In the 80's, Les Miserables took the musical theatre world by storm, sweeping the awards, stunning critics and bringing people to the theatre in droves. And indeed, its film companion seems poised to do the very same. But does it deserve to? Well, with a preface like that, you can assume the answer is no, and you'd be right, at least in this man's opinion. And of course, the bias of the critic should always be taken into account when reading the review (for example, if a critic reviewing Les Miserables hates all musicals on principle, he should let it be known to his reader, as should one who loves any insipid song and dance) and in this case, I would suggest that my bias (beyond being a fan of musicals, without being a blind fanatic) is familiarity with the source material. You see, without that familiarity, the film would come in only a notch or two below director Tom Hooper's last film The King's Speech. Both were critically adored, both were, in actuality, forgettable films driven by brilliant performances and shot as blandly as possible. The difference, of course, lies in the source material. For the King's Speech, while bland, did the best it could with the source material. There was not much more one could really do with what was, in reality, a very simple and uneventful story; a king overcomes a stutter. There aren't many ways to make speech therapy emotional or moving, and its not as though King George and Lionel Logue chose there actions based on what would most entertain an audience. The Source material for Les Miz, however, is different, and is what accounts for, in this writer's opinion, a far less forgivable fumble on the part of Hooper. Les Miserables the novel is an epic of human drama and historical chronicling, the masterwork of Victor Hugo's literary career, one which also featured the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and as such features characters designed for the sole purpose of evoking emotion from and entertaining an audience. Yet Hooper squanders all that by treating it with the same sterile directing and bland color scheme as Speech. Les Miserables the musical is, in many theatre fan's opinion including my own, one of the most brilliant, beautiful and operatic theatre pieces in recent memory. The finest piece of the almost entirely sung show is the music, the operatic score by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boubil which eschewed the "gritty rock" aesthetic popular in the musicals of the time, as well as the "speak-singing" that was becoming more common. The same "speak-singing" aesthetic which rears its ugly head again and again in Les Miserables the film, shredding apart the beautifully strung together notes of Schonberg in order to "convey emotion" more realistically. Many will be quick to blame the actors, but in fact Les Miserables is perfectly cast. Hugh Jackman tackles the role of Jean Valjean the best since Colm Wilkinson originated it on Broadway. Anne Hathaway earns her Oscar this year despite very minimal screen time. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter take on the roles they were born to play as Monsieur and Madame Thenardier, resulting in the second best sequence in the film. Many hands go into making a film, but in this case the blame really only falls on one pair, and that's Hooper's. He not only commits his own errors, such as the staggered singing of what are meant to be near-operatic tunes, and his atrocious camera choices (more on that later), but he also indulges in many of the atrocious sins musical adaptations have been committing for years, and perhaps with this massacre of a modern classic, folks might learn.
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| There are some things even living, breathing perfection can't save. |
First off, leave it alone.
If you're holding a bonafide, beloved classic in your hand, then half of your work is done. In the case of adapting a novel into a performed medium, yes, change is often necessary. One must make alterations and experiment in order to take something from the page to the stage, as it were. First person narration or descriptive passages are scrapped, events are shortened or lengthened in order to be more visually pleasing. But in the case of a stage to screen adaptation, it's time filmmakers learned that, well, the hard part is over. You don't need to worry about what will "please an audience". Your average musical goes through months of writing, then more months of rehearsals, where all those kinks you encounter adapting a book or a story from your head are already ironed out. THEN the show goes into previews, where critics tear into it like vultures to a corpse, and the show is worked on some more to be sure it's at its most coherent, concise and entertaining, and then it opens, and in the case of a classic, is so well written and arranged that it sells out whole theaters 8 times a week to audiences willing to pay $100+ to see. If people are willing to shell out $150 more than once to see the stage show perform "On My Own" after "One More Day", they'll pay the $10.50 for you to do the same. In most maintenance schools, they teach you the credo "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Perhaps they should teach that in film school as well. Of course, this doesn't mean the director is limited to just filming a stage production...
Don't exchange, just enhance.
Even the best adaptations drop a song or a joke, but most of the changes those better films make aren't altering the show, but taking advantage of the freedom the medium of film offers. Using the ability to edit to take a very theatrical moment, i.e. the full-on Fosse barred-door dance of "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago, use it to help move the story along, as Rob Marshall did by cutting away from the musical malefactors to show them telling their stories to reporters or Roxie from within the confines of the prison, keeping an element of realism while also showing Roxie's evolution, letting the song serve the same purpose as a montage in a way the stage could never do. Sets that were just paper and plywood on stage can now become elaborate, million dollar realities that assist the suspension of disbelief required by most musicals. You can make alterations if film allows you to fully do what the limits of theatre could only scrape at. Not exchange what's there for something else so much as build upon what was there. But that's mostly a visual thing, because as we've discussed, the book and score have been worked and worked and really don't need to be altered. Then again, directors may be tempted to whore themselves out for Oscars, so let's just get this one out there…
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| See above photo caption, apply here as well. |
Don't add a song. You can't recapture magic.
Musicals come from composers and writers, and the best can never be recreated. They come at a particular point in the creator's life, when a right mix of creative juices pour out a cocktail that, with work and passion, becomes a cocktail of classic theatre. Sondheim's beloved Company and its brilliant music and lyrics about the mind of a lonely 30 year old came from a lonely 30-year old, and if Sondheim tried to write a new song for it today, it wouldn't fit. Perhaps it would sound similar, but something would be missing, it wouldn't fit the flow. Yet, musical movie after musical movie based on Broadway hits decide that composers need to go back to the well for a "new original" to throw in the film. From "Beautiful City" in 1972's Godspell to "Learn to Be Lonely" from the Phantom of the Opera, from "You Must Love Me" from Evita to the seemingly 90 "new" songs thrown into Dreamgirls, it seems you can't find a musical adaptation that didn't add a new song as a sort of "bonus content" for fans. But is that really what it is? Are any die-hard fans of Nine, who know the words by heart, really clamoring for another song to learn? Odds are they liked it how it was, with characters singing what they sang. That's why they're fans, after all. Nobody calls themselves a Pulp Fiction fan but wishes Jules had given a different speech. So why add a new song? I'll tell you why. Oscars. Musicals want the kind of recognition that's shiny. It adds prestige, and prestige adds views and DVD purchases. Slapping that little golden boy on the box ups sales, no matter what he was won for. And while musicals rarely win the big categories, every producer sees statues when he reads the Oscar categories and sees Best Original Song. "Song?" he thinks "We've got songs coming out the ass in this picture. We're a shoe in." But then he finds out his whole film full of songs won't qualify, since the category is only for songs written specifically for the movie. So then said producer has to rouse Andrew Lloyd Webber from his slumber on his bed of Cats royalty checks and unused Love Never Dies Playbills and have him churned out a half-hearted, half-assed and halfway decent tune to please the AMPAS gods. And can you blame them? This strategy got an Oscar to the flick starring Leonidas and directed by the guy who gave Batman nipples. So Tom Hooper got Schonberg to bang out the incredibly forgettable "Suddenly", which does nothing to advance the story or develop the characters, in pursuit of the holy gold he already has. But all of these travesties could be forgiven, the song-order alterations, the character changes, even the addition of a new ballad or two. But for the love of god, and all that is holy...
Don't change the god damned lyrics!
This isn't the same argument as the prior "The show is a classic for a reason". You can sometimes understand how a misguided director might get to thinking "Well, Stephen Sondheim spent years determining that this was the best spot for this song, and this was the right character to sing it, and these were the right notes to be sung. But that schmuck doesn't know theatre." But this type of alteration, the changing of lyrics, its the most unnecessary type of change. And Tom Hooper does it in spades in Les Miserables. Perhaps this comes off as nit-picky, but I assure you, in reality it's the most atrocious sin of adapting directors because there is literally no need. While those unaffected by the lyrical alterations may say "You're being over-sensitive. Who cares if Javert sings 'One day more to revolution' instead of 'One more day to revolution', its such a pointless little change." but that's just the point, it is pointless. There's literally no need for the change, and considering the devotion fans of the original have to those words as they were, why would you change that? Because in order for these lyrics to have changed, this isn't the case of actors changing something on the spot as they would dialogue in a scene, but rather Tom Hooper sat down, and in all the work he had to do for pre-production on the film said "I know years and years and years of rehearsals, preview and productions have had Javert say "One more day to revolution." he'll now say "One day more to revolution." and it's gonna really make the film better. I can only assume when someone involved in the project inquired "Why?" Hooper's response was either "Because f*** you, that's why" or just mercilessly beating the inquirer with his Oscar. But seriously, in the film, nobody but Javert is seen posing as a revolutionary, and yet he sings to his troops "We will join these peoples heroes, we will follow where they go, we will learn their little secrets, we will know the things they know." Now, you could forgive this if these were the original lyrics, but the original lyrics in fact better fit the events, but Javert merely saying "I will join these people's heroes" etc. Now, perhaps this seems to be obsessing over detail, but I implore you, reader, to remember that the director did it first. The directors of these musicals who change a word in the lyrics did so consciously. They sat down and made damned sure those terrible "I"s in "One Day More" were replaced with "We"s. If anyone can see a reason for so minor a change, please, let me know. And before this comes off as "over-sensitive", need I remind you, dear reader, that many people who are fans of musicals hold this show with as much respect and reverence as the average literature fan hold The Great Gatsby. Now if, in Baz Luhrman's upcoming film adaptation, Nick Caraway greets the audience by talking about his "Younger and less secure days" instead of the book's "Younger and more vulnerable days", there would likely be a massive uproar as viewers would question what possible motive the director would have to alter such a small yet beloved portion of an established classic. In fact, Baz Lurhman wouldn't dare. So, non-musical lovers, the next time somebody gets mad a musical adaptation changed some lyrics, don't ask us why we care; but rather, just as you would if the announcer in Miracle had said "I believe in miracles, do you?!" in lieu of his famous line, ask the director "Why?"
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| This season of Russell Crowe's Fightin' Round The World takes him to France...oh, this is from Les Miserables? Never mind. |
So, now that we've covered the pitfalls Hooper befell that had also tripped up his many predecessors, let's discuss Tom's personal "innovations" and how they dragged the film from the mediocrity of King's Speech to just generally disappointing. The first and less offensive was Hooper's decision to let the actors sing live on set rather than lip-sync to pre-recorded music. In theory, this is a brilliant way to bring realism to the action. In practice, it leads to Russell Crowe's otherwise terrific Javert to occasionally be off-rhythm with the later-added orchestra, cast members to go slightly flat for a portion and have the Post-Production Symphony Orchestra have to adjust, Amanda Seyfried fluctuating between an English and American accent mid-song, and of course cast members "not focusing on singing but just acting and feeling the emotion of the song" which works great for a rock musical like Rent or Spring Awakening, but doesn't go great when beauteous ballads and chopped up in to Shatner staccato.
Yet Hooper's biggest disservice to the classic is his visual choice. In what is undoubtedly the worst cinematography choice this year, or indeed in recent memory, the over-the-top, bombastic, operatic Les Miserables is shot practically cinema verite. Even the hideously obvious CGI buildings and boats fresh from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow are forgivable. Yet I don't think anybody saw a stage run of Les Mis and said "You know what? This should feel a little more like The Office". The camera moved more than a damned Bourne movie, and on the rare occasion it stopped moving and Hooper actually discovered what a tripod was, he managed to make an even worse visual decision. Yes, folks, a good 8th of this movie is shot at slanted angles. It seems Hooper took an overdose of Kubrick pills before making the shot list, as the tilted frame is used both in sequences that require a distorted view, like Fantine's descent into prostitution and the "Master of the House" sequence, and also scenes that…were practically every other scene in the film. With a cast this phenomenal, you can almost forgive the common pitfalls Hooper befell, if he weren't shooting his star-studded cast like it were Full Metal Jacket. The sets are, from what one can gather, gorgeous, but tilted close-ups hide a lot of the best scenery. Yet, even in all of the sub-par elements Tom Hooper brings to the film, he did do one thing right. Among the hand-held mess he did make one bold and strikingly original move. Anne Hathaway steals the show in a worth-the-price-of-admission performance of "I Dreamed A Dream", and Hooper was bold enough to just shoot it head on, in one brilliantly unflinching close up shot. You can see why Hooper deserved his Oscar, when he can come up with an image as haunting as a a skeleton thin, pale, shaved-headed woman singing a bleak ballad as a tear rolls down her face. Oh…oh somebody did already do that? Like, that exact same scene? Almost 20 years ago, you say?
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