Les Miserables: the Wretched, the Poor . . . the Audience

           If you have seen Les Miserables only on the screen and not on the stage, you have seen a poor, flickering shadow of one of the greatest musicals of all time. Its greatness inheres first in Victor Hugo's epic novel, one of the greatest of the 19th century.
          The story incarnates and celebrates the best and most noble human characteristics: courage, selflessness, honor, grace, loyalty, strength of character, and transformative faith. This is why you were moved, if you were moved, by the movie. I promise you that even a mediocre stage production would have moved you more still. The music (by Claude-Michel Schönberg) and the lyrics (original French lyrics by Alain Boublil, the English translation by Herbert Kretzmer) truly and beautifully communicate the sublime themes and feelings present in the story. The score has been criticized for not being, I suppose, written by Sondheim. The New Yorker's Anthony Lane, a generally reliable critic, called the score "a cauldron of harmonic mush, with barely a hint of spice or a note of surprise." True, the score is not, on the whole, musically complex, and this is only exacerbated by a screen adaptation that reprises many of the musical themes where they are not reprised in the stage play, milking too many scenes and songs beyond their merit, even adding a song that adds nothing but filler to the over-long screenplay.
          Director Tom Hooper made so many missteps that one easily resists the temptation to point out the movie's few strengths. The huge, absurd, CGI enhanced opening scene of prisoners pulling a massive ship into dry dock, and the butchering of the opening song, suggested to the wary viewer that many more missteps are likely to follow. And follow they do. Hooper's choice to have the actors sing the songs as filmed rather than in a recording studio for dubbing has been widely discussed. In a few instances it almost works (particularly with the marvelous Eddie Redmayne as Marius), but it generally fails; particularly when Russel Crowe is singing. While Crowe's presence on screen works, he doesn't have near the voice required to being off Javert's parts. He is, at times, cringingly difficult to listen to. And although Hugh Jackman has been praised as a "Broadway veteran," he hardly fares better, though his failing were largely due to Hooper's choice to record songs on site. One senses that he could have brought off his songs much better given a proper recording environment. And this leads to my most severe criticism: the casting of stars in the roles.
          While one understands the importance of box office draw, star power, and demographics, they should have been ignored here. Granted, screen adaptations of musicals are a notoriously dicey business, but Fiddler On the Roof succeeded in large part because the actors were relative unknowns who performed , by-in-large, beautifully. I personally dislike watching Anne Hathaway pretending to be Fantine, just as I disliked Sally Fields, whom I usually love, pretending to be Abraham Lincoln's wife. For important, historic roles, I don't want to have to overcome my repeated previous impressions and experiences of celebrities to acctept them in a important roles. Few celebrity actors can transcend this, as Daniel Day Lewis so stunningly transcends it in his recent role as Abraham Lincoln.
         I have saved my most bitter disappointment for last. The important comic relief provided by the Thenardiers in the stage musical is drained of any value at all in the movie by both the overdone staging of their scenes, and the pathetic performances turned in by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter. They were horribly miscast, and someone failed to inform Helena that she was no longer playing Mrs. Lovett in Sweeny Todd. She brought nothing to the part or the film. Cohen looked out of place and uncomfortable, causing one to wonder if he has any talent beyond his own cruel brand of mimicry.
         To whatever extent the film can be called a success, it is due primarily to the material and the music. True, the score is not musically clever, save in a few spots, but it is beautiful. Many simple things, many simple melodies, are also quite beautiful, and I won't insult you by listing obvious examples. Variations on the musical themes are used to great effect throughout the show, and bind the whole together beautifully. It is too bad that the movie's score sounded exactly as it was developed, with the orchestration being added to the actors voices after the fact. This choice drained power and emotion from the songs, the singers and the orchestra seemingly pulled by different leashes.
     The art direction is beautiful at certain points, hideous at others, as is the cinematography. Granted, a show like Les Mis presents many challenges for film adaptation. But instead of tackling those challenges, Hooper tilted at windmills of his own making, failing us by, perhaps, trying too hard. Overall, Les Miserables deserved a much better treatment on the screen, and we won't likely get another one.