By Rom Watson
c. March 29, 2013
Musicals are by nature a stylized form of entertainment, and film musicals that embrace stylization in their presentation tend to succeed more often than those that choose the path of realism. Jacques Demy knew this when he created his 1964 sung-through French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. He had the film’s sets painted psychedelic colors to constantly remind the audience they were watching a confection, a bittersweet bagatelle, based on human foibles and emotions but filtered through artifice.
In contrast, Tom Hooper, in his 2012 sung-through French musical Les Miserables, is hell-bent for verisimilitude, ingeniously inventing opportunities to rub our noses in the filth and grime of the period. Realism is only necessary when it facilitates storytelling, and in this case it doesn’t. A little artifice might have helped.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a 95-minute chamber piece that leaves me feeling wistful, and Les Miserables is a 158-minute epic that leaves me in tears. Though Les Miserables has by far the better content, I regret to say that The Umbrellas of Cherbourg has the better execution. A case in point: their depiction of snow. In Les Miserables, when it snows on Javert the snow looks real. In The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, when it snows on the gas station in the final scene, it looks staged. Director Tom Hooper wanted “raw and real” as opposed to polished perfection, but raw and real doesn’t make for a balanced whole. There’s so much darkness in the story that piling on more darkness via the production values makes the enterprise too somber. Just because the characters are miserable doesn’t mean the audience has to be as well. When I’m watching a musical, I don’t want the snow to look real, I want the snow to look better than real.
In a period piece, especially one on a grand scale, moviegoers want to admire the sets and costumes, but since the camera in Les Miserables is rarely stationary, the costumes and the sets can’t be seen well enough to be appreciated, only glimpsed at the periphery. (In The Umbrellas of Cherbourg the camera is often moving, but it’s always fluid and smooth.) The jerky hand-held camera work of Les Miserables, as well as some of the tempi, makes the story seem rushed. The problem, which carries over from the stage version, is the epic size of the story. However, speeding up the editing and the pace only makes it faster, not better.
Film is a visual medium, so when casting a musical filmmakers are always going to choose actors over singers. If the actor can sing, so much the better, but their top priority is finding performers who will connect with the audience. Filmmakers care about the way things sound, but unless the film director is a trained singer, (which is rare), they settle for singing that is “good enough.” As a result, all of the acting in Les Miserables is top-notch, and the singing is of varied quality.
If you’ve seen a Broadway or touring company of Les Miserables, you’ve heard the score sung better. Touring companies cast performers who have the vocal technique to sing eight shows a week. This music, however, is indestructible, and will survive any imperfect rendition.
I heard that Russell Crowe’s singing garnered a strong negative response, so when I finally saw the film I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he has a good singing voice. Unfortunately, it is not suited to the score, being a voice more suited to pop and/or rock. Even more unfortunate, it is not suited to the character he plays. Javert requires a voice with a hard edge, and Crowe’s voice is too covered, too mellifluous. Javert requires a voice like a trumpet, not a cello.
Critics should have aimed their strong negative response at Amanda Seyfried in the role of Cosette. Her hammerhead vibrato when she sings in her upper register is piercingly unpleasant. Her breath support isn’t sufficiently developed to put a strong foundation under the tones, and as a result she bleats. Which is a shame, because when she sings with no vibrato at all her voice is lovely.
Anne Hathaway’s singing is good, but her acting is even better. Her Oscar win for the role of Fantine is no surprise, especially when you factor in her strong performance in The Dark Knight Rises, released the same year as Les Miserables.
Though still not a singer, Helena Bonham-Carter’s voice is noticeably improved and much stronger than it was in Sweeney Todd. She and Sacha Baron-Cohen are well cast as the Thenardiers, but the way these characters are handled is the director’s major miscalculation. The Thenardiers are supposed to be comic relief, and making them villains drains the piece of the humor it had on stage.
Eddie Redmayne acquits himself well as Marius, as does Samantha Banks as Eponine. The best singing occurs in the “Red and Black” sequence, most notably by Aaron Tveit as Enjolras.
Hugh Jackman is excellent as Valjean, but you can tell that if he’d recorded his singing in a studio, he would have sounded even better. Too bad polished perfection wasn’t on the director’s agenda.
The lyrics of Les Miserables are designed to tell, not show. This is necessary when most of the audience is sitting far from the stage. These lyrics guide the theatre audience through the story. In film, stories are told differently, but the score hasn’t been altered enough to accommodate for this. Hooper should have emulated the film Yentl and turned some of the singing into voiceovers. This would have changed text into subtext. Instead, the lyrics highlight their incompatibility with the medium of film.
The DVD includes three shorts, one about Victor Hugo and two about the making of the film. All three are interesting, and make it obvious that the film has been lovingly crafted by talented artists. Despite the shortcomings of Les Miserables, I’m curious to see Tom Hooper’s next film, provided he can keep the camera stationary.
Les Miserables may move you to tears, but seeing this material performed live is a much more satisfying experience. The stage version is essential, and the film version is not. In fact, the film functions best as an advertisement for seeing the stage production. Perhaps that is what producer Cameron Mackintosh had in mind all along.
I truly enjoyed the film – for many of the reasons you didn’t. These made the experience of the film more honest and true to the time rather than the glitz Hollywood usually puts on a musical. It wasn’t a “Singin’ in the Rain” project. Things WERE dour during those times – Dickens paints the same pictures.
I think your comments are RIGHT ON, Rom. The “singing” experiment worked for me in that I listened to the words, rather than admired the performers’ singing skills — some of which were terrific. Hooper worked with material that was weaker in its second act than its first. Once we get into Paris, we have to meet a bunch of new characters, some of whom were cheated of enough screentime to get to know their importance to the story. Interesting side note: A relative of mine absolutely REFUSES to see the film, because she doesn’t want it to wreck her memory of all those pretty voices she heard onstage. I wonder how many others made that same choice.