Film review: Les Misérables

Why it left me a bit miserable 

There are plenty of reviews of the film Les Misérables – I suggest starting with this one by Daniel Lammin on the site Switch – so this isn't really a review and assumes that you've seen it. But it's spoiler free if you haven't.

Facey comments weren't enough to describe why I didn't like it, so here are some words about why I was disappointed.

Expectations too high?

I don't think it's misguided to have had high expectations for this film. It's based on the world's longest running musical: 28 years in London.  It had a budget that created an opening scene with 100s of extras pulling a broken battle ship into port in a storm, and a city-wide barricade with its own Paris to be barricaded. The cast is a smart mix of Hollywood A-listers, music theatre favourites and stars of  Les Mis-past. And it's produced by Cameron Mackintosh: the bloke who refused to make the film until it was right and has assured that 60 million-odd people have seen the stage musical.

60 million. When it was first produced in Australia in 1987 (I saw it in '88 and '90), we had a population of 16 million. Even accounting for the multiple viewings, a lot of people have seen, and adore, Les Mis.

This is how much people love this musical. 

 So why is the film so dull?

I went with a bag full of tissues. I sat in the emptier front part of theatre so I could quietly sing along and expected that I'd have seen it again by now. I love Les Mis. I loved the trailers for the film. I love that they sang live on set and was so ready to trash all those cold-hearted nay-sayer critics who just don't get musicals and criticised a film that was made with such brilliant ingredients that it couldn't possibly go wrong.

But I didn't cry (I cried when I saw an amateur production in Canberra and in 10th and 25th anniversary concert films) and had no desire to sing along. I found the whole experience a bit of a snore and came home and "liked" a couple of those nasty reviews.

There's a lot of gorgeous and things to love to bits about the film, but director Hooper doesn't seem to understand how music works in story telling.

What I did like about it 

It looks wonderful – money can create amazing design – and it's clearly made with the same love for this musical that has made it so adored.

Some of the deaths look especially marvellous.

There are some astonishing performances and the live singing on set is genius.

The cast sang live on set with an earpiece attached to a pianist. The result is emotionally raw and real and makes for an intimacy rarely seen in film musicals, where the singing is mostly pre-recorded and mimed on set, or on stage where performers are singing to large rooms and hundreds of people.

But the best reason to see it Anne Hathaway as Fantine. I'd see it again just for her. She's that good and "I dreamed a dream" is the highlight of the movie. If it were all directed like this, it wouldn't be getting the dud reviews.

Colm Wilkinson (who played the first English language Jean Valjean) is a tad theatrical but his appearance as the pivitol Bishop, who gives JV back to God, is lovely and gives a wonderful link to the first productions.

Our Hugh Jackman as Valjean is also lovely, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are delightfully dark Thénardiers, Samantha Barks is perfect as Eponine, as is Aaron Tveit as Enjolras.

(I'll get to Rusty in a bit.)

I'm talking to myself and not to him

But the fact that these exquisite performances are bringing attention to themselves means that they are not being supported with equal goodness.

I saw an interview with director Tom Hooper where he says that in musicals the primary form of communication is singing. Really? Tom, I'd like to sit down with you and watch some musicals because in a lot of musicals – and by a lot, I generally mean the the successful ones – the singing is not how characters communicate.

In musicals, characters sing what they feel and what they think. Like a soliloquy (Hamlet isn't saying "to be or not to be" to anyone but himself), the song is what's happening in their head; it's what they can't or won't say out loud.

This is the secret of musicals that can make them (and songs) such an irrationally emotional experience. The best dialogue on film or stage ensures that characters don't say what they really mean, so (just like real life) we understand the emotional truth through the unwritten subtext. In musicals, the songs and music give us the emotional truth, so there's no need to show the rest. The best decision Hooper made was to reject the idea of any dialogue in the film.

In Les Mis, the exceptions are some of the recititive moments ("Yes there's a child and the child is my daughter" is direct communication), but the songs are mostly in their heads and hearts. The Thénardiers aren't telling their customers that they are stealing and the students aren't having a sing-song at the barricade. Eponine even tells every director/performer who doesn't get it with, "I know it's only in my mind. That I'm talking to myself and not to him."

By filming it as a piece of pseudo realism where singing is treated like talking, this film never really manages to capture its heart and makes the songs sound like naff dialogue.

Which brings me to Rusty Crowe as Javert.  He can't sing, so he "acts" Javert and presents the lyrics like dialogue, which makes them sound soppy and melodramatic. The emotion's in the music, not the words. And I have to go back to HE CAN'T SING. He sounds like Les Mis karaoke.

Here's Phillip Quast as Javert in the 10th Anniversary concert. 

Quast played Javert in the first Australian production.

He can sing.

The emotion is in the music

Music makes us feel in ways that words never can. I don't know how it works, but music creates a gut-felt emotion before our heads catch up. Lyrics and words don't make us cry, it's the music. There's music in the singing voices, but without the full orchestra, it doesn't create the unexplainable visceral emotion.

This film could be saved by re-mixing the sound. The mix is atrocious.

Filmed musicals always suffer from the distance between singer and orchestra and can never capture the effect of being in a theatre, but a film is not a live theatre, so it's best that they create something different.

A full orchestra is mixed in, but at times it can barely be heard, leaving the singers with no emotional/musical support. At other times it sounds like the orchestra was recorded without even hearing the voices, which makes them sound out of time. And when people sing together it sounds like they are singing apart and the joy and power of interacting voices is lost.

The only time I nearly cried in the film was in "One day more". On stage this is the Act One finale. Dramatically, emotionally and musically it is the first and only time all the main characters sing together and, despite all their different stories and motives, it unites them by finding the one thing they have in common: that "tomorrow we'll discover what our god in heaven has in store". I teared up because the film didn't unite them and was on par with a blah 80s-style montage.

On screen, every one is shown their real world, so they never come together and even though the live singing creates incredible individual performances, singers need to hear each other to sing together.

You can see it here. (It doesn't want to be embedded.)

 25th birthday version (with all its odd casting).  
But NBC have blocked EVERY version. Really NBC! 
Ever thought that You Tube clips make people want to buy your stuff?

Will I see it again?

Yea. There's enough great about it for a second viewing, but it will never be one that I buy and watch when I feel miserable (Cabaret, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Sweeny Todd and  Once More With Feeling).

Film review: Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 

Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street will continue to upset some musical theatre purists, but they can wait for live productions. This Sweeney maintains the integrity of the stage version while telling the story with a tension and darkness rarely captured live.

Adaptation from stage to screen is a dangerous art, as it simply may not be possible to recreate the complexity and impact of a live production on film. Many incredible examples of musical theatre have made dull films (A Chorus Line and Rent come immediately to mind), but others have been translated to the screen in ways that almost re-created the genre. Fosse did it in Cabaret and Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

When future theatrical historians dissect 20^th Century American Musical Theatre, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd will rarely be ignored. Premiering on Broadway in 1979, it tells the story a barber who kills his customers and his landlady who uses the bodies to make meat pies. The show fuses comedy with a classical tragic structure and tells the story through the eyes of a modern chorus.

So how does Burton tell this tale? Firstly, he removes the chorus. This instantly means the loss of some of the most memorable music. Sadly, filmgoers may never hum the “The Ballad of Sweeny Todd”, but there is no place for a chorus in this film.  It’s no longer a story about many; it’s the story of Benjamin Barker (aka Sweeney Todd).

We see London from Todd’s perspective. The CGI city is magnificently grey and miserable. Action and characters are viewed through distorted windows or reflected in broken mirrors and shining blades. Todd is unable to see his world (or himself) clearly, until the inevitable moment when it’s too late.

Burton supports this with a stunning use of colour and light. The symbolism is obvious, but the greys and sepias of Sweeney’s world compared to the bright floral of Benjamin’s past show more than any dialogue could manage. Then there’s red – lots of red. (It may be the best use of red on a screen since Spielberg used a little red coat in Shindler’s List.) The squeamish be warned – there’s blood in this film. Blood that oozes, drips, spurts and gushes life, death, love and hope.

Burton favourites Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter head the cast. Depp’s Todd is enticing and I cannot imagine a better choice. He creates a sympathy, and even empathy, for a character who we still clearly see as a monster, but feel every moment of his pain.

The casting of Bonham Carter as pie maker Mrs Lovett has split opinions. In musicals people sing. Burton’s principal cast are not singers, but the roughness in some of the voices adds an unexpected authenticity to their characters. Bonham Carter is clearly not a singer. Hearing “Worst Pies in London” sung by one of the worst singing voices around is deliciously ironic, but somewhat distracting. Marni Nixon made us believe that Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn could sing, so I have to wonder why there wasn’t some dubbing to support Bonham Carter’s voice. Even on the stage, it’s common for a homely chorus member to stand in the wings ensuring that the ingénue’s high C is perfect.

Vocal ability aside, Mrs Lovett is traditionally played by a more mature singer, who is embracing comic roles. (Angela Lansbury was the first Mrs Lovett.) Bonham Carter’s younger Lovett was surprising. However, her performance has brought such a unique depth and poignancy to the character, that Mrs Lovett may never be cast in the same way again.  She is no longer the comic sidekick. Her obsession with Todd is as distorted as his need for vengeance but she make’s their love seem feasible. There are moments when we hope that their murderous rampage can lead to them living happily by the sea.

It’s an odd thing to believe a world where people regularly burst into song, yet musicals can tell the most epic and tragic stories so effectively. Perhaps it is because music can reach ours souls instantly. Words have to go though our brain first. Images are similar – they show us the emotion and feeling, without the need for words. Buton’s film combines the visual and aural with some fine structuring to create an emotionally rewarding film that I’ve already gone back to see again.