Les Misérables (2012) [Blu-ray]

You know I went to see "Les Miserables" on Christmas Day. You know I convinced family and friends to not get together for dinner on Christmas evening, as was the tradition, because seeing this film was more important. I've been waiting to see "Les Mis" for months, damnit, and I wasn't about to wait any longer. I was ready to see something phenomenal. Something that would be a sucker punch of emotion...and a chance to see some of my favorite actors in a film like I've never seen before."Les Miserables" is unlike any film musical I've ever seen. The level of emotion is unmatched. The performances are out of this world. The story is ambitious, and the scope is huge. It's at once a very personal story about its various characters, but at the same time, these people are singing for a generation, that has fascinating parallels to events going on today. It's an incredible feat that I didn't think could be committed to film so well.Director Tom Hooper certainly had the courage of his convictions. A film adaptation of Cameron Mackintosh and Claude Michel Schonberg's beloved stage musical "Les Miserables" had been in development hell since the mid 1980s. The pieces for a successful film adaptation never quite came together. A non-musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel starring Liam Neeson and Uma Thurman came out in 1998, but that film was sub-par at best.Hooper assembled a cast that doesn't seem like the best fit for a musical, including Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway, none of which, to my knowledge, are trained singers. He then decided that these actors, as well as everyone else in the cast, would sing live, instead of lip-synching to studio-prerecorded tracks. I had not known that movie musicals typically did it this way, and that singing live was a new and scary thing. This element would heighten emotion for the audience. This idea is superb and will show to be a game-changer for movie musicals. Each actor's performance is more intimate and personal than they would have been otherwise. Hooper really wants the viewer to connect emotionally with these characters, and for the most part, we connect with these people deeply."Les Mis" follows Jean Valjean (Jackman), a man who was jailed for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving family - five years for the theft, and thereafter for subsequent attempts to escape. He breaks his parole, and police inspector Javert (Crowe) dedicates his life to imprisoning Valjean again. Valjean comes across Fantine (Hathaway), an unwed mother who, after unjustly losing her job, is degraded to the point of no return, being forced to sell her hair, her teeth, her body and her dignity. Valjean promises Fantine that he will raise her daughter Cosette as his own, in her absence. Valjean then saves Cosette from the Thenardiers(Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, pairing up in their second movie musical), neglectful guardians and scheming inkeepers, and the story picks up years later, where Cosette is a young woman (Amanda Seyfried), living mostly in peace. A young revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne) falls in love with her. The Thenardier's destitute biological daughter Eponine has a hopeless and unrequited love for Marius. These young characters dive headfirst into what would become a very important part of the French Revolution.The story of the French Revolution, as depicted in the film, is so reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street protests that went on last year - a group of young idealists looking for a better tomorrow. They're willing to die in the name of a future. They're extremely passionate and exuberant. There are protests, except, you know, they're all sung.Yes, it's all sung. Les Miserables is two hours and forty minutes of song. There's no real spoken dialogue the entire way through. Every minute is sung live as well. And if this bothers you, please skip "Les Mis" and enjoy watching something like "Twilight" or "Jack Reacher". Tom Hooper made this film a game-changer for the way a movie-musical is supposed to work. Lip-synching a pre-recorded studio version seems economical, but today, can allow for auto-tuning and editing a singer's voice. It doesn't feel personal. The voices in "Les Mis" sound raw and real. The actors sang live onset with earpieces playing piano accompaniment, with a 70-piece orchestra being added in in post production. The music sounds extraordinary. There sure as hell isn't any auto-tuning going on.For example, take Anne Hathaway's rendition of "I Dreamed A Dream". At this point in the story, we don't know Fantine very well, but we see the struggle that she's put through. She's at her lowest point. Hathaway half-belts and half-sobs the iconic song, the entire thing being filmed in one take. It's an extremely emotional performance that will bring any person with a heart, to tears.Criticism that I've been hearing of the film mostly revolves around the performances of Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman, as Javert and Valjean. I think both of these guys did fantastic jobs, quite frankly. Crowe isn't the best singer in the world, but his voice fits the part of Javert very well. As for Jackman, well, it could be argued that he carried the entire film. I think he did a splendid job; the role of Jean Valjean is a giant undertaking, and I think he nailed it.However, the real excellence of this film lies in the supporting cast. Everybody is perfectly cast, but particularly Samantha Barks in the role of Eponine. She played the same character in the 25th Anniversary performance of Les Miserables, only two years ago. One small criticism; my favorite part of Eponine's solo (and theme song to self-loathing masochists everywhere) "On My Own", the beginning part, is cut entirely. However, once you see what Barks does with this song it's easily forgiven.Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen, who look like they're in "Sweeney Todd 2", are great comic relief as the Thenardiers. Cohen is the only cast member in this Paris-set film who sings in a French accent, however... I find that strange. Eddie Redmayne and Aaron Tveit are perfect as Marius and his colleague Enjolras. Redmayne's "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables", near the end of the film, will make you cry. His voice goes to extraordinary places, and in such an emotional number, where he's telling the story of his friends who are no longer with him, this is a place where the live singing truly shines.The live singing, itself, is a huge undertaking, cinematically. Director Tom Hooper certainly had alot at stake with this project, however, there are still things that he could have done better. There are so many close-ups in the film. While they work for solos like "I Dreamed A Dream" and "Empty Chairs", they don't work for others. I also kind of feel like Hooper used the fish-eye camera lens a little too often, but these are inconsequential criticisms that don't make the film any less powerful.I hate it when people applaud in a movie theater. I find it trite and kind of pointless, unless you're at the world premiere of the movie, with the director and actors present. However, I'm not ashamed to say that "Les Miserables" brought me to tears no less than five times. I was completely enthralled by each actor's performance, and the applause that the entire theater gave at the end was completely appropriate and well-deserved. I wanted to watch it again the minute it ended, and for a nearly three hour long film, I think that's a pretty high compliment. Don't miss it.Grade: A+

I'm twenty-seven years late to Les Miserables, the musical. I'll admit it. I wasn't interested until the movie was getting press. It looked really cool, and the likelihood of me ever seeing it on stage seemed slim and not something I really, hugely wanted.So I went with my friend, who'd already seen the stage show and the movie (she went before I did).I can honestly say that there are three narratives that have altered the course of my life, and they're the Lord of the Rings, Supernatural, and now, most recently, Les Mis.As a rule, I don't do tragedy. I don't do stories where everybody dies. I refuse to do Titanic for that very reason.But dear god, am I glad that I made the exception for this one.The Movie is an enormous, beautiful mix of the fantastic musical with snippets of canon from the book thrown in. Bahorel's back, though he never made the musical, Enjolras and Grantaire die side-by-side as in the brick, and nobody's quite as romanticized by the movie as they are by the musical, and I love it. I couldn't have asked for a better introduction.Russell Crowe will always be my Javert, for example. He brings a depth to the man that can't be done on stage. I love stage!Javert, I do -- Norm Lewis is fantastic and rigid as iron in the 25th anniversary special, for example -- but Crowe, Crowe gives me a sadder Javert, a Javert who is falling even before he seems to realize it himself. And he is /gentler/, too; when he tells Fantine, "I have heard such protestations/Every day for twenty years/Let's have no more explanations/Save your breath, save your tears," he almost seems to pity her. Stage!Javert, on the other hand, is often openly disdainful with these lines, often emphasizing that last word as though the idea of the "whore" crying sickens him because she is a criminal and in his eyes deserves it and should take it without weeping,I don't mourn stage-Javert, I pity him. But Crowe's Javert made me hurt for him, and he remains one of my favorite parts of the movie.Anne Hathaway may not be the most vocally powerful Fantine we've ever had, but the starkness of Fantine's plight makes for brilliant cinema in ways that, again, the stage show can't. Reordering "I Dreamed a Dream" to come after "Lovely Ladies" is an inspired choice, because it renders the song to be part of the very lowest, darkest point in Fantine's tragedy.Moving forward, the "barricade boys" are absolutely brilliant. With Killian Donnelly (a former Enjolras on stage) as Combeferre and Broadway star Aaron Tveit as Enjolras, we're in very good hands for Les Amis de l'ABC. Tveit brings a brilliant physicality to the part of Enjolras, and his facing his mortality in "Drink With Me" (which, unfortunately enough, cuts out Grantaire's fairly pivotal verse to that effect) with nothing more than a few sorrowful looks is absolutely brilliant. I love Enjolras more than practically any other fictional character, and Tveit is one of my favorite people who've played him.Many of the barricade boys are even better upon rewatching -- I didn't fall in love with Combeferre until my third viewing, when I realized how much he loves the rest of the Amis, how willing he is to take care of all of them in his way. He's their arsenal (alluded to when he is double-wielding pistols on the barricade) and their guide and dies with a comforting hand on Joly's arm. Feuilly is also wonderful, and the friendship between Courfeyrac and Gavroche is absolutely heartbreaking, with Courf sobbing openly when Gavroche is murdered.But most understated and most beautiful, I think, is George Blagden as Grantaire, the group's cynic and drunk. As I mentioned before, Grantaire's verse in "Drink With Me" was cut, which is a pretty major piece of characterization for both him and for, in many stage productions, his dynamic with Enjolras. In the brick, it's stated flat out that Grantaire worships Enjolras, and Blagden's Grantaire makes it clear with every movement, every glance, from beginning to end. He captures the essence of the cynic with only one thing to believe in, and I could write reams of analysis on the subject.Cinematically, the film is almost perfect. The only issue I had is the overuse of background blurring in "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables." But that's literally, along with the missing DWM verse, the only flaw in the movie. I'm a film major, and I can only dream of ever making a movie this perfect, and this apropos to the time it's been released.You see, we're, globally, in a time of intense political, economic, and social upheaval. We, in the US specifically, are a culture in flux. A culture due, I think, for a few revolutions. Without Les Mis, I wouldn't have become nearly as passionate for change as I am, and I certainly wouldn't have sat down and decided to read a book with 2600 pages in it for fun and then proceed to start a project where I give my summer to Enlightenment-through-post-1848 political discourse. Les Mis opened me up to a whole new universe of possibility for my future, and I think it has for a lot of its new fans, even though it's so solidly set in the past. I have to call forth the final lines of "Finale," here -- "Will you join in our crusade?/Who will be strong and stand with me?/Somewhere beyond the barricade/is there a world you long to see?/Do you hear the people sing?/Say do you hear the distant drums?/It is the future that we bring when tomorrow comes!" The story asks us to look at the world around us.And, when we find it wanting, stand up and do something about it.And that's a message I can throw myself behind wholeheartedly. The future doesn't just come; we make it, we shape it into what it is -- that's the whole point, in the end, of the story. With love, and because of love, we are strong enough to fight for the future we want and deserve.Maybe we'll fail. Maybe we'll only have reward in Heaven. And maybe we'll succeed.But we'll never know which if we never try.