Fridae

There are times where I imagine that there should be a movie version of experimental composer John Cage's experimental piece 4'33", which consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute silence. In this case, it would be possible that a movie could be nothing but 120 minutes of sound set against a vacant screen... Hey, it would be a step up from Derek Jarman's Blue anyway.

Such is the feeling I am coming away with for this adaptation of the stage musical with its book by Alain Boublil and Claude Michel Schonberg, based on one of the great masterpieces of 19th century literature. I mean, God, what songs, what a talented cast, what an emotional and universal story that it is all in the service of — but what unimaginative visuals!

For those not in the know of the story yet, it is a multi-layered romance depicting a cross section of French society in the lead up to the July Revolution of 1832. The main thread revolves around the pursuit between Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) and Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). Valjean, who stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister's child, is sentenced to five years of prison which lengthen into two decades due to his repeated jailbreak attempts. Upon release, Valjean is put on probation and finds it difficult to reintegrate into society. After trying to steal a bishop's silverware and getting caught, the Bishop's unexpected act of charity and forgiveness in exonerating him of his crime allow him to start a new life where he eventually becomes a prosperous factory owner and the mayor of the town of Montreuil.

As a factory owner, he comes to know of the plight of the unfairly fired Fantine (Anne Hathaway), forced into prostitution to win back the custody of her child Cosette (Amanda Seyfried as an adult, Isabelle Allen as a child) from the comically venal innkeepers the Thenardiers (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter) and their daughter (Samantha Barks as an adult, Natalya Wallace as a child) and then swears as Fantine dies that he would take care of Cosette for her. Even as circumstances force Valjean into blowing his long-kept cover, this is a promise he keeps, just as Javert keeps his to follow Valjean to the ends of the Earth to bring him to the law. It all leads up to the barricades of 1832's July Revolution as the Republican students prepare for an uprising against the reinstalled Monarchy.

Award-baiter director Tom Hooper, working from a screenplay version by William Nicholson (Gladiator) using Boublil and Schonberg's book as its base, turns in an unimpressively-filmed epic. The clumsy attempt at creating intimacy, which apparently involves filming every single character in mostly a series of continuous close-ups with a few medium shots and a number of wide shots that seem to be so few you can count them on both hands, is so in your face (often literally) and obvious that the film fails to balance out the need for an epic story with intimate scale that it so desperately needs.

The film though shines in its cast, most impressive being Anne Hathaway, whose tear-wringing rendition of I Dreamed a Dream is marked by a pitiful fragility, and Samantha Barks as the older Eponine, whose On My Own is equally heartbreaking and won't leave a dry eye in the house. The others carry their tunes with aplomb as well. The strength of the music accompanied by the weakness of the visuals and editing though makes for a rather frustrating viewing experience in which elements of widely varying quality coexist onscreen at the same time.

Les Miserables is an award-baiting crowd-pleaser of a film with all that implies: as a film it's pretty much mediocre all elements considered, but the well-performed songs wedded to a timeless tale of freedom, love, sacrifice and oppression, pretty much the same elements that made the musical such a winner, are retained nonetheless, and make it worth the watch overall.