At the End of the Day
Mar. 7th, 2013 01:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrasteAfter a mere two months of putting it off (and not being anywhere near a movie theatre a lot of the time) I finally went and saw Les Miserables today, since it's on the way out of theatres and I wasn't going to get another chance.
My reluctance to see it was due to my devotion to the stage musical version, which was immensely important to me as a teenager. I still know every line by heart. And, well, I didn't want to be one of Those Fans, but I was terribly worried that I was going to hate it. Especially since Javert is my favourite.
The good news is: I did not hate it! I have a lot of feelings about what worked and what didn't, but I somehow managed to survive Russell Crowe singing without flinging myself into a swollen river. (I may have achieved this by playing the 10th Anniversary Concert version of Stars four times on my train trip home. Er.)
... and now I am going to cut. Below lies a rambling series of thoughts about staging, casting and Valjean/Javert bondage porn. Because that is how you can tell this is my journal.
If you think Les Mis is boring or the concept of Valjean/Javert bondage porn gives you the vapours, I would suggest looking away now.
To get my biggest issue out of the way: this film was always going to have trouble getting around my Javert Problem. While the 10th Anniversary concert wasn't my first exposure to the show, it's the version of my heart. Philip Quast will be My Javert forever and always. (I cannot help it. I am Australian and was born in 1980 and our television was perpetually tuned to the ABC during my childhood. He read me stories and helped me learn to tell time and make things from cardboard tubes. Thus did he earn my loyalty.) My reaction to any other actor in the part is probably never going to rise above 'yeah, he's pretty good.'
This was not made any better by the film's casting choice. There was not enough D: for my face when I heard Russell Crowe had been given the job. I may have ranted to anyone who would listen about how this emblematized everything that was wrong with Hollywood musicals today. Not that studios in the Good Old Days never cast people because they were famous rather than appropriate for the role, but, FFS, surely there are limits. Leaving my partisanship aside, there must be a dozen guys who could have actually sung the part. They could have used Norm Lewis! It has only been a few years since the 25th Anniversary, I'm sure he hasn't forgotten the words.
However, while listening to him sing his solos was like nails or a chalkboard for me, I thought Crowe's non-singing-related acting was great. (Which makes sense, what with him being a good actor and an indifferent singer.) The bit where he pinned his medal on Gavroche's body was beautifully played, my favourite thing in the whole film. While it's unfortunate that my main reaction to Javert's Suicide was to hope he would hurry up and jump so he would STOP SINGING OH GOD he was not without redeeming features. And at least I liked the staging of Stars - having Javert spend half the film walking around on ledges wasn't exactly subtle, but that Paris vista was beautiful and took proper advantage of the change in medium.
ANYway, to wrest myself thusly onto a more general subject: I don't think the staging choices always worked, but I respect Tom Hooper for trying to make the film its own thing and not an exercise in pointing a camera at the stage version. I think he should have used the 'close-up on actor's crying face' framing slightly less often. It works brilliantly for both I Dreamed A Dream and Empty Chairs At Empty Tables, but he should have done something less claustrophobic for some of the other solos and given us a bit more visual variation.
Similarly, I see what Hooper was trying to do with Confrontation - break it up and make it less stagey - but I found that the action actually robs the scene of its tension. I liked it better when it was two men standing by Fantine's deathbed singing over each other. And I know they probably wanted to avoid people missing Javert's backstory but I've always liked the way they're too busy threatening each other to listen. ("You know nothing of Javert/I was born inside a jail/I was born with scum like you/I am from the gutter too" properly goes with "I am warning you Javert/There is nothing I won't dare/If I have to kill you here/I'll do what must be done." Come to think of it, it's also a shame to lose the one instance of Valjean actually threatening to kill Javert.)
Recording the actors on set achieves the aim of getting more naturalistic performances (well, mostly) but it doesn't do any favours to some of the ensemble numbers - there's a jarring point in Do You Hear the People Sing? where Enjolras's voice disappears abruptly because the camera cuts away from him. Master of the House and One Day More felt pretty disjointed, which I think is inevitable if you haven't got everyone on screen at once.
Speaking of Master of the House, Sacha Baron Cohen was the other person I thought miscast, or maybe he just wasn't reigned in sufficiently by the director. Thenardier is comic relief in the musical, sure, but there's no need to lay it on quite so thick. And WTF was that accent in Master of the House about? I kept saying 'you are all French! Everyone here is French! That baby you are selling is French!' Only not out loud. Helena Bonham Carter was pretty good, which surprised me as I thought she was one of the weak points of Sweeny Todd. (I guess Madame Thenardier is a much less demanding part than Mrs. Lovett, though.)
On the plus side: while there's a pretty big gap between playing Curly from Oklahoma! or Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz and Jean Valjean, Hugh Jackman just about manages to bridge it. Valjean is not an easy part to sing, but his acting is good enough that I forgave the dropped notes.
The rest of the cast was more than fine. (The further you got from the big parts and the celebrity stunt casting, the more consistent the singing tended to be.) Anne Hathaway really was marvellous, and delivered my favourite ever version of I Dreamed A Dream. It's not easy to make the old chestnut sound fresh at this point, but her acting and the direction sell it completely. Eponine was lovely and I cried through A Little Fall of Rain like always. Les Amis were great and Eddie Redmayne excelled himself as Marius. I usually have little patience for Marius and his stupid romance with Cossette, but he managed to win me over. I mean, the romance is still stupid but that's hardly the film's fault.
I was particularly impressed with the two children - Isabelle Allen is heartbreaking as young Cossette, and hilarious in the negotiation scene into the bargain. Daniel Huttlestone's Gavroche was absolutely perfect, and I'm so sorry we didn't get the full version of Little People. (Like Turning, it's so often cut for space. Maybe we'll get it on the DVD? Please?) His death scene was absolutely wrenching, and showed the advantages film has over stage in that respect.
There were other bits I was sorry they cut - in particular, I wish we'd got the whole lead-up to Fantine attacking her would-be customer. ("It's the same with a tart as it is with a grocer!/The customer sees what he gets in advance./It's not for the whore to say yes-sir or no-sir/It's not for the harlot to pick and to choose and to lead me a dance!" Man, that guy really needs punching. And Fantine's response is great: "I'll kill you first if you try any of that!/Even a whore who has gone to the bad won't be had by a rat!")
The only lyrics change I actually hated, though: the Bishop saying that he had saved Valjean's soul for God. He bought it! With silver! It's symbolic! I was delighted to see Colm Wilkinson, though, especially at the end.
Anyway, I thought it was on the whole a good film, and I'm glad that it distinguishes itself sufficiently from the stage version to have been worth making. Even with Russell Crowe.
Partly, though, I admit I am happy they made it because of all the GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS FANFIC. A substantial proportion of which involves Valjean chaining/handcuffing/tying Javert to things. Apparently the entire internet watched the 'please punish me, Monsieur le Maire' scene they added back in from the book - not to mention Javert wearing a noose - and had the exact same filthy thought. I don't think I've ever wanted so badly to have a reverse time capsule through which I could send fanfic to my fifteen-year-old self. With helpful explanatory notes.
It makes me feel simultaneously nostalgic for the days when I would come home from school and listen to the soundtrack through my headphones and so very, very glad I am not that girl any more. Fifteen-year-old me did not have the internet. I think Valjean/Javert was one of the first problems I decided should be solved with handcuffs, but I had no acquaintance with porn of any kind, kinky or otherwise. I didn't know there was such a thing as slash. And whenever people talk about how AWFUL it is that teens these days get exposed to pornography on the internet, I wish I'd found some sooner so I could have stopped believing myself Forever Alone that much faster.
So I think I would be happy for the fic even if I had, in fact, hated the film. Even if I am not picturing the movie actors when I read it. (Every time someone on the internet says 'Valjean and Javert were hotter in the movie', I make a confused face. It is a bit like the confused face I make when people say Charles and Erik were hotter in First Class. I mean, I guess I can give them Hugh Jackman, and it's not that I don't think Russell Crowe is attractive, but ... have people heard Philip Quast talk, let alone sing?)
This all came back to me with particular force because after I'd seen the film, I was eating dinner with friends. I know I shouldn't have mentioned slash tobride_of_lister within the hearing of other people who are less, er, enthused about this stuff. But when one of them said "some of us like to keep Les Miserables in the 19th Century" I had to respond "because there was no gay porn in the 19th century!" and then bite down hard on my tongue. Because of course homosexuality was invented circa. 1890 and reading it into something set in 1832 is wrong. Gah. Anyway, I managed to shut myself up to preserve the peace, but given the things that Les Miserables means to me it was particularly galling. I just can't help thinking of that poor, confused fifteen-year-old trying to figure out if it was OK to think two guys making out was hot, especially when one of them was played by a beloved children's TV presenter. Who co-incidentally has the same first name as her father. (Now that I am an adult, I own all my kinks. It is happier.)
... wow, that was a lot of words to say 'I quite liked the movie. Woo, porn!' I do, indeed, have a lot of feelings.
My reluctance to see it was due to my devotion to the stage musical version, which was immensely important to me as a teenager. I still know every line by heart. And, well, I didn't want to be one of Those Fans, but I was terribly worried that I was going to hate it. Especially since Javert is my favourite.
The good news is: I did not hate it! I have a lot of feelings about what worked and what didn't, but I somehow managed to survive Russell Crowe singing without flinging myself into a swollen river. (I may have achieved this by playing the 10th Anniversary Concert version of Stars four times on my train trip home. Er.)
... and now I am going to cut. Below lies a rambling series of thoughts about staging, casting and Valjean/Javert bondage porn. Because that is how you can tell this is my journal.
If you think Les Mis is boring or the concept of Valjean/Javert bondage porn gives you the vapours, I would suggest looking away now.
To get my biggest issue out of the way: this film was always going to have trouble getting around my Javert Problem. While the 10th Anniversary concert wasn't my first exposure to the show, it's the version of my heart. Philip Quast will be My Javert forever and always. (I cannot help it. I am Australian and was born in 1980 and our television was perpetually tuned to the ABC during my childhood. He read me stories and helped me learn to tell time and make things from cardboard tubes. Thus did he earn my loyalty.) My reaction to any other actor in the part is probably never going to rise above 'yeah, he's pretty good.'
This was not made any better by the film's casting choice. There was not enough D: for my face when I heard Russell Crowe had been given the job. I may have ranted to anyone who would listen about how this emblematized everything that was wrong with Hollywood musicals today. Not that studios in the Good Old Days never cast people because they were famous rather than appropriate for the role, but, FFS, surely there are limits. Leaving my partisanship aside, there must be a dozen guys who could have actually sung the part. They could have used Norm Lewis! It has only been a few years since the 25th Anniversary, I'm sure he hasn't forgotten the words.
However, while listening to him sing his solos was like nails or a chalkboard for me, I thought Crowe's non-singing-related acting was great. (Which makes sense, what with him being a good actor and an indifferent singer.) The bit where he pinned his medal on Gavroche's body was beautifully played, my favourite thing in the whole film. While it's unfortunate that my main reaction to Javert's Suicide was to hope he would hurry up and jump so he would STOP SINGING OH GOD he was not without redeeming features. And at least I liked the staging of Stars - having Javert spend half the film walking around on ledges wasn't exactly subtle, but that Paris vista was beautiful and took proper advantage of the change in medium.
ANYway, to wrest myself thusly onto a more general subject: I don't think the staging choices always worked, but I respect Tom Hooper for trying to make the film its own thing and not an exercise in pointing a camera at the stage version. I think he should have used the 'close-up on actor's crying face' framing slightly less often. It works brilliantly for both I Dreamed A Dream and Empty Chairs At Empty Tables, but he should have done something less claustrophobic for some of the other solos and given us a bit more visual variation.
Similarly, I see what Hooper was trying to do with Confrontation - break it up and make it less stagey - but I found that the action actually robs the scene of its tension. I liked it better when it was two men standing by Fantine's deathbed singing over each other. And I know they probably wanted to avoid people missing Javert's backstory but I've always liked the way they're too busy threatening each other to listen. ("You know nothing of Javert/I was born inside a jail/I was born with scum like you/I am from the gutter too" properly goes with "I am warning you Javert/There is nothing I won't dare/If I have to kill you here/I'll do what must be done." Come to think of it, it's also a shame to lose the one instance of Valjean actually threatening to kill Javert.)
Recording the actors on set achieves the aim of getting more naturalistic performances (well, mostly) but it doesn't do any favours to some of the ensemble numbers - there's a jarring point in Do You Hear the People Sing? where Enjolras's voice disappears abruptly because the camera cuts away from him. Master of the House and One Day More felt pretty disjointed, which I think is inevitable if you haven't got everyone on screen at once.
Speaking of Master of the House, Sacha Baron Cohen was the other person I thought miscast, or maybe he just wasn't reigned in sufficiently by the director. Thenardier is comic relief in the musical, sure, but there's no need to lay it on quite so thick. And WTF was that accent in Master of the House about? I kept saying 'you are all French! Everyone here is French! That baby you are selling is French!' Only not out loud. Helena Bonham Carter was pretty good, which surprised me as I thought she was one of the weak points of Sweeny Todd. (I guess Madame Thenardier is a much less demanding part than Mrs. Lovett, though.)
On the plus side: while there's a pretty big gap between playing Curly from Oklahoma! or Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz and Jean Valjean, Hugh Jackman just about manages to bridge it. Valjean is not an easy part to sing, but his acting is good enough that I forgave the dropped notes.
The rest of the cast was more than fine. (The further you got from the big parts and the celebrity stunt casting, the more consistent the singing tended to be.) Anne Hathaway really was marvellous, and delivered my favourite ever version of I Dreamed A Dream. It's not easy to make the old chestnut sound fresh at this point, but her acting and the direction sell it completely. Eponine was lovely and I cried through A Little Fall of Rain like always. Les Amis were great and Eddie Redmayne excelled himself as Marius. I usually have little patience for Marius and his stupid romance with Cossette, but he managed to win me over. I mean, the romance is still stupid but that's hardly the film's fault.
I was particularly impressed with the two children - Isabelle Allen is heartbreaking as young Cossette, and hilarious in the negotiation scene into the bargain. Daniel Huttlestone's Gavroche was absolutely perfect, and I'm so sorry we didn't get the full version of Little People. (Like Turning, it's so often cut for space. Maybe we'll get it on the DVD? Please?) His death scene was absolutely wrenching, and showed the advantages film has over stage in that respect.
There were other bits I was sorry they cut - in particular, I wish we'd got the whole lead-up to Fantine attacking her would-be customer. ("It's the same with a tart as it is with a grocer!/The customer sees what he gets in advance./It's not for the whore to say yes-sir or no-sir/It's not for the harlot to pick and to choose and to lead me a dance!" Man, that guy really needs punching. And Fantine's response is great: "I'll kill you first if you try any of that!/Even a whore who has gone to the bad won't be had by a rat!")
The only lyrics change I actually hated, though: the Bishop saying that he had saved Valjean's soul for God. He bought it! With silver! It's symbolic! I was delighted to see Colm Wilkinson, though, especially at the end.
Anyway, I thought it was on the whole a good film, and I'm glad that it distinguishes itself sufficiently from the stage version to have been worth making. Even with Russell Crowe.
Partly, though, I admit I am happy they made it because of all the GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS FANFIC. A substantial proportion of which involves Valjean chaining/handcuffing/tying Javert to things. Apparently the entire internet watched the 'please punish me, Monsieur le Maire' scene they added back in from the book - not to mention Javert wearing a noose - and had the exact same filthy thought. I don't think I've ever wanted so badly to have a reverse time capsule through which I could send fanfic to my fifteen-year-old self. With helpful explanatory notes.
It makes me feel simultaneously nostalgic for the days when I would come home from school and listen to the soundtrack through my headphones and so very, very glad I am not that girl any more. Fifteen-year-old me did not have the internet. I think Valjean/Javert was one of the first problems I decided should be solved with handcuffs, but I had no acquaintance with porn of any kind, kinky or otherwise. I didn't know there was such a thing as slash. And whenever people talk about how AWFUL it is that teens these days get exposed to pornography on the internet, I wish I'd found some sooner so I could have stopped believing myself Forever Alone that much faster.
So I think I would be happy for the fic even if I had, in fact, hated the film. Even if I am not picturing the movie actors when I read it. (Every time someone on the internet says 'Valjean and Javert were hotter in the movie', I make a confused face. It is a bit like the confused face I make when people say Charles and Erik were hotter in First Class. I mean, I guess I can give them Hugh Jackman, and it's not that I don't think Russell Crowe is attractive, but ... have people heard Philip Quast talk, let alone sing?)
This all came back to me with particular force because after I'd seen the film, I was eating dinner with friends. I know I shouldn't have mentioned slash to
bride_of_lister within the hearing of other people who are less, er, enthused about this stuff. But when one of them said "some of us like to keep Les Miserables in the 19th Century" I had to respond "because there was no gay porn in the 19th century!" and then bite down hard on my tongue. Because of course homosexuality was invented circa. 1890 and reading it into something set in 1832 is wrong. Gah. Anyway, I managed to shut myself up to preserve the peace, but given the things that Les Miserables means to me it was particularly galling. I just can't help thinking of that poor, confused fifteen-year-old trying to figure out if it was OK to think two guys making out was hot, especially when one of them was played by a beloved children's TV presenter. Who co-incidentally has the same first name as her father. (Now that I am an adult, I own all my kinks. It is happier.)... wow, that was a lot of words to say 'I quite liked the movie. Woo, porn!' I do, indeed, have a lot of feelings.