How sad and depressing do you expect Les Miserables (movie) to be?

Cafe Society
1

I’m debating about watching Les Miserables one day this week. It opens on Christmas Day.

I vaguely recall reading parts of the book in high school. It’s a pretty heavy piece of literature. Jean Valjean jailed for stealing a loaf of bread. Fantine the working class woman fired for being an unwed mother, sells her teeth and hair. Turns to prostitution. The French Revolution. Heck, Les Miserables translates to The Wretched Poor. It’s right up there with Tale of Two Cities for oppression of the poor and eventual revolution.

I know the music is some of the most beautiful written. Thats why I want to see the movie. I’ve never had the chance to see the play.

Will this just ruin my Christmas? Should I wait until after the holidays?

2

The musical is depressing and uplifting, serious and comedic, beautiful and ugly, all at the same time. All I know is that I’m bringing a box of Kleenex. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to use it. Hell, I almost cried at one point in The Hobbit!

3

I saw a children’s theatre group doing their version of it recently (albeit with adult alumni of the group singing the major parts) and it was awesome. It’s designed to tug your heart strings - let them be tugged.

4

Yes, exactly. The big box.

It’s sad, for sure, but ultimately in that good cathartic Dickensian Christmas way. Evil is punished (mostly) good rewarded (although some of the good guys die) and we’re reminded that even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise*…

Don’t take little kids, though. IMHO.

*Sorry, jayjay. That’ll be in your head all day now, won’t it? :wink:

5

Can someone who has seen it tell me whether it is all singing (like Evita) or does it have spoken dialog as well?

I saw Evita in a movie theater when it came out several years ago, didn’t know it was all singing (like not one word was spoken) and it drove me freakin’ nuts. If Les Mis is like that I’ll wait until it comes out on DVD so I can take it in short doses.

6

Nitpick: the revolution depicted is actually the June Rebellion.

7

I wonder how many people love the music and never think about the words? :wink: I admit that I listen to the London cast recording and love it. But never really thought too much about the lyrics. It would have been different if I had seen the play.

I do want to see the movie for sure. I’ll bring tissues. :wink: I may wait until after New Years.

8

It’s close enough to all singing that you should probably see it at home.

9

The musical is, but I’ve heard that they’re reducing the recitative portions. What I’ve heard of some of the songs with recitative lead-ins is that a lot of them transition from straight dialogue to the recitative just before the actual song begins, so I’m imagining that it’s not going to be through-sung like the musical. I don’t know for sure, though, because the way the musical is set up an awful lot of the songs ARE conversations in the first place.

10

Yes, there are dialogue moments. In the musical there is only one line of spoken dialogue, and while the movie has a lot more than the musical, it’s still basically sung-through.

11

There’s a Trailer along with this short teaser article.

12

“Right, my girl! On your way!”?

13

My daughter and I are going to the first show tomorrow. Can’t wait!

14

I just came back from the 6pm showing, and it was magnificent! Two and a half hours and not a sour note. Cohen and Carter almost stole the show as the innkeepers, and Amanda Seyfried as Cosette sang like an angel. Jackman’s Jean Valjean and Crowe’s Javert balanced each other perfectly and I think that, if they had switched roles, it might have been just as good.

15

Saw the matinee yesterday, and while I was overall pleased, I wouldn’t say “not a sour note”; there were several, literally.

Spoilers ahoy:

[spoiler]Mostly what I didn’t like (Crowe’s singing, and to some extent his acting, the new song, Santa Claus in “Master of the House” (seriously, WTF?), Jackman’s unfathomable decision to *not *sing “Bring Him Home” in a falsetto, and strain his way through it instead) was far outweighed by what I did (pretty much everything else).

And it really wasn’t Crowe’s fault. By gum, he did try. It’s just a role way out of his range and training, and it wasn’t fair to cast him. They bumped everything up for him, and it didn’t work for me. Making Javert a tenor made “The Confrontation” painful to listen to (not enough contrast in voices), and took away a ton of Javert’s natural gravitas. This Javert seems petty and possessing a childish “it’s not fair!” attitude, rather than a mature adult reasoned dedication to order and law as higher concepts.

Hathaway’s “Dreamed a Dream” will probably piss of the divas in the crowd, but I loved it. Yes, she didn’t powerhouse through it. Yes, she missed a note here and there. But I think she gets across the utter despair in a way that women who treat the song like “Memories” will never understand.

Gavroche, as intended, broke my heart. Great kid, great casting, great filming. Bad timing…there was some more-than-textual pain among some members in the audience who couldn’t see the blood pooling around him without seeing dead CT schoolchildren. Ouch.

Little touches I loved - Javert takes off his (star shaped, natch) medal to pin to Gavroche’s dead body. Beautiful moment, one I don’t recall seeing in the stage productions. While Enjolras doesn’t die on the barricade itself, they do maneouver him into the iconic upside down leg bent sprawl, which I liked. Valjean’s candlesticks are a recurring image, with him all his life, which if it happens on stage, isn’t so noticeable as it is in the movie, and I thought it worked beautifully. Colm as the Bishop…perfection. There’s an out-of-story emotional punch, as Old-Stage-Valjean passes the torch to Young-Movie-Valjean, literally, with the candlesticks.[/spoiler]
Loved the onset (“live”) singing. I never want to see another movie musical pre-recorded. This is the best way to make it a real musical, with real acting.

They made maybe another dozen lines into spoken lines rather than sung, that’s it. So it’s still very nearly all sung.

16

Anne Hathaway thinks it’s the saddest new movie, but Samuel L. Jackson disagrees.

17

I loved it, but damn did it slow the fuck down in the third act. (We snuck in mini-bottles because I warned 'Im Indoors that after a while it isn’t about Valjean and Javert, it’s about two boring people you’ve never seen before and how much they love each other and not the other boring person you’ve never seen before that all the girls loved when they were in high school. Yep.)

I didn’t dislike Crowe, I think his acting was fine but his singing lacked gravitas. Hathaway blew me away, and I’ve never much liked her before.

18

Seriously? They raised it? Crowe sounded, to me, like a baritone forced to sing tenor. The only notes where he sounded comfortable were the low ones. I got the distinct impression that if he had taken a few months of training with a voice teacher who could make him really dig down and learn properly (i.e. not the stuff he does with his toy band) he could have done an excellent job.

19

I think so? I’m not 100% sure - it may be tone or training rather than absolute pitch, sure. Certainly Javert does have to hit some high notes - he’s often played by men described as “lyric baritones”, who can bridge the gap between tenor and baritone. But compare to this(Colm Wilkinson and Phillip Quast) and tell me what you think. Whether it’s pitch or tone, there’s just a far more interesting contrast between the voices to me.

I think Crowe has a perfectly find bar-band rockish folkish voice. I’d be very happy to listen to him with a guitar around the campfire. But it’s just not a Javerty voice.

20

Great heavens, that was hilarious! “Nothing says Christmas like slaves and whores.”