Les Misérables (2012, d. Tom Hooper)

Unpopular opinion time...

So the Boxing Day movie for this year was the new Tom Hooper directed version of Les Misérables. Some of you have asked what I think of it, and some of you unfortunate souls who saw it with me already heard this rant, so I apologise in advance.

That said, I stand by my opinion that this a bad movie. It's still a fantastic musical, but it is a bad film.

Seriously, Tom Hooper confirms for me with this movie that he is completely undeserving of that Oscar. The direction is DIRE. It's stolid, heavy-handed, unimaginative and ridiculously literal. 

Though the religious aspect is obviously a big part of the story with the key themes of mercy and grace, of justice and repentance, Hooper again goes for entirely unsubtle visual reminders on top of the lyrics and story, hammering home the Christ-parallels for Valjean, and he didn't seem to meet a cross he didn't want to shoe-horn in. 

And the whole thing, despite the roller-coaster vista shots, and the many changes of time and place, still feels frustratingly static, with performers moving awkwardly around sets while singing their key songs (e.g. Valjean singing What Have I Done while pacing the chapel, Javert singing Stars while standing figuratively and literally on the edge of the fakest looking Paris ever, Marius singing Empty Chairs and Empty Tables, etc etc). The camera does nothing but twirl around them and up their noses while they sing, and the pace slows to the a crawl. It's perfectly standard for the stage show, but it begs the question: why bother translating it to film if you're not going to use that to your advantage at all?

So that the movie succeeds as a piece of entertainment at all is in spite of Hooper's work, is because there's still some fantastic performances, and the story and music itself remain wonderfully involving and moving. 

Anne Hathaway stood out the most for me; she does her best with a rushed sequence of Fantine's fall from grace, and I Dreamed a Dream is so heartrendingly good, from her singing to her huge, sad eyes, the way she can subtly convey the change from bitter reminiscence to dead-eyed present within the performance...it was probably the most emotionally true moment of the film. 

Hugh Jackman is great too as Valjean, though I expected as much, and I was also pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Eddie Redmayne as Marius, both acting-wise and vocally. Most of the others in the main cast are good, if not outstanding: Amanda Seyfriend makes a beautiful Cosette and her clear, high voice works for the character; Samantha Barks sings Eponine a little more stagey than the others but is fine; Aaron Tveit is a suitably stern and a little fanatical as the idealistic Enjolras; Helena Bonham Carter was better than I thought she would be 'cos much as I love her she's not a great singer, but the part of Madame Thenardier calls more for comic timing than singing ability, and she got great laughs from the audience. 

While Sacha Baron Cohen couldn't quite match her as Thenardier and was given some incredibly broad humour to carry, he was not the worst performer - that title would fall to Russell Crowe, who clearly struggled vocally with the demanding role of Javert. His higher register was noticeably weak, verging on nasal, and he didn't have the vibrato which meant a lot of his lines were clipped and lost their power. And he didn't give his actual performance a lot of colour either, so overall it was just plain that he was out of his depth with this. 

In the end, I couldn't hate this movie because of my love for the musical, and I don't regret the 3hr+ sitting. But I spent more time thinking about what was wrong with it, and snorting about the literalism and the anvil-ly emotionalism, than actually being carried along with it. And my impression on coming out of the theatre was not 'what a beautiful, grand and uplifting end!', but rather 'Tom Hooper, you hack'.