Though novelist Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) created the plot and protagonists of Les Misérables, it was composer Claude-Michel Schönberg, French lyricist Alain Boublil and his English counterpart Herbert Kretzmer who dreamed the dream – and songs – for which it is now best known. More than three decades after receiving the musical treatment, a corresponding film adaptation has finally emerged, as director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech) becomes the latest to imagine the classic tale.
Adversarial relationships drive the action in a narrative as complex as it is celebrated, amidst a climate of military control, civil unrest and inevitable revolution. Over the course of 20 years, convict Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman, Rise of the Guardians) and the prison guard turned policeman, Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe, The Man with the Iron Fists) personify both sides of the conflict in their enduring battle, with the former’s freedom and the latter’s pride the prizes on offer.
Their game of cat and mouse draws others into their orbit, commencing with factory worker turned prostitute Fantine (Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises). When Valjean assumes care for her daughter Cosette (debutant Isabelle Allen as a child, Gone’s Amanda Seyfried as an adult), Javert’s pursuit is renewed. At the Paris Uprising of 1832, their animosities culminate in parallel with the mounting public rebellion, as does Cosette’s fated infatuation with anti-monarchist fighter Marius Pontmercy (Eddie Redmayne, My Week with Marilyn).
Succeeding where others have failed since the musical’s stage premiere in 1980, Hooper is ambitious in his approach. Eschewing traditional pre-recording of songs in favour of filming his cast singing as they act, he invests every ounce of the story’s emotion into the proceedings, with a rich and raw layering of realism and resonance the devastating result. Hooper’s decision proves revelatory for Hathaway and her brief but brilliant – and likely award-winning – efforts. Others fare according to their vocal talents: some superb (Broadway regular Jackman), some stifled and stilted (part-time rocker Crowe).
Elsewhere, the film’s grandiose direction and garrulous execution plays it bold and brash, befitting the rhythmic pull of the melodic source material. In a sweeping, sprawling spectacle of lavish staging, intricate choreography and energetic cinematography, the underlying themes of honour, hope and heartbreak are allowed to soar. Subtlety may be missing, as is the comic relief sought but not found from Sacha Baron Cohen (The Dictator) and Helena Bonham Carter (Dark Shadows) as seeming escapees from a Tim Burton offering, but sentimentality triumphs over all.
That romanticism, and the overwhelming momentum of William Nicholson’s (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) script, ensures Les Misérables’ strengths eclipse its evident flaws. Rousing and unrelenting, it provides an imperfect but powerful realisation of the operatic screen dream fans have long awaited.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
Les Misérables
Director: Tom Hooper
UK, 2012, 157 min
In cinemas December 26
Distributor: Universal
Rated M
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