Tom Hooper’s film version of the long running stage show would hardly be my first choice for a night out; I abhor musicals and have tried to tolerate many for my wife’s benefit. Calamity Jane and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (or as I like to call it, Seven Rapists Kidnap Seven Virgins) were bad enough, but the sight of Pierce Brosnan singing in Mamma Mia! almost put me back in therapy. Don’t get me started on the camp dancing at the start of West Side Story. Anyhow, you get the point: musicals, with all their theatricality, artifice, loud colours and cheery songs leave me cold (well, apart from Grease, but everyone loves Grease). It is great for me then, that Hooper presents to the audience not so much a musical, but a gripping drama where the cast just happen to sing instead of talk. This type of musical I can take â€" in fact, I’d go further â€" I loved Les Mis.
What appealed to me about Les Miserables was Hooper’s dedication to stay true to the dark subject matter of Hugo’s source novel (which translates roughly as ‘The Wretched’). Les Miserables is a story of pain and regret, limited chances, squalor and poverty. It is also a wonderful exploration of determination, redemption and love. The film, for all its singing, never loses sight of that, Hooper’s brave choice of having the cast sing live instead of lip-synching, making the whole affair seem real, immediate and raw. The story is at once epic and intimate. In 1815 France, Jean Valjean gets parole after serving nineteen years for the crime of stealing bread to feed his sister. We meet him gaunt and emaciated, with Hugh Jackman looking like some kind of skeletal Fagin. Cast out into a society that has no time for him Valjean resorts from stealing from the church that offers him shelter. However, instead of turning him in, the Monsignor forgives him and Valjean turns to God, Jackman emoting his heart out, his voice raw as he turns a corner in his life. He leaves Valjean behind, setting himself with a new identity, becoming eight years on, the mayor of a town and the employer of several seamstresses, including Fantine (Anne Hathaway).
Things take a turn for the worse when Javert, a stoic upholder of the law and previously Valjean’s jailer, turns up. Played by Russell Crowe, Javert is the ultimate unbending soldier, closed to any notions that do not fit his narrow world view. Unsure if the mayor is in fact the disappeared, parole breaking Valjean, Javert’s presence is enough to distract Valjean from noticing that Fantine has been cruelly sacked and, with daughter Cosette to provide for (staying with hideous relatives the Thenardiers, played by Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha ‘Borat’ Cohen) spirals into vice and despair. I’ve seen few things more upsetting than Fantine’s decline, being forced to sell first her hair, then her back teeth and finally her body. Let me be plain â€" Hathaway’s performance here is one of the finest I’ve ever seen, she is utterly mesmerising. This leads to the high point of the film, which is Hathaway’s rendition of Les Mis’s iconic song ‘I Dreamed A Dream’. Recently popularised by Susan Boyle, Hathaway doesn’t so much steal it back but bludgeon all memories of Su Bo’s into the dirt. Her frail face, scrubbed raw of make-up, matched by the most heartbreaking of singing, is an emotional double punch to the gut. Imagine Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares To You’ video turned up to 11 and you’re not even part of the way there. It is a truly stunning piece of cinema. Realising how he has led Fantine down, Valjean tries to save her but Fantine is too ill and soon dies. At her deathbed he agrees to find and raise Cosette as his own. Javert however, now knows Valjean’s true identity and, like Inspector Gerrard in the Fugitive, stays always on the fugitive’s trail, Valjean raising Cosette while always looking over his shoulder.
The final part of the film brings us nine years later to Paris. The mood is ugly with a downtrodden populance feeling betrayed by their leaders just a generation after the Revolution. On the streets young students agitate for another revolution, among them, the privileged Marius (Eddie Redmayne). Loved by the faithful Eponine (the daughter of the Thenardiers), Marius spies a grown Cosette (played by an amazingly bland Amanda Seyfried) and the pair fall instantly in love. Here I lost faith a little, the sudden trip into fairytale/Romeo and Juliet territory alienating me a little from the down and dirty antics so far. It doesn’t help that Redmayne’s singing voice sounds like John Major at a Karaoke Party. I also had little time for the student revolutionaries who all resembled members of One Direction and wouldn’t have a clue how to run a country. It’s when the film abandons the more intimate story of Valjean that the film falters, the spectacle of cannons and barricades competently done but no match for the intimate character work established early on. Young urchin Gavroche dies, which I gather is a highly emotive moment on stage, but I was rather relieved as his Artful Dodger accent was driving me mad. None of the revolutionaries makes much of an impression either. Once again, it is a woman that saves things, Eponine’s sacrifice particularly affecting and Samantha Barks makes an assured impression in the role.
Luckily, as momentum flags, the film comes back to Valjean, his act of selflessness in saving Marius, even though this means he will lose Cosette to him, marking the final step on his path to redemption. It’s hard not to shed a tear when Jackman, close to the end, sings that his adopted daughter is ‘the best of me’. It’s tears of relief, however, when Crowe’s Javert finally departs this mortal coil. Hooper’s decision to hire actors who can sing is great but Crowe can only just about hold a tune and that’s not the same. The poor butch Aussie looks pained and embarrassed every time he opens his mouth, as if he’s at the dentist’s for some painful root canal work. His singing voice is dull and monotonous and this bleeds through into his wider performance too. He remains the weakest link in the whole endeavour, especially when he has to sing on his own. Crowe’s obvious discomfort means Javert never really comes across as a person, rather just the guy in the black hat and, in his final song, which should have been affecting I was just whispering ‘jump already!’ under my breath.
Les Miserables is far from perfect, from the aforementioned shortcomings of Crowe to the broad performances of Bonham Carter and Baron Cohen who feel as if they’re wandered in off the set of a Tim Burton film. Intended as light relief and pithy social commentary, the pair are just annoying. The ending with the many ghosts on the barricades was also vaguely nauseating. Yet the film gets so much right and is a truly emotional experience. Bar the odd clumsy moment I was transported by this film and moments such as Hathaway’s song and Jackman’s strong performance will stay with me for a long time. The messages that the film portrays, that Valjean redeems himself through love (one line near the end states that when you love another you see the face of God), is a shining ray of hope in a hard, cold world. It may not satisfy those who have queued up in Cambridge Circus over the years but to me, Les Miserables is nigh on a masterpiece.
GK Rating: *****
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