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Les Misérables
Jan. 12th, 2013 01:25 amI just saw Les Misérables, and it's really hard for me to figure out what I thought. I am sort of in the lukewarm-to-pretty good range of opinion, I think? I felt very disconnected from the movie when watching it, right up until the moments when it made me cry. I think part of my issue is that the effectiveness of the actors and songs vary wildly, and it was impossible for me to get sucked into the movie as its own thing, because I was constantly mentally comparing it to the stage show, which I've seen twice and have the soundtrack for. Not to mention that I've seen that PBS special of a reunion staging of the show a bunch, too. (I had a very similar experience watching the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice. I was comparing it to both the book and the A&E miniseries while watching, and I just couldn't see it for its own thing. I did not like it much at first, although it has grown on me once I wrapped my brain around it being an *adaptation* and saw it again with more distance since my last reread of the book/rewatch of the miniseries.)
I am happy Tom Hooper did not get an Oscar nomination, because dude, you made some weird choices. I am more positive on the movie than this Slate review, but I entirely agree with this quote: "I don’t know when I’ve seen a movie with a stranger sense of visual scale than Les Misérables. Though many scenes take place in spectacular (often digitally augmented) locations—the halls of cathedrals, the hulls of huge ships, the barricades of 19th-century Paris—the viewer’s experience is always that of being trapped in a small room with someone singing 6 inches from your face. Hooper is in love with the low-angle close-up; his camera follows his actors around like a cocker spaniel, peering up adoringly at them and frequently launching itself in their faces. In especially heightened dramatic moments—the kind this musical strings together in a fairly unbroken crescendo—he’ll abruptly and inexplicably tilt the camera at a German Expressionist-style 45-degree angle. There are very few performers who can pull off the trick of singing vocally demanding, hyperdramatic solos while a movie camera inspects their nostrils. "
Hahahha. It's so true. I'm not a film critic, I like plenty of terrible movies so long as I find them entertaining, and I don't aim to spend my time actively dissecting the movie, but I could not fail to notice and to wonder why it was being filmed that way. That quote is right on. During nearly every song, except for some with multiple singers or larger staging like Master of the House or Do You Hear the People Sing, the camera is ZOMGSOCLOSE framed on the singer's face. Not the singer, mind, we ain't even seeing much torso. The face. And it's fucking DISTRACTING. I was counting Marius's freckles and remarking on how the light made his miniscule beard stubble appear to change colors. I was staring at the snot starting to approach the border of Anne Hathaway's nostril as she sung while crying. I couldn't look away from how rotten Valjean's teeth looked right out of prison. ZOOM OUT, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. And more than just being distracting, it was repetitive. Solo songs basically all looked the same. So that somewhat diminished my enjoyment of the movie.
Everyone was so down on Russell Crowe in the reviews, I was bracing myself for something à la Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia, but he was ok. His range is limited, so not every song suited his singing, but even the songs that didn't suit him, he got on base, even if it wasn't a homerun. And the flip side, I was expecting more from Hugh Jackman because of the reviews and his Oscar nomination. I mean, he was fine, but my socks? were not knocked off. Some of it might be personal preference, as some of his songs, which I ordinarily really like, were just not pretty, from a combination of being out of the strong part of his range and him choosing to prioritize emoting via acting, not singing. I don't know if I am articulating that well, but the stage show, all the emotion is in the singing, the actual notes of music and the phrasing and stuff. He would emote in the scenes, but only sometimes in the singing, but other times he'd be whispery or whatever, with the acting on his face. I like my songs to be sung prettily or well, facial acting is secondary to me, so meh. Amanda Seyfried was good, but seemed a little overmatched sometimes, because her voice is very pretty but not very powerful. (I thought the overall impression her singing left was better in Mamma Mia.) She made me cry, though, so I can't say it wasn't an effective performance.
The best person (besides Colm Wilkinson's cameo) was Eddie Redmayne as Marius, I thought he was fantastic. He nailed all his songs, and everything was well sung and well suited to his range. His Empty Chairs at Empty Tables made me cry. The revolt staging is something that I thought the movie did better than the show. As impressive as Les Mis's stage barricades were, there are only so many people in a cast. So you don't really get a sense of the numbers, because you intellectually know that they are drawing from a finite, not that big set of people. Whereas in the movie, when you see how many are manning the barricades versus how many they will need to succeed, you are all, you poor fucked bastards. I was much more affected by it all than I ever was at the show. Samantha Barks was great, too. She emoted in her singing as I only could wish the others would. Aaron Tveit as Enjolras I thought was good, too, although I might have wished to have been blown away, given his pedigree. I fucking LOVE Red and Black, but this version I just liked instead. I don't know that I have anything original to say about Anne Hathaway. She goes for it and it is undeniably very affecting, even as I wished not to be looking up her nose.
The other thing that can be interesting in a movie of a stage musical is when songs exist outside their original purpose. In a stage show, some songs serve a clear narrative purpose, it's about relaying some information or emoting something important. But the songs of more minor characters or the comic relief, often their real purpose is to take up some time to give the main actors a break to change costumes or for them to do a set change or something to do with the reality of live theater. (See: You're Timeless To Me from Hairspray.) The movie cuts Little People way, way down to a verse one place and another verse another place. It's the right call, I think. The film has no need for Gavroche to vamp while stage and costume changes happen offstage, and moreover it would to grind the action to a halt. So good on that. Master of the House still worked on its own merits as an introduction to the Thenardiers, and it worked better than Beggars at the Feast, which was just off. If it doesn't serve a stage purpose AND it doesn't reinforce that the Thenardiers are cockroaches who will always find a way to come out ok, then I don't know what the point was. Actually, setting during a comeuppance actually negates the usual message, so meh.
And then there were a few random lyric changes. Like in Drink With Me, Marius sings, "Would you weep Cosette/ if I were to fall" instead of "Would you weep Cosette/ should Marius fall." Were they just trying to avoid him referring to himself in the third person? It didn't bother audiences for two decades on Broadway, I wonder why they did that.
That all mostly sounds negative, but I liked it ok. I just wanted to like it more, and I can't call the whole an unmitigated success. It's a bit scattershot, with both meh moments and periodic excellence in the mix.
I am happy Tom Hooper did not get an Oscar nomination, because dude, you made some weird choices. I am more positive on the movie than this Slate review, but I entirely agree with this quote: "I don’t know when I’ve seen a movie with a stranger sense of visual scale than Les Misérables. Though many scenes take place in spectacular (often digitally augmented) locations—the halls of cathedrals, the hulls of huge ships, the barricades of 19th-century Paris—the viewer’s experience is always that of being trapped in a small room with someone singing 6 inches from your face. Hooper is in love with the low-angle close-up; his camera follows his actors around like a cocker spaniel, peering up adoringly at them and frequently launching itself in their faces. In especially heightened dramatic moments—the kind this musical strings together in a fairly unbroken crescendo—he’ll abruptly and inexplicably tilt the camera at a German Expressionist-style 45-degree angle. There are very few performers who can pull off the trick of singing vocally demanding, hyperdramatic solos while a movie camera inspects their nostrils. "
Hahahha. It's so true. I'm not a film critic, I like plenty of terrible movies so long as I find them entertaining, and I don't aim to spend my time actively dissecting the movie, but I could not fail to notice and to wonder why it was being filmed that way. That quote is right on. During nearly every song, except for some with multiple singers or larger staging like Master of the House or Do You Hear the People Sing, the camera is ZOMGSOCLOSE framed on the singer's face. Not the singer, mind, we ain't even seeing much torso. The face. And it's fucking DISTRACTING. I was counting Marius's freckles and remarking on how the light made his miniscule beard stubble appear to change colors. I was staring at the snot starting to approach the border of Anne Hathaway's nostril as she sung while crying. I couldn't look away from how rotten Valjean's teeth looked right out of prison. ZOOM OUT, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. And more than just being distracting, it was repetitive. Solo songs basically all looked the same. So that somewhat diminished my enjoyment of the movie.
Everyone was so down on Russell Crowe in the reviews, I was bracing myself for something à la Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia, but he was ok. His range is limited, so not every song suited his singing, but even the songs that didn't suit him, he got on base, even if it wasn't a homerun. And the flip side, I was expecting more from Hugh Jackman because of the reviews and his Oscar nomination. I mean, he was fine, but my socks? were not knocked off. Some of it might be personal preference, as some of his songs, which I ordinarily really like, were just not pretty, from a combination of being out of the strong part of his range and him choosing to prioritize emoting via acting, not singing. I don't know if I am articulating that well, but the stage show, all the emotion is in the singing, the actual notes of music and the phrasing and stuff. He would emote in the scenes, but only sometimes in the singing, but other times he'd be whispery or whatever, with the acting on his face. I like my songs to be sung prettily or well, facial acting is secondary to me, so meh. Amanda Seyfried was good, but seemed a little overmatched sometimes, because her voice is very pretty but not very powerful. (I thought the overall impression her singing left was better in Mamma Mia.) She made me cry, though, so I can't say it wasn't an effective performance.
The best person (besides Colm Wilkinson's cameo) was Eddie Redmayne as Marius, I thought he was fantastic. He nailed all his songs, and everything was well sung and well suited to his range. His Empty Chairs at Empty Tables made me cry. The revolt staging is something that I thought the movie did better than the show. As impressive as Les Mis's stage barricades were, there are only so many people in a cast. So you don't really get a sense of the numbers, because you intellectually know that they are drawing from a finite, not that big set of people. Whereas in the movie, when you see how many are manning the barricades versus how many they will need to succeed, you are all, you poor fucked bastards. I was much more affected by it all than I ever was at the show. Samantha Barks was great, too. She emoted in her singing as I only could wish the others would. Aaron Tveit as Enjolras I thought was good, too, although I might have wished to have been blown away, given his pedigree. I fucking LOVE Red and Black, but this version I just liked instead. I don't know that I have anything original to say about Anne Hathaway. She goes for it and it is undeniably very affecting, even as I wished not to be looking up her nose.
The other thing that can be interesting in a movie of a stage musical is when songs exist outside their original purpose. In a stage show, some songs serve a clear narrative purpose, it's about relaying some information or emoting something important. But the songs of more minor characters or the comic relief, often their real purpose is to take up some time to give the main actors a break to change costumes or for them to do a set change or something to do with the reality of live theater. (See: You're Timeless To Me from Hairspray.) The movie cuts Little People way, way down to a verse one place and another verse another place. It's the right call, I think. The film has no need for Gavroche to vamp while stage and costume changes happen offstage, and moreover it would to grind the action to a halt. So good on that. Master of the House still worked on its own merits as an introduction to the Thenardiers, and it worked better than Beggars at the Feast, which was just off. If it doesn't serve a stage purpose AND it doesn't reinforce that the Thenardiers are cockroaches who will always find a way to come out ok, then I don't know what the point was. Actually, setting during a comeuppance actually negates the usual message, so meh.
And then there were a few random lyric changes. Like in Drink With Me, Marius sings, "Would you weep Cosette/ if I were to fall" instead of "Would you weep Cosette/ should Marius fall." Were they just trying to avoid him referring to himself in the third person? It didn't bother audiences for two decades on Broadway, I wonder why they did that.
That all mostly sounds negative, but I liked it ok. I just wanted to like it more, and I can't call the whole an unmitigated success. It's a bit scattershot, with both meh moments and periodic excellence in the mix.
