Loved this film. I’ve a soft spot for the play as well, ever since the wife and I saw it on our honeymoon. I was worried the movie would let me down, actually, since the emotional power of the live performance would be difficult to translate to the screen. I actually found it quite interesting how they addressed the shift in medium.
Some folks have complained about the “talk-singing” of some of the libretto, the etreme close ups, and the weakness of Crowe’s voice. I can understand all of these cmplaints, but I think they also reflect a thematic artistic choice that I quite admired. Film is more intimate and individual a medium than the way Les Mis is traditionally staged. And I think Hopper made specific choices to emphasize that teh important conflict for this story was internal. Everything else was backdrop - Valjean’s conflict is with his own conscience and sense of duty. In the staeg play, Javert is generally a clear protagonist, their struggle almost mano-a-mano. But the film subjugates Javert - he becomes simply a civil servant, a recurring eample rather than a personified force of social injustice. The movie does not need him to be big - it can use establishing shots and visual scale to portray the social inequity directly. Hopper allows, and Crowe portrays, Javert on a human scale rather than an epic one.
As a musical choice, it certainly weakens Javert’s ongs. As a cinematic and thematic choice, I appreciated it very much. Javert’s suicide has always been a problematic conclusion to his dramatic arc in teh musical, precisel because he is generally (and for the dramatic requirements of the stage perhaps inescapably) portrayed as such an elemental and unyieding force, the personification of the unyielding injustices of the rigid social order. But I thought Crose’s portrayal showed a much more human Javert.
Thematically this allowed him to be a more effective foil to Valjean’s own struggles with change and identity. Dramatically I think it gave him a more beliveable entry point for his final fall. Some early touches (such as the scene where he tenders his resignation after believing he had falsely accused the Mayor) really served to foreshadow Javert’s complete identification with his own social role, a counter to Valjean;s ongoing struggle to define his own identity independent of social pressure.
And much more simply, Hathaway, jackman, and Barks were all phenomenal. The child actors were admirable in their parts, and I actually found Marius to be a more earnest and likable chacter in the film than I generally do in the play. redmayne brings a sincerity to teh role that I found unexpectedly compelling.
Personally, I could have done with a little less farce in the Thernadier’s. I think it is a more necessary counterpoint in the stage play than in the film. Bonham Carter and Baron Cohen do fine jobs in their roles, but I think if the staging of their bits had been a bit less over teh top it actually would have worked better in the film.
But I still loved it.
