That Movie with all the Dirty People Singing

The fundamental premise of all music based theatrical entertainment is that music is speech/dialogue. In operas, every word is sung, including all that boring plot related stuff. In musicals, all that boring plot related stuff is spoken because, really, why waste the effort writing music for lines that people don't really care about anyway (that's hard work!). This happens on stage all the time and no one has a problem with it, ever. It's understood. But movie musicals, now that's a different story. I cannot think of a single movie opera - a movie where all of the dialogue is sung. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they exist in obscure corners of movie history (yes I include this as obscure). Every major movie musical lets the dialogue take care of the plot and then kicks up the entertainment factor or the emotional stakes with some singing and dancing. Les Miserables is a movie operetta, a strikingly faithful page to stage to screen adaptation. I think quite a few critics and not a small number of moviegoers struggles with the film because they are not buying into, or have enough experience wtih, the music as speech/dialogue paradigm. All what Tom Hooper has done is to take this paradigm to its logical cinematic conclusion.

Movie musicals let spoken dialogue do the plot lifting and the small talk, but movies are also visual. So what ends up happening is that standard spoken dialogue is shot in the standard two shot shot/reverse shot paradigm we all unconsciously know and love. Movie musicals usually have a different gaze when they switch to "performance" mode. A great example of this, taken to the cinematic extreme, is Chicago. In that movie, most of the dialogue takes place in a recognizable Jazz-era Chicago, while the singing and dancing happens in a bizarre expressionist nether-world, totally separate from the real world. Tom Hooper obliterates the plot/performance distinctions in Les Miserables by keeping the spoken camera conventions throughout, including close-ups. People really aren't used to that, seeing the chins wavering, and the throats straining. It's disconcerting and it's a pure litmus test: if you can handle the idea that "music is speech" then you can handle the way Hooper uses his camera to show you his characters. If you don't buy that, don't buy a ticket. Many people don't know how to judge the acting in the scenes between Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman where Inspector Javert introduces himself to Monsieur Le Maire née Valjean. In many a brain it goes like this: "They are singing at each other. I don't know what this means. This is weird. It sucks." I think your fundamental enjoyment or assessment of Les Miserable begins with whether or not you accept the idea that two people can talk about the weather and be singing at the same time. Hooper's decision to work up close goes hand in hand with his decision to have his actors sing live on set and not to muck about with dubbed over versions of the singing. As a theatre geek and a person who makes their living in theatre, all I can say is: Halle-freaking-lujah. When your actors buy into this project and sellout as hard as everyone in Les Mis does, it makes the truly harrowing emotional moments resonate with a power that voice-over is incapable of delivering.

I can has all the awards?

Ok, so I buy the fundamental approach that Hooper brings to the material, I love it, welcome it, and I am desperately in love with the source material. Now the question, THE question, the one question that everyone who loves the musical has to confront: How does the movie compare to the 10th Anniversary concert (that's an Amazon link - your welcome)? I am only slightly joking. Les Miserables, the movie, sits at the center of a dense web of associations for me, and I think for a lot of people. I listened to and sang the song of Les Mis, not only on my own (GET IT?!) but with several other people. It is a shared passion and obsession. There is just no way the movie gets a fair shake. But I did my damnedest and I have the tear stained napkins too prove it (actually, I don't - I threw them away, I promise). Before we get to the meat and potatoes I will say one more conceptual thing: making a faithful adaptation of a stage show into movie leaves the thorny question of pacing unanswered, specifically at the act break. Les Miserables is a long live theatre experience, but there is a fifteen minute intermission built into the run time. More importantly, it is built into the structure of the musical. "One Day More" is an incredible show-stopping number. It brings all the voices and all the characters onto the stage for a point/counterpoint triumph and it ends in stirring unison fashion ("tomorrow is the judgment day . . . One more dawn, one day more!" - Ed: Stop sniveling!). Then you get fifteen minutes to think about it. Then Act II starts off with a huge bang and a massive scene shift to the barricades.

Do you hear the people sing?

The emotional roller coaster between "One Day More" and "Do You Hear the People Sing" prices in the fifteen minute break. When you make a film that is faithful to the stage play, but without the intermission, you end up with pacing problems and an overwhelming emotional experience. At two hours and thirty seven minutes without a built-in break, you've got a length problem.

I can hear you complaining. You're saying: "Erin, you've got a length problem. Just tell me if you like the movie, damn it." Ok, enough technical/theoretical discussion. I loved it. It is not great. The pacing problems hurt it. Russell Crowe hurts it, though not for the reasons you think. Crowe is getting a lot of crap for not being up to the rest of the cast vocally and that's not quite accurate (though I won't go as far as Chuck Pierce in defending him). Crowe can sing. He is not awful, in the way that Pierce Brosnan is awful in Mamma Mia! (I have been accused of being a closet lesbian, so it should not surprise that I liked that movie, Brosnan's Mark Knopfler impersonation notwithstanding). Two huge things are disappointing about Crowe's contributions though, both of which I will blame on the director. Javert's part, as written, is a bass part. It makes a great counterpoint to Valjean's soaring roaring tenor and it makes Stars and Javert's Suicide much more emotional by expanding the range of the singer to express those ideas. It might be Crowe's limitations as a singer that prompted them to move away from the vocal depths of Javert's part, and there is no question, the role is reduced by this choice, but I'm not ready to blame that all on Crowe without knowing all the facts. The other problems come in the soliloquies. Crowe isn't given a lot to work with during his soliloquies (walk this parapet like a boss). He does well with others. He's great in disguise and when expressing disgust and he has one of my favorite emotional touches in the whole movie when he sees Gavroche's body (I won't spoil it).

But what hurts it the most, and what really keeps the movie from being truly a masterpiece, is that Tom Hooper is too in love with pointless camera movement (from Pierce's piece: "I'll never watch another Tom Hooper movie until I'm guaranteed by the producers that his damned camera has been riveted to the floor"). The movie blows you away when it settles in and rests in glorious close-up on emotional, gut-wrenching, world-changing heartbreak. The list of incredible scorching emotional moments is almost too long to recount, but let's hit the highlights: Valjean's agonized pacing in "What Have I Done?" which would have won Jackman an Oscar in any other season (sorry, sainted former Presidents trump fictional convicts), Fantine's entire life, but especially "I Dreamed a Dream" (which will win her an Oscar - as an aside: Anne Hathaway's Fantine so hovers over the movie, her presence emotionally overshadows Valjean's death when she welcomes him to the afterlife an hour after she died), Eponine collapsing against the wall in the rain during "On My Own," transforming herself from self-confident street urchin to unhappy unloved poor young girl in one stanza flat, Marius mourning the loss of his revolutionary comrades during "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," and Cosette watching Valjean die. And in nearly all of these moments, the camera settles in and lets us experience this things without interruption, without flinching. But most of the rest of the time, dear Lord in heaven, it's like a master class in the modern attention span (what used to be called the MTV aesthetic, you know, if you're old). The first fifteen minutes of the film are a series of shots that last no more than two seconds. It's a huge problem.

And then we have the Thernadiers. Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen have drawn decidedly mixed reactions. Half of the reviews that I have read excoriate the pair of them for . . . not being like the rest of the show. To me, this is like complaining about the Rude Mechanicals in Midsummer for not being in the same show as the rest of the cast: it's the entire point. They are purposefully different. You might not like the characters, which I don't understand, but they are executed perfectly. Most of the people who hate the Thernadiers have not seen the musical, so maybe there is something about them that needs context and explanation, but I thought they were great in the movie. I loved seeing them steal from people left and right. They are perfectly cast. The only mistake Hooper made was to cut Thernadier's song "Harvest Moon." It's a deeply cynical song about cleaning up the revolutionary pups and moving on long after their blood has dried on the streets. It really adds depth and sophistication to the character. They would have done better to cut the Javert chasing Valjean into Paris, which is basically not necessary (as you can easily tell from the 10th Anniversary concert).

One final quibble: in the rush to finish the movie, they forgot to explain that Marius has no idea who saved him from the barricade. That's kind of a major plot point. You need to know that when Marius and Valjean talk at the end, before the wedding. It helps set up the Thernardiers' gate crashing. I have no idea why that happened. Maybe that two minute chunk of singing will make the director's cut.

Ok, this is it, the final paragraph, I swear. The bottom line is that I loved the movie for the same reasons that I love the musical. Every emotional beat that I want is there and executed exquisitely. They even manage to overcome some of the things that I hate about the show, the biggest one being Cosette's singing, which is usually so high that the actress has to get extremely operatic to carry the notes. The intimacy of on-set singing removes the volume problem and it helps tremendously that Amanda Seyfried is a wonderfully expressive performer. I was not annoyed by Cosette at all, was moved deeply by her at one point, and that is a major achievement, in my book. The old rule of thumb for making a great film is to have three good scenes and no bad ones. Les Miserables lives up to that standard. But there are too many stylistic issues, too many pacing issues, and one glaring weak link (I wanna represent for my boy Russell, but Javert he is not) and these problems together mean it isn't a great movie, as much as I wanted it to be great.

At least we'll always have Albert Hall.