Film Review: Les Misérables

Les Misérables does what few musical film adaptations dare: it justifies its existence by creating something wholly new. Fans of the stage version may struggle to forgive its free play with the raw material, but this film is an undoubted success in its own right.

If you expect stunning visuals, you will be disappointed. The film benefits little from an IMAX format because we rarely see beyond the characters’ faces, with the background mostly lost in soft focus. Shots are often held for minutes, and this can be taken to extremes: Hathaway’s ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ is a single shot, brave and unforgiving. Director Tom Hooper wants us to experience everything that is immediate about a live performance, but with the intimacy that cinema allows. For this reason, vocals were famously recorded live on set, avoiding the usual practice of lip-syncing. It is striking that in a film that could have made so much of its artifice, the central aim has been to establish authenticity.

This all poses problems, of course, because the musical was written for a very different medium. Such emotional sincerity makes the Thenardiers’ initial comic scene look off-key. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen stick comfortably to type, and deliver what would be a superb cabaret act; but they have the unwelcome air of gate-crashers at a funeral.

Fortunately, everything crystalises around ‘One More Day’, which interweaves the vocals of the principle characters’ to find a common focus. The attempt to put characters at both the visual and thematic centre of the film pays off, as this universal subject is found in a new revolutionary fervour. The transition onto the violent streets of Paris is remarkably seamless, and we never look back.

Hooper’s willingness to embrace ugliness is particularly prominent and refreshing. And despite dental hygiene improving markedly over the course of the film, this aesthetic is relentless. Blood, sweat and shit are everywhere, including a sewer scene so scatological it puts The Shawshank Redemption to shame. The fact that we are rewarded with so few shots that could be considered beautiful ensures that the film’s visuals never pander to the usual populist demands of costume drama.

Why the street urchins sound as if they have been plucked out of Whitechapel is not quite clear, but it’s a rare fault in a cast that is otherwise universally strong. Hathaway and Jackman deserve their Oscar nods, if only for surprising with their versatility. Russell Crowe’s Javert has received a lot of criticism – largely for his comparatively weak vocals – but he brings a humanity and ambivalence to the character that makes his exit so much more poignant. And Seyfried, Barks and Redmayne form a love triangle that provides a genuinely bittersweet resolution.

The audience burst into spontaneous applause as the credits rolled, and many were in tears. Les Mis has its technical weaknesses, but it has achieved something much more significant. It is honest, it bares not a hint of cynicism, and it is humane. It is difficult not to love it.