look down
by Douglas Messerli
Claude
Michel Schönberg and Alan Boubil (book, based on the novel by Victor Hugo and
their original musical in French), Herbert Kretzmer (lyrics, with additional
text by James Fenton), William Nicholson (screenplay), Tom Hopper (director) Les Misérables / 2012
So is the pattern of this film revealed,
as various figures, including the evil Jauvert, vertiginously walking a high
ledge overlooking the city, shout-out in chant-like pieces the necessity of “looking
down,” while the score alternates with quieter pleas for beauty and grace. That
pattern, indeed, is at the center of this sprawling work’s various directions,
as some characters seek out love (Valjean, Marius, Cosette, Éponine), others
freedom through revolution, and still others look into the deep depths from
which they have risen or in which they, like Madame Thénardier and her husband,
remain. Unfortunately, it seems, neither the original musical nor this film
version, offers anything in between. Les Misérables, it seems, are unhappy
because they live at the extremes, phantom beings out of some vast tapestry
that keeps weaving and unweaving itself, each figure chasing or running from
one another like laboratory rats.
Allowing his international cast to use
their own dialects, from the Aussie-vocalizations of Jackman, the Kiwi
shout-outs of Crowe, and the apparently Cockney utterings of the
Dickensian-like David Huddelstone (as Gavroche)—all of whom are supposedly
French—Hopper creates a mish-mash of character-types that, once more, squeeze
any humanity from them.
Hopper’s over-the-top direction is
particularly unfortunate for Jackman—whose presence in this film was, in part,
what drew me to the theater—because his full and rich baritone voice on display
in his stage-version of Oklahoma!
here seems considerably strained, perhaps due to the fact that he was forced to
lose 30 pounds in order to appear like a man who has just spent nineteen years
in chains. As I’ve suggested, since Javert does little more that howl, I have
no idea whether Crowe can sing or not.
While I’m at it, I should admit that I
came to Les Misérables with a bit of
a chip on my shoulder, mostly because I see the lumbering and bumbling musical
score, similar to Cats, as being
responsible, in part, for the death of the American Broadway musical. Yes, both
works have moments of lilting melodies, but the unimaginative tunes of the rest,
combined with never ending series of banally rhymed couplets nearly drive me to
despair. If any tears flowed from eyes—and a few did; I’ve admitted elsewhere I’m
a sentimentalist and Les Misérables is
sentimentality determined to try to break your heart—I might almost attribute them
to the pain inflicted by its music and lyrics. It is hard to imagine, for example,
the following passage is sung:
Javert: Now Prisoner
24601, your time is up and your parole's begun.
You know what that means?
Jean Valjean: Yes, it
means I'm free.
Javert: No.
[hands him a yellow paper]
Javert: Follow to the
letter your itinerary, this badge of shame you wear
until you die. It warns that you're a dangerous man.
Jean Valjean: I stole
a loaf of bread. My sisters child was close to death, and until you die. It warns that you're a dangerous man.
we were starving...
Javert: And you will starve again unless you learn the meaning of the law!
Jean Valjean: I've learnt the meaning of those nineteen years; a slave of
the law.
Javert: Five years for what you did. The rest because you tried to run,
yes 24601...
Jean Valjean: My name is Jean Valjean!
Javert: And I'm Javert! Do not forget my name. Do not forget me, 24601.
All right opera has its strange moments, if translated into English, but this is just insufferable dialogue!
Or
consider this inane rhyme, repeated throughout the song:
Marius: In my life,
there is someone who touches my life. Waiting near...
Éponine: Waiting
here... "Life/life," "near/here." I could do better in my sleep, and have!
And then, there were those wonderful surprises,
such as the performance throughout of Eddie Redmayne as Marius, a handsome
young man with a glorious voice, particularly well employed in “Emply Chairs at
Empty Tables,” as he sings of the passing of his revolutionary partners. Quite
moving also was Samatha Bark’s rendering, despite the drip-drop of rain down
her face, of “On My Own.” Throughout, Amanda Seyfried as Cosette sang, although quite
waveringly, beautifully.
But in the end, none of them could save
Hopper’s up and down, in and out cinematic eye-balling of this war-horse of a
crowd-pleaser.
My
comments, surely, will mean little to those thousands of devotees of this
over-the-top display of loving and hating types, and even I did not share the
feelings of a slightly grumpy elderly man who left the theater loudly
muttering, “That was most boring movie I’ve ever seen.” And although I’ve heard news
of thunderous applauses in local movie theaters, no one applauded at the early
morning showing I attended. I might have simply called Hopper’s film, “ponderous.”
It’s hard to “Hear the People Sing” without a real human being in sight.
Los Angeles,
January 3, 2013
Reprinted
from Nth Position [England] (February 2013).
No comments:
Post a Comment