Les Mis is Les Magnifique! At 2 hours and 40 minutes – about as long as the Parisian war that it depicts – at least the audience is ever-so-grateful its not shot in 3D (like everything else lately.) The Oscar winning director, Tom Hooper, who won the 2010 Academy Award (for The King’s Speech) will be walking the red carpet once again! (FYI: I was the woman who escorted Tom and his father arm in arm, into the Oscars and down that red carpet for King’s Speech defecting momentarily from 127 Hours.)
Russell Crowe stars as Javert, the inspector, but looking more like he stepped off the Cap’n Crunch cereal box, determined to find the escaped convict, Valjean (Hugh Jackman) who has since become a distinguished gentleman and factory owner. Anne Hathaway portrays Fantine who “dreams a dream” (adios Susan Boyle) destined to nail an Oscar nomination… she can sing, she can soar our spirits, she can tear us up, and she can really deliver a performance of a young factory worker turned homeless and prostitute . Hathaway has to do whatever it takes to support her daughter, Cosette (Isabella Allen) who ends up in the care of Valjean, her Fairy Godfather. Cosette was previously raised in the household of the Thenardiers (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter) distant relatives who raise their own daughter, Eponine, with love, though all-but-ignore and abuse Cosette.
As the two young girls grow up, Eponine (Samantha Barks) and Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) fall for the handsome soldier Marius (Eddie Redmayne) and fate begins its sad and torturous twist of a love triangle.
Jackman can usually sing for sure, but in this he often struggles to hit the notes. He also struggles in his role that feel borderline pathetic in the end though his Wolverine sideburns help project a bit of tough. Crowe can’t sing but he doesn’t try to, instead delivering his manly-man character as the brute we know he can be. [this is ironic since his beginning were musical theatre in Australia.] In this, Crowe roams around as the villain version of Master & Commander singing his way through the town and threatening the well-being of little Cosette but oddly with a human touch to an otherwise sad and guilt-ridden character.
The actors sing live on set, big and bold, sans lipsynching close-up in our faces, over the top so much so this musical becomes “Singing in the Pain” as one colleague joked. This makes us – as an audience – feel a part of the bigness and the in-the-moment atrocities each character experiences. We’re right there with them inside them as they pour their hearts onto their sleeves. As a matter of fact, as the Screen Queen I was right there with them at the World premiere (literally) where every song practically got a standing ovation. Les Mis is inspiring, tearful and uplifting. The comic touch of Sacha Baron Cohen and Bonham Carter add pure delight to the misery of the theme with their performances archetypal of English literature.
One might ask why Tom Hooper would choose to direct an already successful stage play (and I did) – seen in 42 countries no less – as his follow up to The King’s Speech. But in a day where recession is hitting England so hard it stands to reason that current-day audiences might relate to poverty and overthrows thus creating their own sort of revolutionary musical. Hooper’s direction goes from King’s stuttering Speech to Royal Flawless Song!
Stage producer, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, should be proud (is proud) of this made-for-screen-adaptation from Victor Hugo’s original story. It’s undoubtedly going to leave an Oscar and BAFTA mark on all of London when it opens January 2013. So happy and humbled to be a part of its debut. ♔ ♕ ♚ ♛