The stage production of Les Miserables is one continuous musical number with at most a couple of words of dialogue spoken throughout it’s duration. Each musical segment blending perfectly into the next, it is the equivalent of listening to a great mixed playlist without interruptions. Every song has a different tone and evokes different feelings ultimately taking viewers on an emotional journey allowing them to resonate empathically with the characters performing. According to the creators of the film adaptation, they wanted to duplicate this by participating in a great experiment of having the actors sing directly on set so they can display their true emotional expressions and not have to mime to a pre-recorded track. Personally, I thought this was a great idea. This technique coupled with the fact that it was an adaptation of an awesome stage musical which I liked for the aforementioned reasons got me extremely excited to see this when it opened on Christmas. Did the movie live up to my expectations? It did not. As an adaptation of the stage musical, it falls short. Songs are chopped, lyrics are changed and extra dialogue was added where it was not needed. Also, more often than I liked, there were times when the characters would interchangeably speak the verses in the middle of singing a song. I felt that there was no purpose for this as it was an underuse of talent. Especially for Colm Wilkinson’s cameo as the bishop who played Val Jean in the original run of the show. He has a terrific voice and he ended up speaking half of his lines. By doing all this, the flow of the music is interrupted and by deleting certain sections featured in the stage production, the experience as a whole felt truncated. It was as if someone was talking in between the tracks of this great playlist to explain what’s coming up and the story doesn’t flow organically. As for the great experiment, there were times I felt that the actors were singing ahead of their notes and the tempo couldn’t keep up. Whether this was intentional or not, I don’t know. For all these reasons, I felt bothered, but I can honestly say that this did not kill the experience for me. The film looked great. The cinematography was an extreme example of showcasing beauty in simplicity. Especially with musical numbers like “I Dreamed a Dream”, where the camera remained focused on Anne Hathaway’s face to show the subtle emotions displayed in her expressions with each wavering note. The director does this for a lot of the key musical segments in the film and it works well. Although I was not impressed with some of the performances like Russell Crowe’s portrayal of Javert, who in my opinion remains passable at best because he lacks the baritone voice needed for the part. But even his awkward rendition of the song Stars was made all the better by the simple backdrop of stars shining in the middle of a Parisian night time sky as he performs the number on top of a roof. I came out of the movie with mixed feelings about what I’ve seen. However, I was still thinking about it the day after with a smile on my face so I can frankly say the experience was worthwhile and after time pondering about it on the whole, I came to the conclusion that as a movie, it works. I’ve had biases because I’ve been a huge follower of the stage production, but I can honestly recommend this is as a great introduction for people who never been acquainted with Les Mis. As for others like myself who are fans of the stage show, I can only say this. Accept it for what it is.
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