Review: Les Miserables Is Sometimes Miserable
I walked out of the theater after seeing Les Mis last night in tears—because I thought it had ended three times, but then they just kept on singing and singing….
We saw the musical on Broadway with the original cast. It was an impressive live performance, one that made your overlook Hugo’s cloying, improbable story. But the barricade on the stage was nothing compared to modern screen effects and budgets, so we have huge ships hauled in by slaves with ropes to dry dock; mountain top vistas; clashes in the streets; and shocking scenes (sewer muck in abundance).
Hugh Jackman plays Jean Valjean and he’s, well, Hugh Jackman, one of the most talented people in the world. We’ve seen him on Broadway several times, once from about six feet, where I was restraining my wife through two acts. He’s wonderful, a great singer, a moral presence, and he brings dignity to the role. Everyone (with an exception I’ll discuss below) is in fine voice.
The surprise hit of the show is Sacha Baron Cohen as Thenardier (with his cohort Madame Thenardier, who I was shocked to learn was played by the lovely Helena Bonham Carter). Cohen is a glorious rogue and innkeeper who keeps turning up unexpectedly, who is asked to chew the scenery, and who does so with such gusto and aplomb that I began rooting for him. These two are a treat, at one point posing as footmen who then race through one door of the carriage to emerge from the other as if occupants, to gain entry to a ball.
Javert, one of the great psychological studies in fiction, right up there with Raskolnikov, is played by Russell Crowe. He captures the man brilliantly, but cannot sing a note. He fundamentally talked through his quite lengthy music, as did Richard Burton in Camelot. And you get the same result: A brilliant actor who also slows down the operetta because the producers have cast a non-singer in a starring role in a musical.
Go figure.
Anne Hathaway sings quite well, and is a lovely Fantine, but her perfect teeth, six feet high on the screen, are at odds with everyone else’s historically accurate frightful hygiene.
The production is far too long, the story far too implausible, and the constant encounters of Javert and Valjean far too contrived. There are two memorable songs, I Dreamed A Dream (the usually over-belted anthem that here is tenderly done) and On My Own (there are perhaps only 30 words of dialogue NOT set to music), and a lot of crowds marching and singing throughout.
The film will make a lot of money, as did that awful James Cameron version of Titanic, and it will be nominated for a ton of awards, but all it did for me was prove that Hugh Jackman is an enormous talent and modern cinema can create outstanding special effects.
But I knew that going in.
© Alan Weiss 2013.
