This film, as a musical, makes it awkward to delineate the boundary between wit and wonder. Normally, the acting and the music work together but are demonstrably different elements. In this case, they are not. I will thus, try to analyze these in connection. Another issue is that this is a record of production of a musical with a long history (particularly a long personal history for me) and thus it almost feels silly going over how well written the songs feel, but I'll try to imagine you all meeting me from scratch, as I like to think is true for some of you.
The script/music for this musical is very well-done. The depth of a book like Les Miserables, a challengingly long and intricate novel, is played out here with a surprisingly large amount of detail, given the disparity in size between the two incarnations. The story in its original form is one of my very favorite stories, the passion (in the sense of the word used to describe the trial and execution of Jesus) of a man who endures some of the most despicable treatment possible for one person to put upon another without someone being killed and is yet transformed into the kind of force that changes the lives of everyone around him, not without failures and mistakes, but without a relapse into darkness. The little kindnesses we undertake, such as Monseigneur Bienvenu does for Jean Valjean, truly can have tremendous consequences. This ignores the deep and complex romance of Marius and Cosette, on the level with Romeo and Juliet, and the human tragedies of Fantine, Eponine, and Gavroche. The story is almost too big to consider in this forum, even in its abbreviated musical version. Needless to say I am a fan.
The music gives life and verve to this beautiful tale, creating one of the most stick-in-your-head feelings of any musical I've ever known, or any music for that matter. I'm actually listening to the 10th Anniversary Recording now. It cannot help but bring me a flood of memories. The film fails this tradition slightly in the way that far too often the actors, almost all of whom could actually sing quite well, undersung the dialogue. They seemed to find something synonymous between whispery singing and the display of emotion. That said, the acting rarely had anything lacking. Before I dive into that, I should mention that listening to some of the 10th Anniversary Recording, I decided that they definitely are guilty of oversinging and underacting. Who knows where the golden mean is? How we need you now, Aristotle.
Back to acting, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway are eminently deserving of all the adulation they have received. Their respective soliloquies are the best part of the movie acting-wise. No shame should be placed on Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried either, though. They embody the two young lovers as well as anyone I can think of. Some comparison with the 1998 incarnation could be instructive.
Hugh vs. Liam Neeson leaves me preferring someone over Liam for the first time I can remember. Jackman is just more capable of making me feel both the destitute Valjean, fresh from prison, and the saintly Valjean at his death, are the same person, even if they are nearly unrecognizable. That should be put down in no small part to costume design and makeup. I'll come back to that. If I compare Anne to Uma Thurman, there is no comparison. Anne really owns this part like no one I've ever seen before. When I hear the musical, I hear her behind the other singer and she judges her harshly. When I read the novel, I now clearly see Anne. Except that "the Blonde" shouldn't have such dark hair. Russell Crowe does not, God forgive me, compare with Geoffrey Rush. Absolutely not. Too bad, I imagined such good things. Amanda vs. Claire Danes is hard. I've loved Claire for a long time and this is the first time since Mean Girls I've really liked Amanda. I'll give them a tie. With Claire, I felt the clear-cut sense of innocence more palpably. I cannot choose between one pair of doe eyes and another, but Claire's portrayal is just more nuanced. Claire and Hans Matheson clearly have a better chemistry than Amanda and Eddie, though. Eddie on his own is better than Hans. Eddie makes me believe the dichotomy between the revolutionary and the lover more fully, with no little help from the music. He doesn't seem shallow for being preoccupied with Cosette on the eve of the revolution, but he also doesn't seem like just a jerk for being miserable about his dead friends when he has Cosette forever.
This could be too academic for many, but I really enjoy the comparison. I do not know whether to place the aforementioned undersinging on the negative of wit or wisdom, so I take it 2.5 off each and incidentals place them each down at 9.5, but I cannot ignore it as much as I have. I would love to have the .25 measure in my methodology, but that's not going to happen now, so I absolutely must make wit a 9. I can't make it wonder, even though it seems like a failure of the director, but the costumes and makeup need recognition.
Wisdom comes last. I have few complaints. The bishop is underplayed and the chorus too often becomes cynical. The final number is absolutely wonderful. I also like the interpretation of what must have been envisioned as a simple musical finale as a glimpse at the afterlife, that is, the inclusion of all the dead in the scene and exclusion of the living and the lost dead, a.k.a. Javert. Add Valjean and Fantine's soliloquies and Fantine's calling of Valjean as he dies, and the mysterious, religious, libertarian, republican themes of the whole thing makes me quiver with the chill of hearing truth clearly and lovingly expressed. I will again point out the scene when the whores recruit Fantine as an example of the unfortunate ambiguity of the musical on these kind of social/moral issues that keeps me from giving it a straight 10.
I know that a large percentage of the good friends I've had the longest have long since seen this for the same reason it was so important to me, but if you haven't, even if you know nothing of Les Miserables, especially then, I suggest you do.
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