needs more hobbits, swords, and magic weapons with useful affixes
Crowe may not be much of a singer, but he was born to be Inspector Jarvert. No matter what he plays, he gives off an air of brooding, earnest determination.
Hell, even his Jack “lesser of two weevils” Aubrey had it (when in the books Jack is essentially a good-natured ass about everything except naval matters.)
Hmm, well - perhaps I’ll just have to visit your country then, and make a day of it :-)
Absolutely! She gave me shivers during that scene. Admittedly, she usually gives me shivers but not like that. Amazing.
Seeing this Wednesday. Sounds like it’ll be a slight step higher than Sweeney Todd which I also saw in theatres and loved. Looking forward to it.
I saw it and enjoyed it. I was a little surprised it had so much signing. Now obviously it’s a musical but my movie musical experience is limited to movies like Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music which are still half dialogue. I don’t remember what Todd Sweeney was like.
The recent Phantom Of The Opera movie was also full of singing. Did you miss it?
Saw this over the weekend. I’d seen the broadway show more than 20 years ago, but haven’t thought much about it in recent years.
This is almost exactly what I came in here to say. The naturalistic singing just doesn’t fit the material, and so it isn’t as moving (or openly manipulative) as the stage show.
It was interesting that their decision to film live-singing takes allowed them to get loooong single-take shots of them singing. But I don’t think it was an improvement per se.
There were a lot of decisions I didn’t understand all around. Jackman was ok, but as you noted, he swallowed much of his singing, but I also don’t think he has a deep enough voice for the role in general. Also, for all the stagecraft and costumes and sets, they never made Jackman look old enough, so his (relative) frailty never made sense. The ladies all did their jobs well. Seyfried was better than I expected. Marius was fine when he wasn’t making a goony Andy Samberg face. Crowe was very weak, and sang much too nasally for the role. “Stars” just fell totally flat, which is a pity.
Compared to the Broadway show, I believe they cut several songs short, which was possibly more distracting than having them cut out entirely.
There were also weird structural problems with it, which I kind of chalk up to an “uncanny valley” effect. Without fade to black stage transitions, the emotional transitions between scenes/songs became very weird. “All my friends are dead! Oh look, I’m late for my wedding.” Also, they added one of two spoken lines between scenes to bridge them together, but those lines were just incredibly awkward as a result. I feel like they should have edited down more, and added some actual scenes without singing, or let them go full on Broadway with the performances. With all the costumes and sets, etc. the broadway-pastiche of influences shows through. Things like “Why is Gavrosh a cockney street urchin in Paris?”
Also, a special mention for Cohen as the Innkeeper (whose name I can never remember). Without the over the top melodrama of sadness, the ‘comic relief’ sections didn’t feel as necessary, but they were also more manic than comic. He also did a weird french-ish accent, but was the only one, so it just made his lines harder to understand, and diluted the comic value as well.
There were a couple things where it felt like they were doing meta-jokes about musicals, but not enough for me to think it was intentional. Like, when Valjean meets the innkeepers, he’s singing dreamily to himself, and ignoring their antics. Also, when Valjean hears Cosette and Marius in the garden, you almost get the impression he’s all “Hey, who’s singing out there?”
It’s interesting, because when I think of Les Mis, I think more about the men’s parts than the womens’. But I think it’s clear that they decided to focus more on the latter, probably for good reason, since men don’t generally watch musicals. But that probably fed into the decision to sing and film “small”, so we lost the big bombastic martial elements that make up a majority of the play.
I’ll stop before I’m tempted to do a song-by-song breakdown, but overall, I’d say it was okay as a musical experiment, but it doesn’t replace the stage version by any means.
“Who’s there?”
“French Revolution.”
“French Revolution who?”
The wife and I took my kids out to see it yesterday. She and I haven’t seen the show in more than 20 years (and the kids never have).
The 15-year-old was totally rapt, even though he’s normally a sci-fi/fantasy fan and wouldn’t have much to do with 19th century melodrama. I thought Jackman’s singing was weak, but liked the rest of the cast; the rest of the family thought he was good. My youngest son felt sorry for Javert, which was interesting.
The funny thing is that all the strings they’re pulling you with are so blatant, but we were crying at the end anyway, even knowing how manipulative the whole thing is.
Your youngest son is very perceptive.
I haven’t seen the movie version yet, but one of my favorite things about the Broadway version is the tight thematic structure, especially musically. The struggle between Valjean and Javert is a journey of self-discovery for them both. The early song of Valjean’s decision to surrender to the light, and Javert’s final song about his decision, are both the same song. Echoes of the theme are also present in their struggle over Fantine.
I am sorry to hear that Crowe’s singing was weak, but I disliked his casting from the beginning. I think Javert works best as a highly intelligent but misguided man. Stars is his love song.
Citation needed.
Hugo does say this, from Wikipedia:
Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice, – error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.
Interesting! I can’t remember if I ever felt that way while reading the book. I thought Hugo was just trying to show the superiority of morality over law.
I typically see these kind of movies because someone else I know want’s to see it. However, in comparison to movies like Evita, Chicago and a few live shoes I have seen, the singing felt okay to me but not great. I kept thinking they probably could have found someone better voice wise but on the screen, it played pretty well visually.
I and my family (Christmas!) found this movie almost literally unbearable. Had I been without them, I would have left after about half an hour. Most of our time in the theater was spent gripping the arms of the seats and looking with wild desperation at each other. I can’t believe one movie can have so much music and so little of it be interesting. And the constant extreme close ups of actors’ faces as they sung at you… Ugh.
Hatheway’s solo was fantastic, the rest execrable. A surprise upset that took Prometheus’ crown as the worst movie I saw last year.
Did you and your family know it was a musical before going to it? And knew the source material?
I wasn’t a big fan of all the close ups either and I also thought that there was to much singing. Some of the weaker pieces could have been removed and replaced with simple dialogue. On the whole I thought it was a pretty good movie even if Crowe’s singing was pretty crap and the movie was longer than it should have been.
I am curious as well…
We knew it was a musical; didn’t know the source material. We’re a musical-liking family. For whatever reason, this film abandoned a lot of the pleasures of many filmed musicals: interesting sets, dramatic choreography, etc. Compare any musical number in, say, Chicago to this. And there were like, 3 melodies in the whole thing. Ugh.
ouch - Its just that it was such a diverse experience from what others wrote, that I thought perhaps you and your family did not know it was a musical and you know, expectations not met aren’t always fun :-)
As for the number of melodies, that sounds strange? The original musical has a common theme of course, but lots of diverse melodies.
I haven’t read the book, but from what I have seen, you don’t even need that context. Javert is a tragic character, just like all the other character, and he is just as trapped by society and his circumstances as Valjean or Fantine.
Of course he’s pitiable. He has his entire worldview shattered, and kills himself as a result. He’s more tragic in fact, than Valjean, who was forced to make a hard choice to do something wrong (and was unjustly punished, but he acknowledges the basic fact of his crimes). Javert thought that he was doing the right thing every step along the way. In my mind, he’s a villain only in the context of Valjean’s story: there’s little inherently villainous about him (although Hugo might disagree with that last bit and find his moral certainty inherently distasteful).
I actually find this to be one of the strengths of Les Mis: the repetition and variations on the core melodies is kind of symphonic. They re-use themes, but rarely actually re-use the same exact song.
Similarly, in several songs it features multiple characters singing different songs against the same melody, which is a neat trick. Confrontation (Javert + Valjean at Fantine’s deathbed) is the most famous one, but the movie didn’t have a very good version of that. In fact, I didn’t feel like any of this type of song worked very well in the movie.
I think I agree with your core complaint though, and it’s why I think it failed overall. The attempt at more naturalistic (not sure if that’s quite the right word) singing and filming style removed a lot of the opportunity for standard “filmed musical” set-pieces.
Also, this is neither here nor there, but Valjean being, essentially, a born-again christian gives the character a certain relevance to today’s political landscape. Which is kind of weird.
Right, but I always thought Hugo’s message was that his worldview was wrong: bureaucratic, stodgy insistence on the rules at he expense of higher justice. I hadn’t considered that he should be pitied for being ignorant.