In a genre dominated by vapid musicals written by Rodger, Hammerstein, and Webber, few musicals have the depth necessary to keep me entertained. Les Miserables was one of the few, the proud, and the great. I have no idea why I had never listened to the music from this play or why I groaned when Eric got it from Redbox. This movie was FAN. TAST. IC.
The plot: This movie follows a prisoner, John Vailjean, from when he escapes from his parole after 19 years in prison for stealing some bread. Pretty reasonable, eh? He finds God and starts to run some sort of textile factory. Because John is dealing with Javert, someone who is after John, Fantine gets fired and forced into prostitution to feed her daughter Cosette. She dies of shock so, John vows to take care of Cosette. This is all in post revolutionary France and leads into the 1832 Paris Uprising.
I loved this movie. Loved it. They decided to have the actors sing live instead of recording it ahead of time and dubbing/lip synching it and that made everything more believable. I wasn't so sure if it was going to make a difference for how much effort Anne Hathaway had made it seem in an interview on the Daily Show, until "I Dreamed a Dream." Also, this movie was full of people that I knew were great actors, but I had no idea they could sing. So that made that fun. Also, I'm obsessed with points in history where people protest by putting trash in the street. So it was like this movie was tailored to my interests.
One thing I liked about this movie is that it didn't have a theme that incessantly ran throughout the movie. I mean, people are obsessed with "I Dreamed A Dream" and "Can You Hear The People Sing" but the music seemed to move with the plot and there was no pointless music. It conveyed how the characters were feeling. Also, when crunch an about 1500 page book into a musical that's roughly two hours long you have to keep up the pace.
To disagree with the haters, I loved Russell Crowe in this movie. He had a rough singing voice, but it was as he was about to kill himself, so, yeah, there's a lot of emotion there. It added to the moment and his character.
Towards the end of this movie, I totally bought into the hokeyness and was bouncing up and down singing "CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING? SINGING A SONG OF ANGRY MEN? IT IS THE MUSIC OF A PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT BE SLAVES AGAIN!" And it's was nifty that the characters that die, die because their dreams die.
Grade: A
Fun historical sidenote: The historical things that happen in this movie, happen in Paris four more times, and then the city and country leaders finally decide to make wide streets that are perpendicular to each other like most downtown city areas today. Then that, and the invention of Department stores and consumerism, stop the uprisings. It also leads to people living in different parts of towns based on wealth so the wealthy have less and less of an idea what it's like to be poor.
Nick's review: http://gorgview.com/les-miserables
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