage show adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel set among the deserving poor in 19th-century France, which climaxes with the anti-monarchist Paris uprising of 1832. Even as a non-believer in this kind of "sung-through" musical, I was battered into submission by this mesmeric and sometimes compelling film, featuring a performance of dignity and intelligence from Hugh Jackman, and an unexpectedly vulnerable singing turn from that great, big, grumpy old bear, Russell Crowe. With the final rousing chorus of "Do you hear the people sing?", the revolutionary-patriotic fervour is so bizarrely stirring, you'll feel like marching out of the cinema, wrapped in the tricolour, and travelling to Russia to find Gérard Depardieu and tear him limb from limb.

Just as some celebrities are so successful they come to be known only by their first names, this is known everywhere by its abbreviation: Lay-miz, impossible to say without a twinkle of camp. It's enjoyed staggering global success on stage since 1985. This version, directed by Tom Hooper, of The King's Speech fame, has all the singing recorded live on set, with actors listening to a pianist via earpieces, and the orchestral soundtrack added later. The result is a bracing, rough-and-ready immediacy from performers who can and do hold a tune.

Les Misérables tells the story of Valjean (Jackman), a proud and decent man imprisoned for stealing bread to save his sister's family from starving. Once released, he is viciously pursued by police officer Javert (Crowe) for breaking the terms of his parole, but makes a Hardyesque career leap into respectability, becoming a mayor and factory owner. His path crosses that of his poor employee Fantine (Anne Hathaway) whose grownup daughter Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) is to fall fatefully in love with revolutionary firebrand Marius (Eddie Redmayne) just as Paris erupts in violence, and as Valjean must make his final reckoning with Javert.

It conquers its audience with weapons all its own: not passion so much as passionate sincerity, not power so much as overwhelming force. Every line, every note, every scene is belted out with diaphragm-quivering conviction and unbroken, unremitting intensity. The physical strength of this movie is impressive: an awe-inspiring and colossal effort, just like Valjean's as he lifts the flagpole at the beginning of the film. You can almost see the movie's muscles flexing and the veins standing out like whipcords on its forehead. At the end of 158 minutes, you really have experienced something. What exactly, I'm still not sure. But just as the inquisition got Galileo to recant just by showing him the instruments of torture, I felt that Hooper had stepped from the unparted curtains before the feature began, fixed my gaze, pointed at a large wringer he had brought on stage and said: "Whinge all you want. You're going through this."

The most affecting scene comes in his movie's opening act, as Valjean is astonished and moved by the Christ-like charity of the Bishop (Colm Wilkinson) who takes him in, and forgives him for attempting to steal silverware, making him a present of it and protecting him from arrest ("I have saved your soul for God"). Jackman sings a soliloquy directly to camera ("Why did I allow this man to touch my soul and teach me love?"), eyes blazing with a new knowledge. There's no doubt about it, this scene packs a massive punch.

Other moments are less successful. Hathaway's fervent rendition of the SuBo standard I Dreamed a Dream, in extreme close-up, has been much admired, but for me her performance and appearance is a bit Marie Antoinette-ish. Her poverty-stricken character is supposed to have pitifully sold her teeth to a street dentist. Conveniently, this turns out to mean just her back teeth: her dazzlingly white front teeth are untouched. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are great as the dodgy innkeepers M and Mme Thénardier, but the crowd scenes have a thumbs-in-the-waistcoat feel, and when smudgy-faced urchin Gavroche (Daniel Huttlestone) addresses grownups in Cockney as "my dear" then we really are in Jack Wild territory.

The star is Jackman. But Crowe offers the most open, human performance I have seen from him. His singing is so sweetly unselfconscious that there is something paradoxically engaging about his Javert, even when he's being a cruel, unbending law-officer and royalist spy. I'll never love Les Misérables the way its fans love it, and I'm agnostic about Claude-Michel Schönberg's surging score, with its strange, subliminal weepiness. But as big-screen spectacle, this is unique.

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[motuck]

I have seen it twice, the second time with my husband. I loved it even more the second time around and cried in the same places. My SO loved it and was particularly taken with Javert. We had see this on Broadway back in 1993 and have loved the music every since. My new favorite song for now is Suddenly. It touches me every time I hear it. I love reading all the reviews fer and agin the movie. I have my own opinion, not swayed by naysayers or snarkers. I think it is a masterpiece and hope to see it again before it goes out of the theaters. Hugh is up against tough adversaries for the Oscar. I think the movie deserves it as well as Hugh. I am surprised it didn't get nominated for best director but then what so I know? All I can say now is thank you to all involved for such a wonderful thoughtful soul wrenching movie.

[jo]

I do like this particular review -- it transcends the pettiness of those who argue about a note not being perfectly sung but rather views the whole story of Les Miserables being magnificently brought to the screen ( after he himself thought it was an indifferent show almost 28 years ago) and then summarizes the key issues of its impact, including the original social concerns that illuminated Hugo's book in the first place !

Bravo!

www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/13/les-miserables-review-tom-hooper

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Les Misérables – review

Tom Hooper's gamble of filming Les Misérables with on-set singing has resulted in a work of unusual power and colour


Philip French
The Observer, Sunday 13 January 2013


Asked who was France's greatest poet, André Gide responded with the famously rueful answer: "Victor Hugo, hélas!" Cameron Mackintosh, the impresario who brought Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel's Les Misérables to London and transformed it into a worldwide phenomenon after its mild Parisian success and disastrous British first-night reception, would give a rather more positive response. I was in that first-night audience on 30 September 1985, and shared the general opinion that it was an indifferent show, shallow and somewhat forced in tone. I emerged with only one song planted in my head, Master of the House, sung by Alun Armstrong as Thénardier, the outrageously opportunist innkeeper, a number that struck me as rather like You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two from Oliver!

I wasn't writing about the play back in 1985, just producing a radio programme in which it was discussed, so I have no words to eat, merely a confession to make. After a gap of nearly 28 years, I've seen Tom Hooper's film of Les Misérables and the scales have fallen from my eyes and ears. On screen at least, it's the best musical I've seen for many years, a magnificent achievement that overwhelmed me from the opening moments of the tormented hero Jean Valjean working with a chain gang to drag a sailing ship into dry dock in 1815 to the finale of his death in a Parisian convent 17 years later following the failure of the 1832 uprising against the repressive monarchy. If at times, as I've suggested, Les Misérables echoes Oliver!, it's an Oliver! with steel teeth and waving a red flag.

Almost everybody, whether they've read Hugo's 1,300-page novel or not, knows the compelling story from the numerous films and broadcast versions. As pared down for the stage, it's about the brutalised ex-convict Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) trying to live a Christian life after being redeemed by the saintly Bishop Myriel, and pursued for nearly two decades by the rigid upholder of the law, Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). It's a very Victorian tale, both uplifting and sentimental, of deep-dyed villainy, fallen women, mistreated orphans, hidden benefactors and social injustice. And in the film it's treated with a proper seriousness that provides comic relief only through the wicked Dickensian couple, Thénardier (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his slatternly wife (Helena Bonham Carter), both of whom are excellent, as they were in the Tim Burton film of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

Several things hold the film together, the most notable being Claude-Michel Schönberg's music and the English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, which like Rouben Mamoulian's 1932 Love Me Tonight and Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort are sung through using rhyming couplets at all times. These lyrics are simple and direct, neither deliberately smart nor particularly witty, but they hold our attention line by line, driving the action forwards, developing the themes, turning the film into a verbally coherent whole. The solos and choral pieces always propel the story and derive their force from the context, so that Fantine (Anne Hathaway), the prostitute whose daughter Cosette is eventually adopted by Valjean, sings I Dreamed a Dream from the depths of her degradation.

Instead of pre-recording the songs and having the actors mouth the words on set, Hooper took the risky course of having them sung and recorded as the cameras rolled. Peter Bogdanovich came a cropper doing this in At Long Last Love. But in Les Misérables it lends an unusual power, intensity and colour to the performances, most especially Jackman's Valjean and Crowe's Javert. This is a fanciful thought, but it may well be that as Australians (or in Crowe's case a New Zealander long resident in Australia) these two actors have a particular feeling for the convict culture that lies behind Hugo's novel.

Although Javert's pursuit of Valjean is the dramatic thread that ties the story together, the political theme is principally linked by men accused of being class traitors, and this is well brought out. The working-class Javert has been corrupted by becoming the unquestioning servant of the ruling class; the student Marius (Eddie Redmayne in fine voice) has found personal salvation by deserting his own class to join the revolution. In Les Misérables the idealists, not the devil, have the best tunes, among them Red and Black and the stirring Do You Hear the People Sing?.

Hooper is also to be congratulated on the integration of the grand set-pieces – the chain gang at work, the chases, the fighting at the barricades during the aborted revolution – with the more contemplative moments, and both parts with the continuous flow of music. In this he's been helped by some gifted collaborators, including production designer Eve Stewart and cinematographer Danny Cohen, who both worked with him on The King's Speech, and the editor, Chris Dickens, whose recent credits include Slumdog Millionaire and Berberian Sound Studio. The film has a wonderful period look that's both stylised and realistic, and draws on 19th-century French paintings, most especially David, Géricault, Delacroix, Manet and Gustave Doré.

Above all else, perhaps, the film is about three things. First, love both sacred and profane, and its ability to transform and transcend. Second, our need to fight for change and social justice in a cruel world that resists revolution or too easily undermines and diverts it. Third, and above all, Les Misérables is about holding on to hope in the most desperate conditions, and it ends in the victory of love in a context of political defeat.


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Once again - this is the kind of review ( whether negative or positive) that should have been written -- focusing on the real message of the film/story and how the actors/characters enhanced the storytelling! Imperfect notes maybe but perfect messages brought out by the performances and by the movie itself! That is the Les Miserables I love!


Jo

[motuck]

What a wonderful review. It is the best review I have read and the best one for centering in on the story rather than whose singing voice is better etc. It seems to me that some of the reviews I have read are written from ignorance of the story and what all the themes are. After listening to Garrison Keillor spoofing Les Miz today, this article makes me wish I could have called in and tell them this is what they didn't understand about this musical. I understand spoofing having had subscriptions to MAD magazine, but this one was a bit vicious. Thanks for posting the article. I feel redeemed, no pun intended. Some just don't get it.

[jo]

A review from a Philippine newspaper -- which centers its tribute to who is the soul of the movie! Yay!

www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/01/15/13/review-les-miz-applauded-twice-ph-premiere

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Review: 'Les Miz' applauded twice in PH premiere

By David Dizon, ABS-CBNnews.com

Posted at 01/15/2013 10:17 PM | Updated as of 01/15/2013 10:17 PM











Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, who both won Golden Globes, in a scene from “Les Misérables”

MANILA, Philippines – Two rounds of applause for a musical? That’s practically unheard of for any movie but that’s exactly what happened during the Manila premiere of “Les Misérables,” the new movie by Oscar winner Tom Hooper.

Adapted from Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg's stage musicale based on Victor Hugo's massive 1862 novel, “Les Miz” is all cinematic fire and visual pomp, a movie epic of story and song.

There was loud applause after the movie finally finished and people started filing out, only to be followed by a second wave of applause from people who stayed behind to watch the credits and linger even more in the experience.

Hugh Jackman plays Jean Valjean, a former convict who is imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread and finds redemption after another act of theft is repaid with kindness.

He breaks parole shortly after his release, ever watchful for his former prison guard Javert (Russell Crowe), even as he births a new identity and transforms himself as a mayor. Valjean is forced to flee after he reveals his true identity at a local court. He also adopts a young girl, Cosette, after helping her mother, Fantine (Anne Hathaway), who had died after getting fired from a factory that he had owned.

The story’s second act sees Valjean and the now grown-up Cosette still hiding from Javert. A student revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne) falls for Cosette, to the detriment of Eponine (Samantha Barks) who is in love with Marius. And all this drama is happening as revolution comes to a boil in the streets of Paris.

Songs filmed live

Here’s the first thing I thought of after the movie: the entire cast should be tried for the first degree because they practically murdered the audience. The decision to film the songs live, with the actors singing to a piano accompaniment, gives the movie authenticity. Every dropped note, spoken word, vocal break is there; every soaring note thrills like no pre-recorded track can.

Director Tom Hooper deserves praise for shooting some of the musical’s best solos ("I Dreamed a Dream," "On My Own," "Bring Him Home," "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables") in one continuous, unforgiving take without cuts -- it’s like watching a theater performance up close, flaws and all.

Jackman and Hathaway turn in the kind of spine-tingling performances that could draw tears from stone.

Jackman, in particular, is going to turn a lot of heads from here on out: his performance as the repentant sinner longing to escape his past is the beating soul of this movie. Jackman’s voice rakes and rivens here, changing from urgent longing in “What Have I Done?” to commanding power in “One Day More” and soothing lullaby in “Bring Him Home.” When he barely whispers his song in “Valjean’s Confession,” your awe is complete.

Acting-wise, Jackman shows greatness as he transforms from emaciated hobo to mayor to father of Cosette to forgiven pilgrim. One particular scene stands out: when Valjean’s prodigious strength finally, inevitably fails him.

Jackman’s performance is only matched here by Hathaway. Hathaway, all slinky and steel as Catwoman in last year’s "The Dark Knight Rises," looks emaciated here as the consumption-riddled Fantine. Hathaway may not have the pipes of a Susan Boyle or a Patti Lupone but she more than makes up for it with emotional fire.

Shorn like a sheep and forced into prostitution, Hathaway sings “I Dreamed A Dream” with both rage and despair and her performance is heady and potent. When she sings that line “Come with me, where chains will never bind you” in “Valjean’s Death,” it sounds like a blessing.

One performer that I feel will be the breakout star in this movie is Samantha Barks as Eponine, the only holdover from the Les Misérables 25th Anniversary Concert: she played the same role in the musicale’s London production in 2010.

Beating out hopefuls such as Lea Michele and Taylor Swift for the role, Barks gets to do that other show-stopper of a song “On My Own” on a rain-spattered street. Barks exudes a calm confidence in her role, even if it is her first time to do a movie. I expect more movie roles for her in the years to come.

The other performers are equally deserving of praise: Aaron Tveit brings youthful haughtiness to Enjolras, while Amanda Seyfried (Cosette)'s lovely soprano is enthralling when she sings "A Heart Full of Love."

Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the Thénardiers, are old hands in this genre after singing through the operatic Sweeney Todd. Here, they find humor in unexpected ways in their songs "Master of the House" and "The Bargain."

Eddie Redmayne as Marius deserves special mention for his stirring, heartfelt "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables."

According to producer Cameron Mackintosh, the version used in the movie is actually the 21st take of the same song. Redmayne also said in an Empire Magazine interview that he decided to tape the song over and over again so he could use the emotion built up in his last performance to fuel the next one.

Russell Crowe as Javert

Finally, there’s Russell Crowe, who gets the antagonist role of Javert.

Crowe’s gruff baritone sounds fine in his solo “Stars” but he sounds weak every time he has to sing with someone else. Crowe’s voice lacks the fullness and nuance compared to his fellow leads, and he seems ill at ease in his role.

Perhaps the biggest letdown is Crowe’s final solo, “Javert’s Suicide.” It lacks the emotional heft of a man whose emotional axis has been upended by Valjean’s act of mercy.

A final note on the cinematography: some reviewers have chastised Hooper for his restless camera and odd angles. True, there are a few scenes where the camera placement felt skewed but these are too minimal to mar the movie.

One caveat though – the movie sometimes feels too slavish to the musical, rushing to the next song immediately instead of letting a scene, and the audience, breathe before moving on. And there were times when I wanted the camera to pan out to see Hooper’s set design and cast, to bring a sense of spectacle instead of another close-up.

These, however, are mere quibbles. “Les Misérables” deserves every bit of praise and accolade heaped on it. More than the sum of its parts, it is more than just a movie but an experience.


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We know how to love music and musicals

Jo

[jo]

Another review from Philippine media --

www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/290720/lifestyle/reviews/movie-review-anne-hathaway-and-hugh-jackman-soar-in-les-miserables

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Movie review: Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman soar in 'Les Miserables'

By MIKHAIL LECAROSJanuary 17, 2013 12:56pm


Huddled in a corner, the (lovely) ladies of the night bear judgmental witness to Fantine’s arrest, their caked-on makeup made more ghoulish by the glimmer of a waning moon. Inspector Javert’s grim satisfaction at the justice he is serving is cut short by the arrival of Monsieur Madeleine, who orders the frail woman’s release. As light snow begins to fall, and Madeleine removes Fantine from the scene to seek medical attention, Javert makes a silent declaration that this incident is far from over. Sooner or later, there will be a confrontation, and it will not end well.

Scenes such as this, meticulously staged and adeptly acted, characterize the film adaptation of the famed stage musical, “Les Misérables.” Twenty-seven years after the play’s (based on Victor Hugo’s classic novel) West End debut, the film version boasts a star-studded cast that includes Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, and Russell Crowe.

The story opens in 1815, where we are introduced to Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a convict laboring under the watchful eye of Russell Crowe’s Javert, a police officer with absolute belief in the letter of law. This belief places him in conflict with Valjean, who was imprisoned 19 years ago for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving son. A kindly bishop, some parole jumping, one assumed name, and eight years later find Valjean living happily as a respected member of his community.

Valjean’s second lease on life expires prematurely when he, in his new identity as Monsieur Madeleine, crosses paths with a dogged-as-ever Javert. Javert is investigating an incident involving factory worker-turned-prostitute Fantine (Anne Hathaway, in her Golden Globe-winning performance), when Valjean intervenes. Before Fantine succumbs to the rigors and injuries sustained from her time on the streets, Valjean vows to take care of her daughter, Cosette. With Javert in hot pursuit, Valjean purchases Cosette from the unscrupulous couple, the Thénardiers (“Sweeney Todd” vets Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, gleefully hamming it up), tasked with caring for the young girl.

Nine years later, on the eve of the 1832 Paris Uprising, Valjean and a now-grown Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) find their peaceful existence endangered yet again with the threat of student violence and the return of Javert. Complicating matters is Cosette’s budding relationship with Marius (Eddie Redmayne, “The Other Boleyn Girl”), a young nobleman and revolutionary. As the activists and government forces hurtle headlong toward an inevitable showdown, so too do nemeses Valjean and Javert.

“Les Misérables” is not a movie musical in the traditional sense, nor is it a case of a stage production awkwardly grafted onto a cinematic template. What director Tom Hooper is presenting here is cinema as stage production, in the truest possible sense. This is a stage production, plain and simple, albeit one with a multimillion dollar budget and shot unlike any musical film you’ve ever seen.

With very few exceptions, filmed musicals are bold, lavish affairs shot with wide angles to showcase the intricate choreography and production design that went into their creation, where characters are just as liable to burst into song as pedestrians/gang members and/or construction workers are to line-dance. While all the prerequisite extravagance, big establishing shots and star power are present here, what stands out about Hooper’s “Les Mis” is how intimate it all feels.

Much of this stems from Hooper’s much talked about choice to have his performers sing all their songs live on set (rather than lip sync to a studio recording). While there have been other musicals shot with the actors singing live on set (1995’s “The Fantasticks,” for instance), never has there been one where the performers were forced to rely on the degree of sheer acting skill seen here, captured in unforgiving close-ups by cinematographer Danny Cohen for most of the major numbers. Without extras, props, choreography, or even a lip synch to hide behind, the combined effect is one that is simultaneously raw and immediate.

In “Les Mis,” Hugh Jackman is able to finally able to distance himself from his blockbuster leading man image, portraying the fugitive Valjean with commendable verve and commitment. From his emaciated opening scenes to his ultimate denouement, Jackman makes full use of the Tony- and Drama Desk Award-winning chops that made him a hit on Broadway.


And what of Anne Hathaway? Simply put, this is one instance where the hype is entirely justified; Hathaway is absolutely deserving of her Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe win (along with any other awards coming her way). If Jackman jumped headfirst into his Valjean, Hathaway is Fantine. Damaged in body, spirit, and dignity, Hathaway’s Fantine is deadened in every way but her maternal drive to provide for Cosette, creating a performance that, for my money, ranks among the most heart-rending ever committed to film.

If there’s a weak link in the cast, it would be Russell Crowe as lawman Javert. Crowe gives it his best shot, but is hampered by the fact that the hawkish nose that made him such a distinctive gladiator is also what he sings out of. Crowe cuts a striking, formidable figure in uniform, making it all the more unfortunate that his performance ends up being tear-jerking for all the wrong reasons.

Crowe aside, the supporting cast is impressive. Redmayne makes for a solid Marius – a far cry from Nick Jonas’ constipated attempt in “Les Mis’” 25th anniversary concert. An alumna of that concert, Samantha Barks, holds her own as Marius’ unrequited admirer, the tragically lovelorn Éponine, while Daniel Huttlestone is appropriately plucky as street-smart urchin Gavroche.

Unlike many stage-to-film adaptations, “Les Mis” had the sung-through nature of the stage version, meaning that the film contains far less actual dialogue than certain portions of the audience may be used to. For fans and patrons of musical theater, though, there is much to love about this sparkling translation of a beloved musical.

As much for longtime fans as it is for the uninitiated willing to give it a chance, "Les Misérables" is an excellent way to see this classic story, brilliantly retold.

Now that’s something worth singing about. —KG, GMA News

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Jo

[mamaleh]

Crowe has a "hawkish nose"? I don't think so.

Nice stuff about Hugh, though.

Ellen

[motuck]

I felt Crowe was good as Javert if you don't care about his singing. In fact, because his singing is a weak point (IMO) his stature as Javert made it less important. All in all, this was a well done performance no matter how it is described. Stage, movie, cast, etc., it gets all my praise.

[jo]

Another thoughtful review from the UK --

www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/01/do-you-hear-actors-sing

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Do you hear the actors sing?

A story everyone needs to hear at least once.
By Kate Mossman Published 17 January 2013 8:30


Les Misérables
dir: Tom Hooper

One of the most striking things about Les Misérables is the volume of tears it generates. These aren’t snivels but full-blown, tubeclearing excavations of the nose (I count myself here, I’ve seen it three times). It’s not the schmaltzy bits that make people cry – the song of the fallen woman Fantine (“I Dreamed a Dream”, as popularised by Susan Boyle), the sight of the urchin or the show’s wig-waving climax – but moments of greater emotional complexity: the happy death of the street-girl Éponine, or the ballad “Bring Him Home”, in which the hero Jean Valjean (played by Hugh Jackman) risks his life to save a young blade he’s never even met. In the Times last month, the theologian Ian Bradley recalled the Easter Sunday address in which Archbishop George Carey described Valjean’s early redemption scene (he is blessed by the bishop whose house he’s robbed) as “the finest description of grace outside the pages of the New Testament”. But even for heathens, the real thrill of Les Misérables is about watching one eye-popping gesture of human self-sacrifice after another and thinking, how can anyone be so . . . good?

Tom Hooper’s new film adaptation remains a hard sell for non-fans of musical theatre. For a start, it features Hollywood A-listers singing; many people are still haunted by the mahogany tones of Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia!. Second, the show is not exactly easy on the ear. It always felt, superficially, closer to opera than a musical, not just for its hefty themes and historical setting but for its sheer unwieldliness. The lines of exposition, written in French by Alain Boublil and translated into English by Herbert Kretzmer, are often deliciously gauche and clunky: “There was a time we killed the king/ We tried to change the world too fast/ Now we’ve got another king/ He’s no better than the last.” Hooper’s decision to record the songs “live” has, as well as generating most of the film’s publicity, enhanced the music’s ragged, chaotic feel.

With tiny mikes shoved down their ear canals, linking them to a piano accompanist hidden somewhere in the corner of the set, the actors were in charge of setting their own pace for each song and occasionally, it seems, their own pitch. The fugal “Confrontation” between Valjean and his relentless pursuer Javert (Russell Crowe) – the first a piercing tenor, the second a throaty rock-and-roll voice – is just one of several moments in the show where you feel a bit like you’re trapped in a chicken run. But this is exactly what Les Misérables ought to sound like. It’s a brave production: Hooper could have sweetened the meal for the cinema but instead he’s made it even tougher.

The story, based on the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo, takes place not during the French Revolution (a common misconception) but starts in 1815 and culminates in 1830’s June Rebellion, a damp squib of an uprising in which the Parisian populace failed to turn out and 93 students were killed.

The outdoor set gives Hooper – who cleaned up at the Oscars two years ago with his last film, The King’s Speech – an opportunity to close in on the theme of personal bravery over politics. In the stage show, the famous “barricade” looks like part of the action, a symbol of wider revolution.

On film, as all manner of junk is tossed out of shops and houses including, memorably, a couple of coffins, you realise just how small and ineffectual the real-life barricades were. When things get ugly, the good folk of Paris lock their doors on the rebels and leave them to the National Guard.

“Here’s a handsome, charismatic student on the street outside your house, saying all the stuff you want to hear,” said Hooper in a recent interview. “Would you actually let him in, with his gun, when the police are chasing him? No.”

There are various other moral grey areas explored more pointedly in the film than in the stage show. There’s a new song (“Suddenly”), commissioned from the original writers and inserted after Valjean’s adoption of the orphan Cosette (Amanda Seyfried), which explains that the child is the second redemptive moment in his life: character change, unlike in the movies, is a long, complicated process.

The villain, Javert, has been fleshed out too, with a new scene taken from the book in which he asks Valjean to punish him, convinced he’s been pursuing the wrong man. “People who are unforgiving and unrelenting to those in their professional life,” says Hooper, “are often even harder on themselves in private.” Funny to think that Les Misérables, among all those other things, is about a jobsworth maddened by the kindness of someone more at peace with the world than himself. See the film, or the show, or read the book, but this remains a story that everyone needs to hear once. Then maybe five more times, if it gets to you.

Les Misérables is released on 11 January
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[jo]

Every critic, every Oscar voter, and every hater of the film should read this well-written blog from The New York Times ( by Stanley Fish, Professor of Law and Humanities) :

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/les-miserables-and-irony/

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Stanley Fish January 28, 2013, 9:00 pmComment

‘Les Miserables’ and Irony

By STANLEY FISH
Stanley Fish on education, law and society.

.

I may have missed it, but I don’t recall USA Today devoting a full one and three-quarters pages to a movie, never mind a movie that’s been out for some time now. But there in the Life section of the Weekend edition was a lengthy discussion of “Les Misérables,” or, more precisely, a discussion of the furiously negative responses the musical epic has evoked from a gaggle of critics who simultaneously trash the film and express an incredulity verging on outrage at fellow moviegoers who don’t share their view.

David Denby, writing in The New Yorker, after declaring that the movie is not “just bad,” but “dreadful,” goes on to report himself “deeply embarrassed because all around me … people were sitting rapt, awed, absolutely silent, only to burst into applause after some of the numbers.” What embarrasses Denby is the decline in “the taste of my countrymen” in the face of something that is to him so obviously “overbearing, pretentious, madly repetitive”; and he seconds the judgment of Anthony Lane, also a New Yorker reviewer, who dismisses the film as “inflationary bombast.” (Something a bit inflationary about that phrase, perhaps.)

And then there is Matt Walsh, who was dragged to the movie by his wife and found it “a thousand times worse than I could have imagined … [v]apid, shallow, self-indulgent and emotionally manipulative.” All that crying, you know.

After reading the full versions of these diatribes and a bunch more, I decided that I just had to go see for myself. So I saw the movie twice, last Friday and Saturday. The first time I liked it, the second time I loved it. Part of the reason for my increased enthusiasm was that I could better understand what the director, Tom Hooper, was up to when he employed two techniques every reviewer comments on: (1) the actors do not lip-sync the songs, but perform them “live” (what is and is not real and authentic is always a difficult question) as the camera rolls, and (2) that camera is literally “in your face”; the close-ups are so close up that, as a viewer, you are almost inside the singer’s larynx. As Dana Stevens explains (not in admiration) in Slate, while many movies “cram ideas and themes down our throats,” this one may be the first “to do so while also cramming us down the throats of its actors.”

The key to what is intended by these technical choices was provided for me by Hooper himself when he remarked in an interview (also printed in USA Today) that while “we live in a postmodern age where a certain amount of irony is expected, [t]his film is made without irony.” Irony is a stance of distance that pays a compliment to both its producer and consumer. The ironist knows what other, more naïve, observers do not: that surfaces are deceptive, that the real story is not what presents itself, that conventional pieties are sentimental fictions.

The artist who deploys irony tests the sophistication of his audience and divides it into two parts, those in the know and those who live in a fool’s paradise. Irony creates a privileged vantage point from which you can frame and stand aloof from a world you are too savvy to take at face value. Irony is the essence of the critical attitude, of the observer’s cool gaze; every reviewer who is not just a bourgeois cheerleader (and no reviewer will admit to being that) is an ironist.

“Les Misérables” defeats irony by not allowing the distance it requires. If you’re looking right down the throats of the characters, there is no space between them and you; their perspective is your perspective; their emotions are your emotions; you can’t frame what you are literally inside of. Moreover, the effect — and it is an effect even if its intention is to trade effect for immediacy — is enhanced by the fact that the faces you are pushed up against fill the screen; there is no dimension to the side of them or behind them; it is all very big and very flat, without depth. The camera almost never pulls back, and when it does so, it is only for an instant.

By means of these devices, Hooper manages to create on the screen something like what the Color Field painters (Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis) were always striving for: “We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth” (Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, letter to The New York Times, 1943). In Color Field painting, “figure and ground are one, and the space of the picture, conceived as a field, seems to spread out beyond the edges of the canvas.” As a result you are not encouraged to engage in higher-order thoughts about what you are viewing; it’s all very elemental; it hits you straight on. Rothko declared that “The fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted by my pictures shows that I communicated … basic human emotions.” Newman echoed the point: “I present no dogma, no system … I work only out of high passion.”

Endless high passion and basic human emotions indulged in without respite are what “Les Misérables” offers in its refusal to afford the distance that enables irony. Those who call the movie flat, shallow, sentimental and emotionally manipulative are not wrong; they just fail to see that what appear to them to be bad cinematic choices (in addition to prosaic lyrics that repel aesthetic appreciation, and multiple reprises of simple musical themes) are designed to achieve exactly the result they lament — an almost unbearable proximity to raw, un-ironized experience. They just can’t go with it. And why should they? After all, the critic, and especially the critic who perches in high journalistic places, needs to have a space in which he can insert himself and do the explicatory work he offers to a world presumed to be in need of it. “Les Misérables,” taken on its own terms, leaves critics with nothing to do except join the rhythms of rapt silence, crying and applause, and it is understandable that they want nothing to do with it.

Understandable but not admirable, if what you desire from criticism is some kind of affirmation. Irony — postmodern or any other — is a brief against affirmation, against the unsophisticated embrace of positive (unqualified) values. No one has seen this more clearly than David Foster Wallace, who complains that irony “serves an exclusively negative function,” but is “singularly unuseful when it comes to replace the hypocrisies it debunks” (“E Unibus Pluram,” Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993). Irony, he adds, is “unmeaty”; that is, it has nothing solid inside it and is committed to having nothing inside it. Few artists, Wallace says, “dare to try to talk about ways of redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naïve to all the weary ironists.” But perhaps there is hope. “The next real … ‘rebels’ … might well emerge as some weird bunch of ‘antirebels,’ born oglers who dare to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse single-entendre values. Who treat old untrendy human troubles and emotions with reverence and conviction” (“E Pluribus Unam”). Enter “Les Misérables.”

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Hooper has been maligned in some quarters for what he tried to achieve with the movie and this article is an affirmation that some did understand his vision! I have read one comment ( message board, I think) which said that people will understand what Hooper achieved with this film maybe after only five years. It was a way of saying that we need not look at oblique angles - the surface is what it does tell us it is! Too bad for them! Great for the Les Miserables fans who loved the movie musical and spent as much time as they could inside the confines of a movie theater. I wish I could - but I am just recovering from a virus that has prevented me from seeing the movie once again in a cinema, where it is intended to be appreciated. I have had 4 straight viewing days...I might not have the chance for that 5th or 6th time.

I hope this article finds its way into Hooper's periscope!

Jo

[carouselkathy]

Jo,
Thanks for posting this article. Finally, someone comments on the critics' marriage to cynicism and their distaste for any type of sentimentality in film. Many of them are still mad that THE KING'S SPEECH beat SOCIAL NETWORK (had trouble remembering the title) in the Oscar race two years ago. As I said yesterday, audiences will remember LES MIS.

[jo]

Reviews are still coming in from the UK, where the movie continues to lead the box office for the last 3 weeks! Similar chart trends have been observed for the soundtrack ( despite the accusations from many quarters, not from the UK, of " imperfect singing" - LOL!).

I am always interested in the British perception of the movie musical as it was where the English version of the stage musical originated ( Hugh calls the UK the spiritual home of Les Miserables). Would they find anything worthwhile in the movie version or would they be disappointed?

www.hucknalldispatch.co.uk/lifestyle/natalie-stendall-s-film-review-les-miserables-1-5361483

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NATALIE STENDALL’S FILM REVIEW: Les Misérables

Published on Monday 28 January 2013 18:30

VICTOR Hugo’s monumental novel of love, redemption and injustice during the years following the French Revolution became a musical in 1985. Now, Tom Hooper, director of Academy Award winning The King’s Speech, brings us an epic film version of this much loved musical.

Ex-convict Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) avoids his life-long parole, working his way up the social ladder to become a factory owner and respected citizen while always looking over his shoulder for Inspector Javert (Rusell Crowe), who is resolutely pursuing him.

In an effort to redeem himself, Valjean promises to care for Cosette (Amanda Seyfried), the child of a dying prostitute (Anne Hathaway). As Cosette matures in Paris, rebellion is brewing and she finds herself falling in love with rebel leader, Marius (Eddie Redmayne).

Hooper’s epic musical film is powered by an array of evocative and poignant performances from his talented cast. Jackman grips his audience immediately in a heartbreaking take on the destitute and anguished Valjean, who is moved to tears by a religious man’s act of kindness.

But, it is Anne Hathaway’s turn as Fantine, a beautiful woman brought low, that raises the bar for musical performances as she transfixes in an emotionally charged rendition of I Dreamed A Dream. Hathaway’s tortured expressions, filled with pain and hopelessness, are the pinnacle of Les Miserables. It’s a pity her screen time is so short lived.

Hooper’s risky decision to record the vocals on set - rather than recording them earlier in a sound studio - clearly pays off, giving Les Miserables realism and intensity. Vocal performances overflow with feeling, benefitting from the actors’ additional time spent in character alongside their fellow cast members.

A commitment to long takes that hold the gaze of the cast, further heightens the emotional impact of Les Miserables’ musical pieces. Hooper’s unusual shot composition - empty space above close-ups and the placing of his performers in the bottom left or right hand sides of the frame - makes for a commanding visual style. Tilted angles and occasional shaky camera’s enhance movement and give Les Miserables an artistic visual style that reflects its theatrical roots. Hooper’s dedication to such creative camera work builds incredible intensity. This is never more evident than during Javert’s climactic struggle, where Hooper combines close-ups, extreme long shots, low and high camera angles, to powerful effect.

Almost all of the lines in Hooper’s Les Miserables are sung and creative use of the camera compensates for some weaker vocals that inevitably creep in. That said, the medium of film brings with it a greater level of intimacy with the characters and the strength of Hooper’s Les Miserables is the emphasis it places upon acting skill. Vocal power is much less of a concern here than in theatre (where projection is key), enabling voices to quieten, crack and split with emotion to create deeply moving and poignant scenes.

Visually, Hooper’s film version should have a clear edge over any stage interpretation of Hugo’s novel. With CGI readily available, the medium of film has the opportunity for intricately detailed skylines and exhaustively lifelike streets.

Instead, the impressively photographed, wide-open landscapes of rural France give way to a more theatrical approach as Les Miserables moves forward into rebellion, where painted skies and hazy Parisian vistas place the performances centre stage.

Yet for all its strengths, Hooper’s Les Miserables never seems to out-do its flawless exposition and, in the absence of an interval, begins to feel overlong. Valjean’s rise through the classes and Fantine’s degradation have much greater resonance and power than the subsequent love story between Cosette and Marius. While Redmayne’s pure and heartfelt vocals propel emotion into the June rebellion - never more so than in his grief-stricken version of Empty Chairs And Empty Tables - Les Miserables never quite recaptures the gut-wrenching pathos of the film’s earlier moments. From its visceral scenes of poverty, to the misery Hooper squeezes into every inch of the mise-en-scene, it is in the exposition where Hooper’s Les Miserables is the most emotive.

The verdict: In Les Miserables, Hooper creates an epic version of the established stage musical, driven by brave and powerful performances from a skilled cast. Demonstrating artistic flair and an audacious visual style, Hooper’s Les Miserables raises the bar for film musicals.


Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 158 minutes

Verdict: 4/5
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Theoretically, it looks like that if Tom Hooper had added another 20-30 minutes ( the actual length of his director's cut) that the lack of exposition of the characters in the second half of the story could have been addressed. On the other hand, the rising feeling of revolutionary fervor might not have built up as imperatively as it did in the movie, if the story meandered somehow.

Btw, here is one SPOILER not found in the film but which Hooper shared.

In the movie, we see Gavroche being shot dead by an Army soldier. Right after, we also see a glimpse of Marius's aiming his rifle. According to Hooper, that would have been the shot of Marius killing the soldier who shot Gavroche!

Can't wait for the BluRay/DVD - there have been no announcements of a director's cut, but would a director's commentary also not to be expected?

Jo

[jo]

There are still reviews that get to you because they seem to be so honest and heartfelt! Especially so if one has seen the movie a few times -- imperfections and all!

www.examiner.com/review/hugh-jackman-is-masterful-les-mis-rables

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Hugh Jackman is masterful in Les Misérables
Movies and entertainment
February 7, 2013
By: Nicholas Haskins

Les Misérables is, at once, one of the most engrossing, emotionally realized, and overwhelming theatrical experiences of the last decade. Many parts of it are so grandiose and spectacular that few words exist to describe how memorable they are; others are baffling and confusing. Still others are almost horrid mistakes. Its complexities and intricacies are many, but in the end, Les Mis stands as a fantastically beautiful film that should have been the best picture of the year.

The film's primary (and most engaging) narrative is the story of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), prisoner 24601, recently paroled after nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. After his parole, his treatment and exclusion almost forces him to be a criminal in order to survive, leading him to steal silver from a church. Rather than condemn him, the priest instead takes pity on Valjean and gives him the silver, on the condition that he use it to become an honest man. Horrified by how low he had sunk and touched by this gesture, Valjean resolves to become just that.

Hugh Jackman deserves to win best actor at this year's Academy Awards for this role. He is absolutely amazing as the tormented Jean Valjean, even after he skips out on parole and is living a good life he is still on the run, still afraid, bitter, angry, and uncaring. Jackman infuses all of these layers into his performance, creating a character that is utterly captivating. His voice is equally amazing, his singing digging deep to the core of the character. His evolution from selfish to selfless, and his redemption for his crimes, all brought to life effortlessly by Jackman's brilliant performance.

Equally moving is Russell Crowe as Inspector Javert, an inspired bit of casting on the part of Tom Hooper, which has drawn some ire from some circles but is a tremendous success. Though clearly not as musically inclined as the castmates around him, Crowe plays Javert's dedication to finding the escaped 24601 with zeal and hunger. He vanishes into the role and is effortless, and gives a performance that was sadly overlooked this awards season. His Inspector is firm, cold, and unforgiving, and played wonderfully so.

Hooper does a fantastic job blending the need for strong performances with the emotional singing, not content to just let one side or the other do the job. With such wonderful music, it could have been easy to allow it to elicit the emotion, but many of the performers blend it seamlessly with deep, visceral performances that complement each other beautifully.

Anne Hathaway will almost certainly walk away with an Oscar for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Fantine. While this is a truly great performance, the film nearly falls apart during her rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" for a few reasons. Hooper pushes the camera in close, allowing all of Fantine's raw despair and anguish to pour from the screen. She has a fantastic voice, but frankly Hathaway mugs the camera during the song, and she goes a little bit overboard in her performance toward the end- she is utterly perfect through most of it. More than this, the scene demands such emotional investment (between the performance, the close-up, and the song itself) that it becomes almost overwhelming. The film takes some time before it returns to the level of emotion displayed here, leading to a kind of slump that drags through the film. It's as if this were the complete focus of all of Hooper's efforts, and it feels too much like awards bait.

Nine years later, the film truly hits its stride as the tides of revolution wash in; the microcosm that was Valjean's treatment early in the film becomes the experience of all the poor in France. Éponine (Samantha Barks) is grown up and is desperately in love with Marius (Eddie Redmayne), but he is oblivious to this fact. Compound that with the fact that he and Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) fall madly in love with one another from the moment they see one another, and that Marius is swept up in the struggle for freedom alongside Enjolras (Aaron Tveit). For the final ninety minutes, the film builds and builds to a magnificent climax, both in plot and in its characterizations. Redmayne in particular gives an astounding performance as Marius, especially with his brilliant rendition of "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables." Mind-blowing isn't apt enough a description.

Inevitably, Les Misérables has so many amazing moments it would be nearly impossible to recount them all. It is a film that demands multiple viewings. The music is brilliant, the voices singing it crafting each note with heart-wrenching honesty and emotion. That Tom Hooper, fresh off his win for his amazing work in The King's Speech, was ignored for a nomination for best director at the Oscars is criminal (despite it being a very crowded category).

It should have been the best picture of the year- in many ways, it is. Yet its pacing and length detract from what would have otherwise been a masterpiece of an offering. Too much screentime is wasted on the Thénardiers, between Helena Bonham Carter's wardrobe and Sacha Baron Cohen's ridiculous French accent (the only one in a film set in France). Still, from the moment Enjolras begins singing "Do you Hear the People Sing?" the film's pace thunders forward, finally re-capturing the emotional wave that had roared in when Hathaway belted out the film's most recognizable tune. It is a shame that wave too long receded, and that Hathaway's is the most talked-about performance in the film. From the very beginning to the end, this film belongs to Hugh Jackman, and his is the kind of performance that absolutely transforms a great work into something spectacular. Four and a half out of Five Stars.

By Nicholas Haskins


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Jo

[birchie]

Feb 8, 2013 6:10:18 GMT -5 jo said:

There are still reviews that get to you because they seem to be so honest and heartfelt! Especially so if one has seen the movie a few times -- imperfections and all!

www.examiner.com/review/hugh-jackman-is-masterful-les-mis-rables


Jo

Great to see another honest and intelligent review at this stage and good that it's timely with Oscar voting! I agree wholeheartedly with almost everything he said. I was a little less impressed with Russell but I'm glad someone else finally feels the way I do about the IDaD scene. I too think it was overdone and is the reason that almost everything else has been excluded from all the conversations about the movie! Yes, it was a good performance but they made it into a way bigger scene that actually detracts from the rest of the movie. As I mentioned last week, I started fast forwarding through the scene when I watched the screener I had access to. The only other scene I FF through is Master of the House because I also agree with the writer's view of the Thenardiers especially SBC. I actually like him in the later Paris scenes where he is more sinister and doesn't use that dreadful accent. And of course everything this writer said about Hugh is perfectly stated! I hope Oscar voters have had time to seriously look at the performances and judge them accordingly.
Sue

[jo]

A review that appreciates the moral issues, and the acting and singing choices in the movie musical --


www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_22225953/hugh-jackmans-hero-makes-les-mis-eacute-rables

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Movie review: Hugh Jackman's hero makes "Les Misérables" one of the year's finest
*** 1/2 STAR RATING (out of 4) | Musical epic

"Les Mis" star Helena Bonham Carter has family ties to author Victor Hugo. In "Les Misérables," Victor Hugo's 19th century historical novel and the behemoth, long-running musical based on it, the question raised again and again is not an obvious one. Because it doesn't really concern the hero's transformation.

No, the question isn't, will the ex-convict Jean Valjean remain a changed soul? Instead the quandary is, will Javert, the man who hunts him obsessively, recognize in Valjean's transformation an opportunity for his own redemption?

Director Tom Hooper's lavish yet gritty big-screen adaptation of the Tony-winning musical, opening Tuesday, stars Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe as Valjean and Javert, respectively. And the British director wields a decidedly visual language — vast and intimate — to tell the story of the nemeses, the ill-fated factory worker turned prostitute Fantine (Anne Hathaway) and her wee daughter Cosette.

Jackman is in his element here, mastering the space where acting and singing meet head on. He brings depth to Valjean's tale of offense and grace, of taking responsibility for a child and then letting go. Jackman makes Valjean's epiphanies, aches and doubts real. Late in the movie, his rendition of "Bring Him Home" has narrative heft, moving Valjean from fatherly rival to champion of his daughter's true love.

We meet Valjean shortly before his release from a chain gang. It is a few years since the French Revolution, and it's quickly clear that little wealth has trickled down to the masses, the poor, les misérables.

Valjean was imprisoned for failing (or not) the sort of dilemma rudimentary ethics classes like to pose: Would you break the law to help your starving sister and her child? He would and did. And so Valjean served five years for stealing a loaf of bread and another 14 for escape attempts. As he departs, head of the guards Javert promises him hell if he violates parole.

Like so many ex-convicts, Valjean returns to a suspicious society. A bishop (Colm Wilkinson) shows him compassion. Valjean disappoints us more than the bishop when he steals from the convent.

If you wonder how this often-grim adaptation of Hugo's socially thoughtful if romantic novel finds itself opening in theaters on Christmas Day, you need look no further than the meeting of Valjean and the bishop, who strikes a subtle Christian bargain with Valjean.

"Why settle for these trinkets, my son, have you forgotten these valuable candlesticks? Use them to better yourself and live a generous life," is the Christian bargain.

"What Have I Done?" sings an anguished and renewed Valjean.

Only no one sent Javert the memo. So begins one of the great hunts in literature. Valjean's

Helena Bonham Carter stars as Madame Thénardier. every decency is met by Javert's righteousness. The inspector's singleminded adherence to the law becomes its own form of villainy.

They first meet again in Montreuil-sur-Mer, where Valjean owns a factory and has become the town's benevolent mayor. He has taken the name Monsieur Madeleine.

Hathaway brings a radiance and sorrow to Fantine, the onetime employee Valjean aids too late to save — but not too late to become caretaker to her child.

When the action relocates to Paris nine years later, Amanda Seyfried plays Cosette. It's a wan performance amid more robust turns. It's as if Valjean protected his beloved ward so much, she lacks any signs of the hard-won grit of her dead mother or her adoptive father. Indeed you may find yourself rooting for the more destitute Éponine (Samantha Barks) who hankers for Marius, the student revolutionary.

Marius and Cosette's love-at-first-sight story rings tinny next to Hugo's grander themes of justice and grace. Eddie Redmayne, with his smattering of freckles and wide, inviting mouth, appeals as the well-off, radicalized student Marius. But his object of affection seems less inspiring than the ideals that send he, friend Enjolras (Aaron Tveit) and their fellow students to the barricades.

The students provide two of the film's finest songs: the gorgeous anthem "Do You Hear the People Sing?" and the ballad of camaraderie sung on the eve of a bloody street battle, "Drink With Me."

When Marius returns to the scene of so much carnage, he sings the lovely and mournful "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables."

Through out the saga, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter take sleazy delight in their roles as Thénardier and Madame Thénardier, the innkeepers who fleeced Fantine as they cared for the child Cosette.

Hooper and his team, which includes the original creators of the musical behemoth (producer Cameron Mackintosh and composer Claude-Michel Schönberg, among them), have hewed to the sung-through form. Further adding to the challenge and texture of the undertaking, Hooper had the actors sing live.The result is not always pretty. Far from being a problem, this adds to the movie's force. There is real exertion going on here.

Much will be made of Crowe's capable but hardly astounding singing. The notes the actor doesn't hit in song, he captures in his face. Javert is the only one that doesn't know how wounded he is by his past, how out of tune with France's future he is.

Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, [e-mail] or twitter.com/bylisakennedy


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Jackman is in his element here, mastering the space where acting and singing meet head on. He brings depth to Valjean's tale of offense and grace, of taking responsibility for a child and then letting go. Jackman makes Valjean's epiphanies, aches and doubts real. Late in the movie, his rendition of "Bring Him Home" has narrative heft, moving Valjean from fatherly rival to champion of his daughter's true love.

Finally, someone who understands the acting and singing interpretation of BRING HIM HOME!

And also appreciates the moral turmoil of Javert, as finely interpreted by Russell.

[alma]

On Superbowl day, the Sunday magazine of the main paper here featured Michael Oher on its cover (fully deserved) but inside I found a four-page layout on Anne Hathaway and a one-page layout on Hugh, concerning Les Miserables.

Sure, it said nothing but delightful things about his person and his work, but give me a break. Down here too, they're treating it as "her" movie? Don't follow the herd, people, make up your OWN minds!

This week I was getting further ticked off because Les Miserables 'opening day' down here--Feb. 14-- was approaching and I couldn't see any promos in the newspaper. Since Sunday there were quarter-page ads of Die Hard, also opening Feb. 14 (is it #5?), but nothing on Hugh's movie.

Till today. The movie got practically the entire front page of the "People" section of the main paper, where films and theater shows are reviewed and advertised.

Now that's more like it.

It features the poster with Hugh most prominent at the top, and Russell, Anne, Amanda and Eddie further down. And I'm happy to translate the best parts:

"'Les Miserables' comes to cinemas in Mexico today
MUSIC IN A BIG WAY
Hugh Jackman says the story is still valid 150 years after its publication..."
The interview goes on to quote Hugh:
"Is there still injustice? Yes; sexual slavery of women? Absolutely; inequality between rich and poor? Yes, perhaps more than ever...
"For me, Nelson Mandela is the living example of Jean Valjean. I read his book and wanted to meet him. Someone who knew injustice first hand, and after 27 years in jail, when he is released he overcomes any feelings of revenge and turns them into forgiveness, which unifies his country."

Then on page 7, the newspaper's official reviewer gives Les Miserables four stars out of four. This guy hardly ever gives four stars! And let me translate what HE says:

"Les Miserables, one of the most famous musicals in history, comes to the big screen in a version that will delight fans.

"Filmmaker Tom Hopper, who won the Oscar for The King's Speech, undertook the task of having the actors sing live, instead of doing playback and that makes a great difference.

"The movie is probably not the best sung of the genre, but it is the best interpreted, because the phrasing of the actors, their breathing and the long 'takes' as they sing make all the difference on the emotional level.

"The movie follows the classical story of Victor Hugo's novel and just like in the theater, is entirely sung, which must serve as a warning to those who are not fond of the genre.

"But those who forget their prejudice against musicals will find an epic story, emotionally and impeccably produced, with first-rate acting.

"Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway gets to sing one of the best known songs of the musical, "I Dreamed a Dream", and her performance is moving.

"Hugh Jackman stands out as Jean Valjean, carrying the weight of the story and without doubt he delivers the most solid performance of his career.

"Les Miserables, which manages to arouse people to applaud during its screenings, may reach beyond fans of musicals. Don't miss it."

Now THIS guy gets it. I'm feeling a new-found respect for him, whoever he is!

A lot of people check the paper's reviews to decide if they'll go see a movie or not, so this should encourage many to check it out, even if they're not fans of musicals.

Me? I can't make it today. I will have to wait till tomorrow. But I can take one more day.:-)

Alma

[foxie]

Hall says she had "far more sympathy for Hugh Jackman's embattled Jean Valjean in Les Mis" than for Washington's pilot, while Craig Mathieson loathed the film but loved the performance.

"In a shockingly bad movie Jackman displays absolute dedication and gives his all," Mathieson says. "Only a true movie star could have sung for all those hours with such devout conviction."

Jake Wilson sees something noble not just in the character of the former criminal who turns his life around, but also in Jackman's role. "He plays the tormented Jean Valjean with the jolly, swashbuckling air of a trouper helping out his less gifted friends," says Wilson.

Ed Gibbs feels it is Jackman's "storming presence" alone that makes Les Miserables more or less bearable, and notes that while this is his first nomination, the Australian's past Oscar hosting duties have "helped him remain a popular choice with voters". We'll see exactly how popular on Monday.