les miserables 2012 movie review

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Movie Review

The Wretched Lift Their Voices

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By Manohla Dargis

• Dec. 24, 2012

In the first long act of “Les Misérables,” Anne Hathaway opens her mouth, and the agony, passion and violence that have decorously idled in the background of this all-singing, all-suffering pop opera pour out. It’s a gusher! She’s playing Fantine, the factory worker turned prostitute turned martyr, and singing the showstopping “I Dreamed a Dream,” her gaunt face splotched red and brown. The artful grunge layered onto the cast can be a distraction, as you imagine assistant dirt wranglers anxiously hovering off camera. Ms. Hathaway, though, holds you rapt with raw, trembling emotion. She devours the song, the scene, the movie, and turns her astonishing, cavernous mouth into a vision of the void.

The director Tom Hooper can be a maddening busybody behind the camera, but this is one number in which he doesn’t try to upstage his performers. Maybe he was worried that Ms. Hathaway would wolf him down too. Whatever the case, he keeps it relatively simple. Moving the camera slightly with her — she lurches somewhat out of frame at one point, suggesting a violent, existential wrenching — he shoots the song in a head-and-shoulder close-up, with the background blurred. By that point, with her dignity and most of her pretty hair gone, Fantine has fallen as far as she can. She has become one of the abject castaways of the musical’s title, a wretched of the earth.

Written by Alain Boublil and the composer Claude-Michel Schönberg (with English-language lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer ), the musical “Les Misérables” is of course one really big show, perhaps the biggest and certainly one of the longest-running. Its Web site hints at its reach : Since the English-language version was first performed in London in 1985, it has been translated into 21 languages, performed in 43 countries, won almost 100 awards (Tony, Grammy) and been seen by more than 60 million people. In 1996 Hong Kong mourners sang “Do You Hear the People Sing” to memorialize Tiananmen Square . In 2009 the awkward duckling Susan Boyle became a swan and a world brand with her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” on the television show “Britain’s Got Talent.”

Somewhere amid the grime, power ballads and surging strings there is also Victor Hugo , whose monumental 1862 humanistic novel, “Les Misérables,” was, along with the musical “Oliver!,” Mr. Boublil’s original inspiration. Like the show, Mr. Hooper’s movie opens in 1815 and closes shortly after the quashed June Rebellion of 1832, boiling the story down to a pair of intertwined relationships.

The first pivots on the antagonism of a onetime prison guard, now inspector, Javert (Russell Crowe, strained) toward a former convict, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman, earnest); the second involves the love-at-first-sight swooning between Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a revolutionary firebrand. As a child, Cosette was rescued by Valjean from her caretakers, the Thénardiers (the energetic Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, who nicely stir, and stink up, the air).

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Film Review: ‘Les Miserables’

For all its expected highs, this adaptation of a justly beloved musical has been managed with more gusto than grace.

By Justin Chang

Justin Chang

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As a faithful rendering of a justly beloved musical, “ Les Miserables ” will more than satisfy the show’s legions of fans. Even so, director Tom Hooper and the producers have taken a number of artistic liberties with this lavish bigscreen interpretation: The squalor and upheaval of early 19th-century France are conveyed with a vividness that would have made Victor Hugo proud, heightened by the raw, hungry intensity of the actors’ live oncamera vocals. Yet for all its expected highs, the adaptation has been managed with more gusto than grace; at the end of the day, this impassioned epic too often topples beneath the weight of its own grandiosity.

The Universal release will nonetheless be a major worldwide draw through the holidays and beyond, spelling a happy commercial ending for a project that has been in development for roughly a quarter-century. Since its 1985 London premiere, the Cameron Mackintosh -produced tuner (adapted from Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg’s French production) has become one of the longest-running acts in legit history, outpaced on Broadway only by “ The Phantom of the Opera ” and “Cats.” “Les Miserables” has aged far more gracefully than those two ’80s-spawned perennials, owing largely to the lush emotionalism of Schoenberg’s score, the timeless sentiments articulated in Herbert Kretzmer’s lyrics, and the socially conscious themes, arguably more relevant than ever, set forth in Hugo’s much-filmed masterwork.

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In an intuitive yet bold scripting decision, scribes William Nicholson , Boublil, Schoenberg and Kretzmer have fully retained the show’s sung-through structure, with only minimal spoken dialogue to break the flow of wall-to-wall music. Not for nothing is “Do You Hear the People Sing?” the piece’s signature anthem; song is the characters’ natural idiom and the story’s lifeblood, and the filmmakers grasp this idea firmly enough to give the music its proper due. Even with some of the lyrics skillfully truncated, this mighty score remains the engine that propels the narrative forward.

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In visual terms, Hooper adopts a maximalist approach, attacking the material with a vigor and dynamism that suggest his Oscar-winning direction on “The King’s Speech” was just a warm-up. At every turn, one senses the filmmaker trying to honor the material and also transcend it, to deliver the most vibrant, atmospheric, physically imposing and emotionally shattering reading of the show imaginable. Yet the effect of this mammoth 158-minute production can be as enervating as it is exhilarating. Blending gritty realism and pure artifice, shifting from solos of almost prayerful stillness to brassy, clunkily cut-together ensemble numbers, it’s an experience whose many dazzling parts seem strangely at odds.

The film’s ambition is immediately apparent in a muscular opening setpiece that hints at the scope of Eve Stewart’s production design: In 1815 Toulon, France, a chain gang labors to tow a ship into port. Among the inmates is Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), overpunished for having stolen a loaf of bread nearly 20 years earlier, now being released on parole by Javert (Russell Crowe), the prison guard who will persecute him for years to come. With his scraggly beard, sunburnt skin and air of wild-eyed desperation, Valjean looks every inch a man condemned but, through the aid of a kind bishop ( Colm Wilkinson , who originated the role of Valjean in 1985), vows in his soul-searching number “What Have I Done?” to become a man of virtue.

In this and other sequences, Hooper (again working with “Speech” d.p. Danny Cohen ) opts to bring the camera close to his downtrodden characters and hold it there. It’s a gesture at once compassionate and calculated, and it’s never more effective than when it touches the face of Fantine (Anne Hathaway), a poor, unwed mother ejected from Valjean’s factory into the gutters.

Hathaway’s turn is brief but galvanic. Her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream,” captured in a single take, represents the picture’s high point, an extraordinary distillation of anguish, defiance and barely flickering hope in which the lyrics seem to choke forth like barely suppressed howls of grief. Hathaway has been ripe for a full-blown tuner showcase ever since she gamely sang a duet with Jackman at the Oscars in 2009, and she fulfills that promise here with a solo as musically adept as it is powerfully felt.

This sequence fully reveals the advantages of Hooper’s decision to have the thesps sing directly oncamera, with minimal dubbing and tweaking in post. As carefully calibrated with the orchestrations (by Anne Dudley and Stephen Metcalfe) in Simon Hayes’ excellent sound mix, the vocals sound intense, ragged and clenched with feeling, in a way that at times suggests neorealist opera. A few beats and notes may be missed here and there, but always in a way that serves the immediacy of the moment and the truth of the emotions being expressed, giving clear voice to the drama’s underlying anger and advocacy on behalf of the poor, marginalized and misunderstood.

Hathaway’s exit leaves a hole in the picture, which undergoes a tricky tonal shift as Valjean rescues Fantine’s young daughter, Cosette (Isabelle Allen), from her cruel guardians, the Thenardiers. Inhabited with witchy, twitchy comic abandon by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter , not terribly far removed from the grotesques they played in “Sweeney Todd,” these innkeepers amusingly send up their venal, disreputable and utterly unsanitary lifestyle in “Master of the House,” a memorably grotesque number that also marks the point, barely halfway through, when “Les Miserables” starts to splutter.

As it shifts from one dynamically slanted camera angle to another via Melanie Ann Oliver and Chris Dickens’ busy editing, the picture seems reluctant to slow down and let the viewer simply take in the performances. That hectic, cluttered quality becomes more pronounced as the story lurches ahead to the 1832 Paris student uprisings, where the erection of a barricade precipitates and complicates any number of subplots. These include Javert’s ongoing pursuit of Valjean, their frequent run-ins seeming even more coincidental than usual in this movie context; the blossoming romance between Cosette (now played by Amanda Seyfried) and young revolutionary leader Marius ( Eddie Redmayne ); and the noble suffering of Eponine (Samantha Barks), whose unrequited love for Marius is heartbreakingly exalted in “On My Own.”

As the characters’ voices and stories converge in the magisterial medley “One Day More,” the frequent crosscutting provides a reasonable visual equivalent of the nimble revolving sets used onstage. Yet even on this broader canvas, the visual space seems to constrict rather than expand, and the sense of a sweeping panorama remains elusive. From there, the film proceeds through an ungainly pileup of gun-waving mayhem before unleashing a powerful surge of emotion in the suitably grand finale.

Devotees of the stage show will nonetheless be largely contented to see it realized on such an enormous scale and inhabited by well-known actors who also happen to possess strong vocal chops. The revelation here is Redmayne, who brings a youthful spark to the potentially milquetoast role of Marius, and who reveals an exceptionally smooth, full-bodied singing voice, particularly in his mournful solo “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.”

Jackman’s extensive legit resume made him no-brainer casting for Valjean, and he embodies this sinner-turned-saint with the requisite fire and gravitas. Whether he’s comforting the dying Fantine or sweetly serenading the sleeping Cosette (in the moving “Suddenly,” a song written expressly for the screen), Jackman projects a stirring warmth and nobility. He’s less at home with the higher register of Valjean’s daunting two-octave range; there’s more strain than soul in his shrilly delivered performance of “Bring Him Home,” usually one of the show’s peak moments.

Crowe reveals a thinner, less forceful singing voice than those of his co-stars, robbing the morally blinkered Javert of some dramatic stature, although his screen presence compensates. Barks, a film newcomer wisely retained from past stagings, more than holds her own; Seyfried (who previously flexed her musical muscles in “Mamma Mia!”) croons ever so sweetly as the lovely, passive Cosette; Aaron Tveit cuts a dashing figure as the impulsive student revolutionary Enjolras; and young Daniel Huttlestone makes a delightful impression as the street urchin Gavroche, bringing an impish streak of energy to the proceedings.

• Production: A Universal (in U.S./U.K.) release presented in association with Relativity Media of a Working Title Films/Cameron Mackintosh production. Produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Mackintosh. Executive producers, Angela Morrison, Liza Chasin, Nicholas Allott, F. Richard Pappas. Directed by Tom Hooper. Screenplay, William Nicholson, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schoenberg, Herbert Kretzmer, based on Cameron Mackintosh's production of Boublil & Schoenberg's original stage musical "Les Miserables," from the novel by Victor Hugo.
• Crew: Camera (color), Danny Cohen; editors, Melanie Ann Oliver, Chris Dickens; music, Claude-Michel Schoenberg; lyrics, Herbert Kretzmer; orchestrations, Anne Dudley, Stephen Metcalfe; musical director, Stephen Brooker; music producers, Boublil, Claude-Michel Schoenberg, Anne Dudley; music supervisor, Becky Bentham; production designer, Eve Stewart; supervising art director, Grant Armstrong; set decorator, Anna Lynch-Robinson; costume designer, Paco Delgado; sound (Datasat/SDDS/Dolby Surround), Simon Hayes; supervising sound editors, John Warhurst, Lee Walpole; re-recording mixers, Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson; special effects supervisor, Mark Holt; visual effects supervisor, Richard Bain; visual effects producer, Tim Field; visual effects, Double Negative, the Mill, Utopia, Rushes Postproduction, Lola VFX; choreographer, Liam Steel; stunt coordinator, Paul Herbert; associate producers, Thomas Schoenberg, Francesca Budd; assistant director, Ben Howarth; casting, Nina Gold. Reviewed at Mann Chinese 6, Hollywood, Nov. 24, 2012. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 158 MIN.
• With: Jean Valjean - Hugh Jackman Javert - Russell Crowe Fantine - Anne Hathaway Cosette - Amanda Seyfried Marius - Eddie Redmayne Madame Thenardier - Helena Bonham Carter Thenardier - Sacha Baron Cohen Eponine - Samantha Barks Enjolras - Aaron Tveit With: Isabelle Allen, Daniel Huttlestone.

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• DVD & Streaming

Les Misérables

• Drama , Musical , Romance , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

• December 25, 2012
• Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean; Russell Crowe as Javert; Anne Hathaway as Fantine; Amanda Seyfried as Cosette; Helena Bonham Carter as Madame Thénardier; Sacha Baron Cohen as Thénardier; Samantha Barks as Éponine; Eddie Redmayne as Marius

Home Release Date

• March 22, 2013

Distributor

• Universal Pictures

Movie Review

The world can be a terrible and cruel place. A miserable place, you might say. And that’s especially true in 1815.

That’s when the emaciated and hobbled Jean Valjean is finally released from his prison debts. Nearly 20 years he spent in near slavery—five for simply stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving child, another 14 for trying to escape his too-cruel bonds.

Valjean’s misery doesn’t end there, though. Even after parole he must carry and present his papers in every town and hamlet his bare, half-frozen feet can carry him to. Papers that mark him as a former criminal so that none of the locals will offer him work or give shelter to the likes of him. In fact, he’s hounded and beaten like a mongrel wherever he goes. Kindness and forgiveness are but the hopes of fools.

Fortunately for Valjean there is one man who is willing to offer him a bit of both. A priest sees him shivering in a church doorway and invites him in for a meal, some bread, a glass of wine—luxuries Valjean never believed he’d see again.

In spite of this great kindness, however, the marked man can’t keep himself from stealing the priest’s few silver plates and cups. It’s a shameful, ungrateful move born out of desperation. And he should have known that a criminal with a sack of stolen silver doesn’t get far. The authorities nab him and drag him to the church, ready to beat him and send him back to the galleys.

It’s then that Valjean gets his first glimpse of heaven’s grace. Of God’s infinite mercy even in the face of sickening sin.

The priest says that he freely gave the plates and cups to the ex-convict.

“In fact, you forgot the most valuable pieces,” the priest reports, shoving two silver candlesticks into Valjean’s sack. Then the kindly churchman whispers in Valjean’s ear, “You must use this silver to become an honest man.”

“What have I done, sweet Jesus?” Valjean shouts out as he gives lyrical voice to his inner pain and shame. “Is there another way to go?” And as he prays and cries before a church altar, the answer soon comes. Yes, there is another course, that inner voice seems to say. You must be a different man … a better man.

[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

That’s exactly what Valjean does. He rips up his parole papers and uses his silver to build a business that employs the poor. And he stays ever mindful of any who may be in need. For instance, he singlehandedly rescues a man from a tipped over wagon. Later, when another man is falsely accused of being him, Valjean presents himself before the court to admit his guilt and vindicate the put-upon prisoner (even though that means he’ll likely be arrested).

One night, Valjean spots one of his former workers—a woman named Fantine who was unjustly fired by Valjean’s foreman. He rushes to her aid and eventually promises to adopt the dying woman’s daughter Cosette. He raises the girl as his daughter and sacrifices for her repeatedly, even extending his protective umbrella to cover the boy she eventually falls in love with, Marius. Indeed, he puts his life on the line to save his life. (Marius is in danger because he’s involved in a quest to free the masses from the tyranny of the ruling class, embraced by a group of young zealots who stir up a public revolution.)

The “love at first sight” infatuation between Cosette and her handsome suitor Marius eventually evolves into a more enduring commitment. But at first it’s obvious that a girl named Éponine is the one who truly loves this young man. In fact, she ultimately sacrifices her life to protect him—which is the first time he recognizes her feelings.

It’s that kind of commitment and self-sacrifice that drives the unmarried Fantine, even in her fallen state, to desperately do everything she can to support her daughter (who is being kept by another family). After getting thrown into the streets, Fantine sells all she has—her hair, her teeth … and finally her body. (More on the latter sacrifice in “Sexual Content.”)

Police inspector Javert is always in pursuit of the lawbreaking Valjean. On the face of things, he is a man dedicated to upholding every letter of the law. However, it’s soon apparent that the officer is more obsessed with his idea of carrying out levied sentences than in true justice. Certainly forgiveness is not in his vocabulary. Which makes it all the more powerful when Valjean spares his pursuer’s life at a crucial juncture, opting to replace vengeance with grace and letting him go free.

Spiritual Elements

This is a time in France when the church was a place of sought-out refuge for all. Crosses, crucifixes and religious iconography can be spotted on nearly every wall and in every room. We see a convent full of nuns, and Valjean in several churches.

When the priest invites Valjean in for a meal, he tells him, “What we have, we have to share.” The pastor prays over their meal. And when later he gives the ex-convict his silver he tells him, “I have saved your soul for God.” We see Valjean praying, looking skyward at various points after that.

Several people sing of the disappointments and agonies of life, and their hopes for God’s aid and forgiveness. Some wonder if God exists. But this operetta does not. Its lyrics and narrative theme point straight toward God’s grace, His love, His forgiveness, His mercy, His sacrifice for us all.

When Valjean steps forward to help Fantine and rescue Cosette, Fantine tells him, “Good monsieur, you come from God in heaven.” Before he dies, Valjean asks God and his daughter to forgive all his trespasses, and he states that “to love another person is to see the face of God.”

Sexual Content

Twenty or so prostitutes plying their “trade” beneath the docks expose just about as much skin as is possible in a PG-13 film, cupping their breasts, and shaking their torsos and backsides in the direction of potential customers. The famous “Lovely Ladies” song speaks of sailors “poking” the women and dropping their “anchors.” And we see quick images of some of them doing just that in the shadow-shrouded grime and filth.

Then the camera takes a bit longer watching Fantine—dressed in a hiked-up, bare-shouldered petticoat—as she and her first sexual customer consummate their transaction with realistic sexual movements. Her pain and despair over what she feels she’s forced to do is so palpable here that it’s nearly as smothering as the grimness of her surroundings and the crudeness of the act itself.

Another sex scene, this one set up to be humorous, involves a different prostitute (clothed) straddling a male customer on a bed. Again we see them moving and bouncing as another man steals a coin purse while hiding beneath them.

Picking a man’s pocket, an innkeeper named Thénardier fondles a woman’s clothed breast. His wife sits on a handsome officer’s lap and reaches her hand down toward his crotch as she sings. We see a man’s nearly naked backside. Éponine binds her breasts with a long cloth to pass for a boy. Fantine is fired by a lusting foreman who tries to seduce her. Fantine, Madame Thénardier and young Éponine, along with other women, all display too-generous amounts of their breasts by way of their tightly cinched bodices.

Violent Content

As the short-lived revolution takes place in the streets of Paris, there are a number of clashes involving cannon and rifle fire. Improvised barricades, along with their occupants, are blown up. Most victims fall down dead with a small amount of blood spatter. Some are wounded, bleeding from foreheads or upper bodies. A young woman and a 12-year-old boy are shot by soldiers, and we see them bleed to death. We see stacked corpses in the street, and the gutters run red.

Several people are punched or hit with wooden clubs. And an aggressive lout has his face scratched by an angry Fantine. Fantine also has some of her teeth removed by a barber with a crude set of clamps; we see the bloodied holes in her gums when she sings. Valjean is beaten several times by townspeople after his release from prison.

When faced with the conflict between accepting an unexplained grace and delivering an immoral “justice,” Javert reasons that he can’t live with either choice … and commits suicide. He leaps from a high bridge, and his body crashes viciously into a stone partition before sinking into the water below.

Crude or Profane Language

One s-word. One or two uses each of “h‑‑‑,” “a‑‑” and “b‑‑tard,” one of “b–ch.” Jesus’ name is misused a half-dozen times, most often by the innkeeper. God’s also comes up as exclamatory.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Valjean and the priest have wine with their dinner. Customers at a bar/inn drink some form of wine or alcohol. And young revolutionaries regularly smoke pipes and pass bottles of wine around during their planning meetings and behind their barricades.

Before prostituting herself, Fantine is given, and drinks, a small vial of a pain-killing agent.

Other Negative Elements

The garish and crude antics of the thieving innkeepers are lightly “celebrated” as humorous. They include urinating (onscreen) into a wine bottle that’s destined for a patron’s table, and grinding up rats, birds and cat tails for meat pies. Oh, and it turns out that their “care” for Cosette was something much closer to using her as a slave.

Realism and musical theater. The two don’t readily mix. In fact, musical theater is by its very nature something that purposely stretches beyond the borders of reality—adding a sparkling song to any conversation and an orchestral sweep to every tear.

Thus, in bringing Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s blockbuster musical to the world of movies, director Tom Hooper had to go to considerable lengths to try to fuse the two. Sometimes in gritty directions.

Hooper insisted, for instance, that for the sake of realism, all the show’s lyrical lines (and all of its lines are lyrical) had to be delivered live on the set rather than lip-synced to prerecorded tracks. That makes for some particularly powerful moments, most of them delivered with emotionally wrenching oomph by Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway as Valjean and Fantine. But for other “more-actor-than-singer” performers in the cast it made things challenging. The rules-obsessed Javert, for example, is a central character left almost featureless because of actor Russell Crowe’s struggles to emote and hit his high notes at the same time.

Then there are the film’s unflinching depictions of Parisian squalor in the early 1800s. From the wretched, toothless alley-bound masses to the blood-filled street gutters to the scab-covered, half-dressed prostitutes fornicating and shaking their “goods” under the grimy port docks, this Les Mis presents some seriously disquieting moments. Moments that no tune can rescue and that few families will want to stomach.

It would be grossly unfair, though, not to end this review with tribute to a story of the struggle between man’s laws and God’s grace in a fallen, heartless world. When the ill-fated Fantine is shorn, beaten and stripped of her humanity while desperately trying to care for her daughter, her song of lost dreams takes on a painful intensity rarely seen on film. And when the repeatedly maligned and beaten-down Jean Valjean falls to his knees in awe of one man’s kindness and in recognition of God’s life-changing love, we can fully and profoundly understand his tearful surprise and emotional exhilaration.

There are story threads of revenge and rescue, revolution and romance in this epic opus. But at its immersive and orchestrally soaring heart, Les Misérables makes it clear that we wretched humans can only truly find freedom by forgiving and loving one another. And we can only do that by openly accepting God’s redemption. God’s. Not just one merciful man’s. And that’s a beautiful song indeed.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Les Misérables Reviews

This is a decidedly gritty and grounded adaptation, with Hooper’s assured direction capturing the horror and humanity of revolutionary France.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 16, 2024

This is a decidedly gritty and grounded adaptation, with Hooper’s assured direction capturing the horror and humanity of revolutionary France.

Hooper brings an appropriate sense of grandness to the musical [...] but overall, the creative choices call more attention to how it was made and distract from the powerful story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 20, 2022

Despite its faults, the story of "Les Misérables" is timeliness for a reason. There is something special about Claude-Michel Schönberg's music that makes you stand up to attention which makes the film enjoyable in spite of its imperfections.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 16, 2022

A sweeping epic musical that includes incredible performances by Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, and star-making turns by Eddie Redmayne and Samantha Barks. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 30, 2021

The pacing is surprisingly well handled, the themes of hope and love are commanding, and the epic presentation and striking tragedies can't be overlooked.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 2, 2020

This version of Les Miserables is better than anyone dared to dream.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 26, 2020

Jackman succeeds tremendously and certainly warrants a Best Actor nomination.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 13, 2020

There is a lot to admire here ... But at the same time, the great pieces didn't quite fit together to make a perfect whole.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 29, 2020

An intricate layer of musical themes and cues, notes and songs repeat and reappear, connecting the characters, stories, and historical epochs.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 19, 2020

An impressively epic screen adaptation of the smash-hit musical based on the famous book by Victor Hugo.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 12, 2020

Epic in every sense of the word though occasionally unpolished as an uncut diamond, Les Misérables stirs the heart and soul of every musical fan.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 26, 2019

It's a spectacle without the aspects that make it a spectacle.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 13, 2019

The real stars here are Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. Go to see their truly inspired portrayals, as well as the new song Suddenly.

Full Review | Jul 30, 2019

This is the kind of show that demands to be seen live, and no amount of cinematic spectacle can replace a Broadway production.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 8, 2019

Director Tom Hooper stays faithful to the Broadway adaptation, and for the most part it works.

Full Review | Apr 11, 2019

Hammy camerawork and duff delivery aside, Les Misérables' biggest crime is arguably its lack of true spectacle.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 25, 2019

For those unfamiliar with the play, watching the movie will make for a decent introduction; it's a bit overlong, perhaps, but while there's a slight disconnect from the source material, there's also an undeniable passion and respect for it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 20, 2019

A spectacular musical adaptation, Les Miserables is a mind-boggling production.

Full Review | Jan 26, 2019

If your Christmas must include streets soaked in blood alongside bawdy, dishonest, but so amusing innkeepers, Les Miserables is certainly the holiday movie for you.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 18, 2018

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Movie Reviews

In paris, misery and music blended for the big screen.

Ian Buckwalter

Hugh Jackman uses his Broadway-tested voice to give life to reformed criminal Jean Valjean in an epic adaptation of the stage musical Les Miserables. Laurie Sparham/Universal Pictures hide caption

Les Miserables

• Director: Tom Hooper
• Genre: Musical
• Running time: 157 minutes

Rated PG-13 for suggestive and sexual material, violence and thematic elements

With: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway

Half an hour into Tom Hooper's adaptation of the long-running stage musical Les Mis e rables , he fixes his camera on Anne Hathaway's tortured, tear-streaked face, and she delivers what ought to become one of the great moments in musical cinema history — right up there with Dorothy singing wistfully of a land far away, Gene Kelly swinging happily around damp lamp poles, and a problem like Maria singing to the grassy Austrian hillsides. She's that good.

It's also Hathaway's last big moment in the movie, as the single-mother-turned-prostitute Fantine, who dies early in the story. It's a testament to the performances delivered by the actors in the film's bigger roles that the remaining two hours aren't spent wishing for more Fantine.

It's also a testament to the strength of Claude-Michel Schonberg's music that everything after the show-stopping lament of Fantine's "I Dreamed a Dream" doesn't come across as so much padding.

Watch Clips

Credit: Universal Pictures

'My Daughter'

'Who Am I?'

'On My Own'

Schonberg's diverse songwriting has always been the show's greatest asset, matching the impressively epic scope of the story — adapted from Victor Hugo's gargantuan historical novel about the lives of a number of interconnected characters in the years leading up to the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris — with an equally impressive range of musical styles. Huge patriotic anthems coexist alongside wistful love songs, comic barroom pieces with tragic laments, the joints smoothed over by the composer's habit of frequently echoing themes and familiar bits of melody. There's plenty of opportunity for those musical quotes too, as the work is nearly devoid of spoken dialogue, through-sung with recitative sections connecting the larger pieces.

Hooper makes some interesting casting decisions, blending accomplished musical theater actors with some not known for their voices. Broadway veteran Hugh Jackman takes on the central role of Jean Valjean, the honorable ex-con around whom all these other lives seem to revolve. Samantha Barks is the only actor here to reprise a role she played onstage, as Eponine,the daughter of two crooked innkeepers — Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen, in excellently conceived comic casting. Hathaway stands out as an actor not generally associated with musicals; others in that category not so much, like the slightly too-warbly Amanda Seyfried as Fantine's daughter Cosette, and thin-voiced Eddie Redmayne as the revolutionary romantic Marius, who falls for her. Then again, their love-at-first-sight romance is the least interesting subplot of the film, so it's difficult for them to rise above the blandness of their story.

Jean Valjean and young Cosette (Isabelle Allen), two of the most iconic characters in contemporary musical theater, come to the big screen. Laurie Sparham/Universal Pictures hide caption

Jean Valjean and young Cosette (Isabelle Allen), two of the most iconic characters in contemporary musical theater, come to the big screen.

The biggest surprise though may be Russell Crowe as Javert, the dogged inspector who tracks Valjean over the 17 years covered by the film. At first listen, Crowe sounds miscast, a barroom singer put on a stage too large. Yet his brutish vocal presence tends to fit Javert, who is in many ways the movie's most fascinating character, a man who plays an instrument of blind justice when he's really carrying out a lifetime of revenge for the sins of his parents. His transformation from emotionless oppressor to penitent man is the film's most significant character journey, and a fitting personal face for the political strife that forms the story's backdrop.

Part of the success of the performances in the film owes greatly to Hooper's decision to record the actors singing on set, rather than have them lip-sync to pre-recorded tracks, the usual method for filming musicals. The technique works exactly as intended: The actors, freed from having to match a vocal performance from weeks or months prior, are able to live in the moment. The impact on the emotional immediacy of the songs is striking.

Unfortunately, if Hooper is to take credit for what that technique adds to the film, he also takes the fall for failing to match that innovation visually. Too many songs are shot in long, single-shot close-ups of the actor singing; the intent may have been to further showcase the performance (and to keep the actors from running out of breath — witness Redmayne's dodgy vocal performance while forced to walk and sing during "In My Life"), but in practice it makes the movie visually static when everything about it is constantly moving. It takes an expansive epic and stuffs it into a too-restrictive frame.

The movie also suffers somewhat from the obvious skimping on digital effects. Digital backdrops and establishing shots are used frequently, and none look convincing. When Javert walks the edge of the Parisian rooftops during "Stars," it's difficult to take the danger seriously when it's so obvious he's only at risk of falling onto a green screen covered over with digital images.

Luckily, it's hard to concentrate on anything but Crowe in that moment, as he delivers one of his best performances in recent memory here. That's how it goes with the rest of the movie too, as the music and the magnetic performances make many of the directorial missteps fade into the background.

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Les miserables.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 48 Reviews
• Kids Say 192 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Excellent film adaptation of gritty, heartbreaking musical.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this all-star version of Les Miserables is an adaptation of the world-famous stage musical, which itself is based on Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel. Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, and Anne Hathaway star in the gritty, often-heartbreaking tale of justice, duty, love, and revolution…

Why Age 14+?

Almost all the dialogue is sung, with very little profanity, but there are a cou

Some bawdy scenes/references, especially in a few scenes that feature prostitute

Much of the second half of the film focuses on the June Rebellion, a Paris upri

Several scenes feature people drinking wine, including one set at an inn that's

Any Positive Content?

The story's ultimate take-away is about the redemptive power of faith and love -

Although Jean Valjean is a fugitive who breaks parole and spends much of the fil

Almost all the dialogue is sung, with very little profanity, but there are a couple of uses of words including "s--t" (once), "bitch," "ass," "hell," "damn," and "bastard." Other songs have some sexual references and mentions of whores.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some bawdy scenes/references, especially in a few scenes that feature prostitutes and a brothel. One scene shows a prostitute being used by a client (her skirt is up; he's on top of her); it isn't erotic or revealing. Lots of cleavage; lyrics include phrases like "ready for a quick one or a thick one in the park" and "thinks he's quite a lover, but there's not much there."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Much of the second half of the film focuses on the June Rebellion, a Paris uprising in 1832; there are many battle scenes that include gunfights, cannons, explosions, hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and fists, and plenty of dramatic, sad deaths (even children are involved). Because it's a musical, the violence is more play-like than realistic, and there's not much blood or gore (though one post-battle scene does show a stream of blood running down the cobblestone pavement), but it feels much grittier than the stage production. There are also some nasty beatings and a bone-crunching suicide leap. A woman prostitutes herself out of desperation; the scene is brutal and heart-wrenching. She scuffles with a potential client and bites him (a little blood is shown).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Several scenes feature people drinking wine, including one set at an inn that's filled with drunken patrons.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

The story's ultimate take-away is about the redemptive power of faith and love -- of God and/or of another person. And it raises thoughtful questions about the nature of justice, power, and duty. That said, many of the characters live truly miserable lives, and good deeds are rarely rewarded. But Jean Valjean does seek to do the right thing and to care for others, even though it might cost him his freedom. And Marius and his cohorts are motivated by passion and dedication to an ideal, even if things don't go the way they planned.

Positive Role Models

Although Jean Valjean is a fugitive who breaks parole and spends much of the film trying to avoid being recaptured, the fact that he was originally imprisoned for a minor crime and then spends the rest of his life trying to selflessly help others are powerful mitigating factors. The dogged Javert is motivated by a powerful sense of duty and always thinks he's doing the right thing. The students are driven by a passionate belief in a cause. Fantine is a devoted mother who will do anything to keep her child safe; Eponine is similarly self-sacrificing for love. The Thenardiers are moral black holes who stop at nothing to make a profit, but they're clearly intended to be scoundrels.

Parents need to know that this all-star version of Les Miserables is an adaptation of the world-famous stage musical, which itself is based on Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel. Hugh Jackman , Russell Crowe , and Anne Hathaway star in the gritty, often-heartbreaking tale of justice, duty, love, and revolution. The film deals with abject poverty, prostitution, imprisonment, corruption, war, and death; all of which fans of the musical will be expecting -- but bringing the story to the screen means it has a much more realistic feel (despite the fact that the actors sing virtually all of the dialogue). Characters suffer painful beatings, degrade themselves out of desperation, engage in gun and bayonet fights, claw their way through unspeakable filth, and more. Expect some bawdy lyrics/references (with a sprinkling of curse words, including one "s--t"), a very sad scene in which an unwilling prostitute "entertains" a client, plenty of cleavage, some blood, and a few very sad deaths (including one suicide). But ultimately, Les Miserables is about the redemptive power of love and faith, and there are many moments of hope and beauty amid the miserable ones. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (48)
• Kids say (192)

Based on 48 parent reviews

Incredible film

Disappointing, what's the story.

Set in 1800s France, LES MISERABLES is a faithful adaptation of the massively popular stage show -- which is based on the classic novel by Victor Hugo. The basic story centers on Jean Valjean ( Hugh Jackman ), a fugitive who's wanted for breaking parole after serving 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread (and then trying to escape). The dogged and misguidedly by-the-book Inspector Javert ( Russell Crowe ) is at his heels, even though it's been years since Valjean left prison. Meanwhile, the former convict has dedicated himself to helping others -- especially Cosette, the young daughter of doomed factory worker Fantine ( Anne Hathaway ), who loses her job and turns to prostitution in desperation. After Fantine's death, Valjean raises Cosette ( Amanda Seyfried ) as his own until they're both caught up in the June Rebellion of 1832 in Paris, when Valjean encounters Javert again and must decide whether to continue to live on the run or take a stand. Cosette, meanwhile, has fallen for the young revolutionary Marius ( Eddie Redmayne ) -- but little does he know that Eponine (Samantha Barks), the daughter of the crooked innkeepers who had initially raised Cosette on Fantine's behalf, is enamored of him. Love and duty are intertwined in this searing epic about faith, forgiveness, class struggles, politics, poverty, and change.

Is It Any Good?

From the first scene, Les Miserables is both majestic and brutal, the beauty of the cinematography and the music achingly juxtaposed against the cruelty and savagery of its characters' lives. Expect your emotions to be wrenched this way and that; the actors -- especially Jackman, Hathaway, and Crowe -- have thrown everything on the table, making for a movie you won't easily forget. Director Tom Hooper had the actors sing live as the cameras rolled, and it was a brilliant decision, capturing the rawness of performances that sought to elevate the actors beyond warbling iconic songs in tune. You can feel them living the lyrics, sampling them as if they've never been sung before.

No wonder the film has earned so many accolades; this one's worth the buzz. Crowe's craggy, rock-star voice at times feels at odds with the rest of the cast's style, but his deeply felt Javert persuades. In the end, he seems utterly lost and broken, and we feel for him. At times you wish the camera would pull back a little, or that the score could quiet down a little to let a moment just be -- there's virtue in the plainly staged scene, too -- but there are few of those, thankfully. Les Miserables is a wonder.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the movie's messages. What is it saying about faith and love? About justice and duty? Why is Javert so determined to take Valjean back to prison? Valjean clearly becomes a noble person, even though he's also a fugitive and a lawbreaker. Does he deserve to go to back to jail, as the law requires?

Why are the students so passionate about their cause? Do you agree with them that it's one worth dying for? Have you ever felt that strongly about anything?

How well do film actors perform in a movie that requires them to sing almost every line of dialogue? Why do you think filmmakers cast mostly movie stars instead of veteran stage actors?

For fans of the stage musical -- which version do you prefer, and why? What was changed? What was missing -- or added? Why do you think the filmmakers made the changes they did?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 25, 2012
• On DVD or streaming : March 22, 2013
• Cast : Anne Hathaway , Hugh Jackman , Russell Crowe
• Director : Tom Hooper
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Musical
• Topics : Book Characters , History , Music and Sing-Along
• Run time : 157 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : suggestive and sexual material, violence and thematic elements
• Awards : Academy Award , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner
• Last updated : August 8, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Movie Review: Les Misérables (2012)

• Aaron Leggo
• Movie Reviews
• 15 responses
• --> December 28, 2012

Providing comfort.

From the page to the stage to the screen, it’s been quite the journey for Les Misérables . Once Victor Hugo’s novel, then Cameron Mackintosh’s stage musical, and now Tom Hooper’s movie, the beloved tale of lives in the gutters of 19th century France hits the big screen in musical form looking, well, almost identical to the stage version. Apparently this was one adaptation effort too many. And apparently Tom Hooper temporarily forgot that the sets and makeup were being designed for a camera and not for the back row of a stage theatre. It’s the only explanation for how garish and awful a visual experience this version of Les Misérables provides. Keeping the sung-through style of all singing all the time almost intact means that Hooper’s movie still sounds great, but it looks like a decrepit theme park gone laughably awry.

Since the music and the majority of the script are already done and such an adaptation as this needs to justify its stage-to-screen transformation, there’s no bigger or better space to find its own identity than in the visual language of the picture. So while being able to comfortably enjoy the melodious sounds of the famous tunes once more is still an enjoyable experience, it feels like such an automatically integrated pleasure that little credit can go to Hooper for anything other than the bold decision to record live vocals on set as opposed to having the actors dub their lip synched performances in post-production like most musical movies. That decision remains a fine call on Hooper’s part, as it gives the various performances the space to breathe on screen. But too bad Hooper’s camera just as quickly suffocates that space with cramped compositions that make the nearly three hour running time a stifling bore.

Using close-ups to capture emotion and action in the vast majority of the shots, Hooper completely discards any sensible or even abstractly communicable form of cinematic language and instead turns nearly every scene into an entirely hideous display of misconceived framing. Even an action as simple as a character entering a room becomes a confusing stumble marred additionally by odd editing choices. Actual action sequences involving scuffles between characters are even more disastrous, clumsily cobbling together images of movement into a sloppy blur.

Watching this all unfold over such a long period of screen time (and without the stage version’s apparently necessary intermission) is a chore under Hooper’s direction. Having enjoyed the stage version quite immensely both times I’ve seen it, I figure there’s a way to get this tale to the screen without losing nearly all of its magic along the way, but shoving the camera in every actor’s face is certainly not the way to accomplish such a feat. Letting the makeup team run rampant with ridiculous alterations that appear painfully shoddy when shot at such tight angles is another clear mistake that contributes to the overall ugliness of Les Misérables . Sure, some of the characters and situations call for some grimy prosthetics or gaudy colors, but Hooper’s team takes it too far, swapping effective subtlety for showy theatricality.

In the briefest of moments that Hooper pulls the camera away from an actor’s face, thus sparing us the sight of the low caliber makeup work for a moment, the screen is usually filled with some cheap CGI in a disconcerting attempt to cinematically depict the immensity of a situation that could not be fully executed on stage. When the movie opens and we first meet story hero Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), the grizzled prisoner is one of many men pulling a massive ship onto a dry dock with nothing but rope and pure strength. It’s a moment of spectacle captured in a manner that is unique to cinema, but the scene still suffers from hokey digital effects that denigrate the imagery. Other rare moments of the camera being pulled back suffer from blatant green screen work and lazy bird’s-eye view shots of Paris streets painted with pixels.

Searching for guidance.

Occasionally, the strength of the music breaks through Hooper’s wall of bad camera work to actually strike a chord. The songs can still stir at times and never better than during Anne Hathaway’s passionate belting of the signature song “I Dreamed a Dream.” It’s a touching scene and perhaps the one time that Hooper’s otherwise vapid framing works in an actor’s favor. Pushing Hathaway’s Fantine into one corner of the screen, isolating her, and letting her be nearly swallowed up by the surrounding darkness is actually a visual touch that the emotional scene can use. But then the technique of pushing actors against the edge of a frame is eventually overused and Hooper’s lack of visual imagination leads to lamely recycled compositions.

It seems that beyond casting the movie (Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried also star) and opting for live vocals, Hooper can’t get anything else right. His penchant for capturing every longing look, every tear, every cry with his full frame only serves to further sentimentalize the experience and his love of Dutch angles is on full comical display here. The camera is tilted so often and with so little reason that I almost expected to see the actors start slipping on the sets. It’s all so silly and this inanity undercuts the drama. The songs still sound lovely, of course, but while this Les Misérables may be music to the ears, it’s also an achingly abysmal assault on the eyes.

Tagged: France , novel adaptation , parole , redemption

You and I both know the truth. You just don't admit it.

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'Movie Review: Les Misérables (2012)' have 15 comments

December 28, 2012 @ 3:02 pm Brainload

I can’t imagine watching a movie with all sung dialogue, especially when it is sung by untrained vocalists.

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December 28, 2012 @ 3:19 pm Commander A8

It was the 19th century, Aaron. The world wasn’t exactly clean! I thought the costumes and cinematography were impeccably done.

December 28, 2012 @ 3:42 pm Dermis

I;ll never watch a musical again.

December 28, 2012 @ 4:20 pm Wantage Soup

Tough to explain, it was somehow very not right. It belongs on stage where a production like this can breathe and feed off of the audience.

December 28, 2012 @ 7:21 pm Mugget

The impact of the stage show didn’t translate over. But aside from there being one or two overly long slow sequences the movie is still a fine interpretation of the Victor Hugo story.

December 28, 2012 @ 4:34 pm Rick Olson

Holy hell. Even my friend who dragged me to this over the weekend thought 3 hours was an impossible amount of time for one sitting (plus it feels like it is 3x that.)

December 28, 2012 @ 5:13 pm Eyetooth

I can appreciate Les Mis for the sheer magnitude of trying to bring the play to the screen. I can’t appreciate the result though.

December 28, 2012 @ 5:48 pm Retrad

I am 100% confident I would have liked this if it were done without the signing dialogue.

December 28, 2012 @ 6:44 pm roguegoat

Hugh Jackman is a talented mofo. This guy can do it all.

December 29, 2012 @ 8:44 am Scannell

He is quite good on this. I can see him getting recognized for the effort. Hathaway too.

December 28, 2012 @ 9:02 pm General Disdain

Russell Crowe’s singing made me think of Pierce Brosnan’s in Mama Mia!. Neither of them can sing a lick but both make a sincere effort and sing their hearts out.

December 28, 2012 @ 9:30 pm EPark

December 28, 2012 @ 11:27 pm Laslo

If it weren’t for the ‘signing dialogue’ how would the deaf in the audience enjoy the musical? I think you meant ‘singing.’ :)

December 29, 2012 @ 3:34 pm aj.snow

I liked it better than the Liam Neeson non-singing adaptation.

January 3, 2013 @ 11:55 am Tom Valance

How many good adaptations of classic literature are there, anyway? Even the best ones, like John Huston’s often-overlooked 1987 adaptation of Joyce’s short story ‘The Dead’ works best a a sort of companion piece to the film. The greatest literary adaptations, in my view, are based on less-prestigious and canonized, more recent novels, like a Clockwork Orange.

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Les Misérables: 2012 Film Review

• Jack Walters
• February 22, 2024

Les Misérables is an entertaining retelling of the stage musical that might not have aged perfectly, but still knows the strengths of this story.

When it comes to classic French literature, Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” is one of the texts that can’t be avoided. It’s an integral part of the country’s culture whose story perfectly captures the struggle, poverty, and resistance that so clearly characterised the history of the nation. The narrative is absolutely epic, spanning multiple decades and jumping across an enormous roster of characters – so when it was announced that Tom Hooper would be following up his Best Picture-winning The King’s Speech with a musical retelling of Les Misérables , expectations couldn’t have been higher. Luckily, Hooper managed to repeat his success with Les Misérables – it was another gigantic hit at the Oscars , made a huge profit at the box office, and essentially launched a whole new wave of movie musicals that continued into the 2010s.

Hooper’s Les Misérables sticks very close to the narrative of the stage musical, following an escaping convict named Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) on his journey through Revolutionary France as he attempts to raise his adopted daughter and escape from the steadfast Officer Javert (Russell Crowe). All the while, a bloody fight for freedom rages in the background that causes even more trouble for Valjean and causes Javert to come face to face with the consequences of his own loyalty to his country. The film’s biggest strengths, as expected from such a wildly successful musical, are the songs and the score . Not only are the lyrics catchy and the instrumentation filled with orchestral sounds, but each song serves a specific purpose. Whether that’s offering insight into a character’s mind or establishing a recurring motif throughout the film, the music is used excellently to enhance the story rather than merely being used for aesthetics.

However, much like with The King’s Speech , the many flaws and setbacks of Hooper’s film were seemingly swept away by the whirlwind of success that it was celebrating at the time. But with the benefit of twelve years of hindsight, during which plenty of better musicals have been released, Les Misérables ’ approach to the ‘sung dialogue’ seems incredibly dated and unfitting for the big screen. This kind of storytelling, in which the characters sing their lines in moments of heightened emotion, doesn’t really work when everything else on the screen is trying to be as dramatic and realistic as possible.

This method works much better in the theatre, where the barrier between reality and fiction is already blurred by definition – audiences are much more aware that they’re watching something fictional, which is the entire draw of the art form. The main problem with Hooper’s film is that it tries so hard to maintain a sense of reality through its dark cinematography and immersive production design, but that makes all the singing (outside of the designated songs and choreographed set pieces) feel incredibly jarring. Of course, it doesn’t help that several of Les Misérables’ main characters are played by actors with little (or no) musical background, which leaves them feeling miscast and uncompelling. It’s for this reason that more recent movie musicals like West Side Story and In The Heights feel so much more engaging: musical theatre is a totally different world, and Hollywood actors aren’t always the best choice. 

That being said, one aspect of Les Misérables that’s actually aged surprisingly well is Tom Hooper’s cinematic direction. Perhaps the biggest advantage of cinema in contrast to theatre is the ability to create an entire world on-screen, as opposed to being limited to the physical space of a stage. Hooper capitalises on this fact with some brilliant production design and creative camera movements that fully realise the scope of this story, placing the audience directly in the middle of the action in a way that’s simply not possible on-stage. It’s one of the few legitimate arguments in favour of adapting this musical for the big screen – the film includes so much detail and environmental storytelling that adds new dynamics to this narrative.

Les Misérables might not be the best example of bringing a stage musical to the big screen, but there’s still plenty to celebrate about this huge accomplishment . There’s proof enough in the costumes, production design, and use of music that Tom Hooper understands the strengths of this story even if he’s not always capable of capitalising on them. Nobody is arguing that it’s better than the original book, or even better than the stage musical, but maybe there’s a place for this creative twist on a timeless story. Les Misérables has an enormous fanbase that means it’s still considered among the best movie musicals of the past few decades, but that begs the question: does a great story constitute a great movie, or were audiences too enamoured by the unquenchable spirit of this narrative to see the flaws of Hooper’s iteration? 

A new remixed and remastered Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision version of Les Misérables was released in cinemas in the UK & Ireland, Australia and New Zealand on February 14, 2024 . The film will be playing in AMC Theatres in the US from February 23 , for one week only. The film is also available to watch on digital and on demand.

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LES MISÉRABLES Review

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Les Misérables is a musical of big emotions.  Characters are brought to their lowest, experience love at first sight, sacrifice their lives for revolution, spend decades in pursuit of justice, and believe their quests are ordained by God.  The songs and their context can come off as cheesy, but the non-stop music and story wrap the production in grandeur that sweep the audience into a captivating world.  Paired with terrific performances, the film adaptation of  Les Misérables is almost unstoppable.  But director Tom Hooper throws up a barrier as he constantly blocks out the tremendous production values with far too many close-ups and editing that chases the music rather than guides it.  We still hear the people sing, but their voices should ring louder.

Set in Paris during the first half of the 19th century,  Les Misérables follows the journey of Jean Valjean ( Hugh Jackman ).  After being imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread (along with repeated escape attempts), Valjean devotes his life to God after being shown mercy by a kindly priest.  In his quest for redemption, he adopts the child Cosette ( Isabelle Allen ) after the death of her mother, Fantine ( Anne Hathaway ).  However, he constantly remains on the run from the unwavering Javert ( Russell Crowe ) whose devotion to justice demands that he capture Valjean for breaking parole.  As the story progresses, the characters get caught up in the 1832 Paris Uprising, which is led in part by Marius ( Eddie Redmayne ), who has fallen madly in love with adult Cosette ( Amanda Seyfried ).

The story of  Les Misérables can be divided into two halves: pre-1832 and the Paris Uprising.  The pre-1832 material is the stronger part of the story.  The emotions feel more honest and personal as we see wretched characters like Valjean, Fantine, and young Cosette pulled from their depths through the power of mercy and kindness.  It's tough to say that it's "gritty realism" when everyone is singing, but the story does feel more grounded in personal journeys.  It also helps that the first half has the majority of the musical's best songs.

Once the film moves into the second-half, it runs into problems as we're introduced to a slate of new characters like Marius, his fellow revolutionaries Enjolras ( Aaron Tveit ) and Gavroche ( Daniel Huttlestone ), along with the adult Eponine ( Samantha Barks ), who is infatuated with Marius.  These infatuations lack the emotional honesty of the first half because the movie now seems like it's in a rush.  A grounded tale has led to outsized emotions like Marius and adult Cosette falling in love at first sight, the students calling for revolution, and Valjean almost pushed to the background.  There's also a lull in the quality of the songs between "On My Own" and "Javert's Soliloquy."  But by the end of the movie, we're as uplifted as when we began the story.  The redemption is complete.

On the stage, directors must fill the area with big sets to help emphasize the importance of the situation against relatively small actors with a big voices.  Film doesn't have that problem.  Film can have both: close-ups, wide-shots, and allow viewers an experience that simply can't be created in a theater.  Unfortunately, Hooper never met a close-up he didn't like, and his adaptation of  Les Misérables puts a massive burden on the cast.  They are front, center, and kind of in the way.  The majority of the emotions are written on the faces of the actors and in the sound of their voices.

Thankfully,  Les Misérables has a tremendous cast.  Jackman, a Tony-winning musical performer, takes full advantage of the opportunity the film adaptation has provided him.  The production allowed the actors to sing live, which put them in control of the tempo, rather than having to match playback of previously-recorded audio. While I disagree with a few of Jackman's choices, his rendition of "Valjean's Soliloquy" does a remarkable job of setting the tone.  The rest of the cast is also impressive, but Hathaway is unforgettable.  It's the one time in the film where Hooper's static close-up works since it gives up complete control to Hathaway's heart-wrenching performance.  "I Dreamed a Dream" is a centerpiece song, and by the end of Hathaway's rendition, I was close to tears.

I wish I could credit Hooper to a canny decision to shoot the song this way, but he shoots almost every song that way.  As we saw with The King's Speech , Hooper is a fan of the close-up, but it works fairly well in that film, which is a nice, small story.   Les Misérables is epic, and every number almost feels like a wasted opportunity.  We're given occasional glimpses of what the costume department, art direction, and cinematography have to offer when Hooper pulls back the camera.  But then he quickly returns to the close-up and obscures the rest of the production. Combined with a limited number of sets, it feels like  Les Misérables has been crammed into a tiny box.

The film is also hampered by the weak editing.  I don't know the best way to cut together a song where multiple actors are singing in different locations, but neither do editors Chris Dickens and Melanie Ann Oliver .  Part of the problem boils down to staging, which falls on Hooper, but the editing constantly feels like its scrambling to keep up with whoever is singing the lead vocals.  This kind of approach greatly diminishes one of my favorite songs ("One Day More") and it's cringeworthy during the reprise of "A Heart Full of Love".  There's elegance to the music, and if there's an advantage to relying mainly on close-ups, it's that it keeps the shots simple.

These glaring flaws still aren't enough to diminish the power of the musical in the hands of the right actors.  For some,  Les Misérables will seem remarkably corny.  It's simply too earnest, the characters too saintly, the conflicts too broad.  But I'm usually won over by earnestness, and I love that the movie wears its bleeding heart on its sleeve.  With songs of hope, love, charity, and freedom, we can't help but join in the crusade even if beyond the barricades there's a world we want to see.

• Russell Crowe
• Aaron Tveit

‘Les Miserables’ (2012) Movie Review

By Brad Brevet

Adapted from the stage musical, which itself was adapted from Victor Hugo’s 1862 French novel, Les Miserables is instantly massive as prisoners heave on giant ropes, pulling a massive ship into the port at Toulon. They sing in tune with each pull, “Look down, look down… Don’t look them in the eye.” It’s here we meet Jean Valjean ( Hugh Jackman ) for the first time, head shaven and scarred. His sentence of nineteen years for stealing a single loaf of bread has come to an end, but a strict parole has been put in place, limiting his freedom under the watchful eye of the dedicated inspector of police Javert ( Russell Crowe ).

These opening moments take place in the year 1815 and the film will cover the next 33 years as the people rise up to claim their country, an ex-con will become an adoptive father and a young girl will fall in love. Fans of the stage musical are sure to eat up all 157 minutes of this film, which is every bit a musical as it claims to be. Hardly a word is spoken without being sung and the words are sung quite well as the Tony award-winning Jackman is clearly in his element, Crowe is no stranger to song and Anne Hathaway as Fantine breathes such life into this film, she is sorely missed in the latter two-thirds.

Les Miserables is fantastic for its first 60 minutes, the emotional investment rising with every turn in the story. Eight years following his release, Valjean manages to break parole and reinvent himself. He now owns a factory and lives under the name of Monsieur le Mayor, but his guise will only last him so long, though it will afford him the chance to meet Fantine and soon care for her young daughter Cosette as he must once again run from Javert.

From here the story, again, jumps forward in time. This time nine years have passed, Cosette has grown up and we are introduced to 1832 Paris. Valjean and Cosette ( Amanda Seyfried ) lead a quiet life while a revolution is brewing in the streets. Javert is still on the hunt and we meet the rebel Marius ( Eddie Redmayne ) and Eponine ( Samantha Barks ), the daughter of the innkeepers ( Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter ) that cared for Cosette before Valjean relieved them of their duty.

It’s here the film begins to fall apart. Les Miserables reaches such a climax with Hathaway’s show-stopping performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” that simply nothing that comes after it can live up to its excellence. Hathaway, shot in close-up for the song’s duration and without a single cut, is crushing. I can’t remember a time where I was so floored with emotion from one solitary musical performance that the fact her few minutes of song outweigh the entirety of a nearly three hour feature is telling not only of her performance, but of the remaining minutes that follow.

Barks, who played Eponine in the recent London stage adaptation of Les Mis , does provide the film’s second half with a fantastic performance of “On My Own” that stands only second to Hathaway’s “Dream”, but is one of the few remaining highlights as the final 90 minutes drag to an inevitable conclusion.

Beyond Javert’s chasing of Valjean, a storyline that grows quickly tiresome, the second half of Les Mis depends on your believing that in only a glance across a crowded street, Cosette and Marius have fallen madly in love. A performance of “A Heart Full of Love” is then meant to seal the deal. It doesn’t. Eponine’s jealousy and disappointment in Marius’ choice of Cosette over her are the only emotions I was convinced of in these scenes.

I’m not sure if it was due to the fact virtually every word of this film is spoken in song, and if that is a hang-up of my own, but there needed to be a little massaging of the relationship between Marius and Cosette if we were meant to have any emotional investment. As it stands, all that exists is the rebellion (which always seems secondary, even when it’s not), Javert’s tiresome dedication to capturing Valjean and Eponine’s reluctancy to let go of her love for Marius.

The love we’re meant to feel between Cosette and Marius comes across as something director Tom Hooper ( The King’s Speech ) determined was a given and not something he needed to dedicate any real time to building. If that’s the case, he was wrong. Whether that’s due to the performances of Seyfried (whose singing voice reminds me of a classic animated Disney princess) and Redmayne (whose voice is the most distinguishable among the cast) or the narrative as it was edited together I can’t quite tell, but I will say neither Seyfried nor Redmayne stood out to me as particularly moving, at least not when compared to Hathaway, Jackman, Crowe and Barks.

A bit of humor is injected in the way of Cohen and Carter as the married innkeepers who make their living off thieving and conning the public and both are perfect for their roles (as is their performance of “Master of the House”). It’s also quite clear costume designer Paco Delgado had some of his most fun dressing these two, though I must say the costumes throughout are quite amazing as is the production design led by Eve Stewart whose filmography clearly shows she’s something of a master at these period set pieces, which include Oscar nominations for The King’s Speech and Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy .

Hooper’s handling of such a massive story is a mixed bag of tightly woven storytelling in the first half to dry, dull and tiring in the second. Perhaps that’s just the nature of the story, but everything about the introduction of Marius and all that leads up to the rebellion felt clunky and ill-conceived and none of it believable. Though, I must give kudos to Daniel Huttlestone whose performance as the young street urchin Gavroche provides some moments of enjoyment throughout the film’s latter half through song and general mischief.

I could watch the first hour of this film over again, but once Cosette grows up, Les Mis grows old.

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Metacritic reviews

Les misérables.

• 80 Total Film Neil Smith Total Film Neil Smith Stirring and striking, Hooper's epic musical won't be wanting for awards and plaudits. Danny Cohen's cinematography is stunning and Hathaway's Oscar is guaranteed.
• 70 Boxoffice Magazine Mark Keizer Boxoffice Magazine Mark Keizer For fans, this is exactly how the story of Jean Valjean's transformation from thief to saint should be delivered: smothered in bombast.
• 70 Variety Justin Chang Variety Justin Chang Yet for all its expected highs, the adaptation has been managed with more gusto than grace; at the end of the day, this impassioned epic too often topples beneath the weight of its own grandiosity.
• 60 The Guardian The Guardian By the end, you feel like a piñata: in pieces, the victim of prolonged assault by killer pipes.
• 60 Movieline Alison Willmore Movieline Alison Willmore Even at a generous running time that matches this season's other giant award candidates, Les Misérables seems like it's in a hurry, skittering from one number to the next without interlude. After Hathaway's early high point, it starts to feel numbing, an unending barrage of musical emoting carrying us through Valjean's adopting of Cosette, the latter's first encounter with Marius, the battle at the barricade and a last hour that can feel like it's a non-stop series of death arias.
• 60 New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein The tasteless bombardment that is Les Misérables would, under most circumstances, send audiences screaming from the theater, but the film is going to be a monster hit and award winner, and not entirely unjustly.
• 50 The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy As the enduring success of this property has shown, there are large, emotionally susceptible segments of the population ready to swallow this sort of thing, but that doesn't mean it's good.
• 50 The Playlist Rodrigo Perez The Playlist Rodrigo Perez While 'Les Mis' ends terrifically, it cannot make up for the largely uneven experience that comes before it. There is no doubt an abundance of passion and commitment in Les Miserables but when the musical isn't connecting emotionally -- which is at least half the time -- it's a lot of blustering sound and fury that could either use a dialogue break or an edit.
• 50 Time Richard Corliss Time Richard Corliss Sensitive souls in search of wrenching emotion can be guaranteed their Kleenex moments; you will get wet. But aside from that opening scene, you will not be cinematically edified. This is a bad movie.
• 25 Slant Magazine Slant Magazine One would be hard-pressed to describe this, despite the wealth of beauty on display, as anything but an ugly film, shot and cut ineptly.
• See all 41 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Les Misérables

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• FILM REVIEWS

LES MISÉRABLES (2012)

• by Michael G. McDunnah
• December 26, 2012

Spoiler Level: I'm reviewing an adaptation of a 30-year-old musical based on a 150-year-old book. Nonetheless, I'll do what I can. 

Les Misérables, the new film version of the highly successful stage musical, is nearly three hours long.

It feels longer.

Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, on which the musical was based, is about 1,400 pages long.

The film feels longer.

The story covered by Les Misérables takes place over a period of roughly 17 years.

The experience of watching it all play out feels—you guessed it—even longer still.

Mere weeks ago, I dreamed a dream in which The Hobbit would be the most unendurable Hell I would face in a movie theater this year, but director Tom Hooper's overly literal, excessively bombastic, painfully tone-deaf film has killed that dream—along with three hours of my life, my love of musicals, and a good portion of my will to live.

There are dreams that cannot be, there are storms we cannot weather, and there are films—like Les Misérables— we simply cannot endure. 

For the record, I went into Les Misérables without a love for either version of the source material, but with an open mind: I haven't seen the stage version, I've never listened to the cast album, and—though I probably pretended differently back in my lit major days—I've never even read the novel. However—unlike my partner, The Unenthusiastic Critic (who, about 20 minutes into this film, would have been rummaging in her purse for something sharp with which to puncture her own eardrums)—I happen to like musicals. I was secretly looking forward to Les Misérables, and mentally reserving a spot on my forthcoming Best of the Year list in case it turned out to be as good as it looked.

(Spoiler alert: Les Misérables will not be on my Best of the Year list.)

Let us dispense with plot summary, for the uninitiated. The film opens with Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), prisoner #24601 in the port prison of Bange de Toulon, under the watchful eye of stern Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). Valjean has served 19 years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving nephew, but Javert has no sympathy for him: "You will starve again unless you learn the meaning of the law," Javert says—or sings, rather. (The aforementioned uninitiated should be warned: no one talks in Les Misérables: they only sing…for 157 musical minutes.) Valjean is released on parole, but with a criminal conviction hanging around his neck he can't get an honest job, so quickly resorts back to crime, stealing silver from a church that has given him shelter. When the kindly bishop (Colm Williamson—who originated the role of Jean Valjean in the English-language stage version) forgives this crime and makes a gift of the silver to the starving man, it allows Valjean to turn his life around and set up a new identity as a successful businessman.

It is as a business owner that he encounters Fantine (Anne Hathaway), who is wrongfully fired from her job as a seamstress in Valjean's factory and forced into a life of prostitution to feed her young daughter Cosette (played as a child by Isabelle Allen). Feeling responsible for this turn of affairs, Valjean decides to commit to providing Cosette a better life, buying her away from the reprehensible innkeepers (played by Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen) with whom she has been living. Unfortunately, around this same time, Valjean also runs into Javert, who recognizes him and forces him to flee with Cosette and go into hiding once again.

Several years later, Cosette (now played by Amanda Seyfried) meets and falls instantly in love with Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a well-born young man who has sworn off the bourgeoisie and taken up with revolutionary forces. With the ubiquitous Javert in pursuit of both Valjean and the revolutionaries—he is apparently the only cop in France, after all—the final act plays out against the Paris Uprising of 1832, with much swooning and pathos and waving of banners.

Oh, and they all sing everything: did I mention?

Sigh. Look, as I said, this was my first encounter with Les Misérables , and—if the movie is anything to go on—I don't care for the musical. I don't like the plot, which is all over the place, and yet must take place in about one square block of Paris in order to explain all the coincidental meetings. I don't like the script, which takes terrible, cliché-ridden dialogue and makes it worse by forcing it into contrived rhymes. ( "You're the friend who has brought me here/Thanks to you I am one with the gods and Heaven is near!" ) Mostly, I don't like the music, which is repetitive and laborious. (I also have to admit that, in general, I'm not a fan of musicals without dialogue: hearing someone sing a showstopper about their feelings is one thing, but hearing someone sing linking dialogue about arranging a carriage is something else altogether.)

But I would almost certainly have enjoyed the musical more on stage, or in a puppet theater, or in any version that was not directed by Tom Hooper. The history of stage musicals on film is not a proud one, and there's a reason for that: the delicate theatrical alchemy that makes us accept the conceit of characters who sing their thoughts aloud is difficult to reconcile with the matter-of-factness of film, and Les Misérables doesn't even come close. Hooper won an Academy Award for the harmless, crowd-pleasing The King's Speech a couple of years ago, but his limited talents are sorely tested by the scale and challenge of this material. There is absolutely no subtlety or imagination in his direction—he is the unquestioned master of the medium close-up, but this is a highly dubious honor—except when he decides to swoop the camera around, or cant it at an arch angle, for no apparent reason. Some of the larger set pieces, like the uprising in the third act, were no doubt huge and spectacular on stage, but here Hooper combines the limited, stage-bound blocking of a theatrical piece with an attempt at cinematic scale (with poorly used computer-generated backgrounds and crowds). The result makes these "big" scenes seem small and oddly trivial on-screen.

Much has already been made of Hooper's decision to have the actors all sing their roles as they act them (as opposed to the traditional method of pre-recording the songs and then lip-syncing the performances). It's a lovely idea: by marrying the music to the acting in this way, it should—in theory—allow for capturing the honest immediacy of a stage performance with the intimacy and closeness that only film can achieve. However, it does his cast no favors here. Note to future directors of screen musicals: take Hooper's lovely idea, and employ it with actors who can actually sing.

With two exceptions—which we'll discuss below—everyone struggles painfully here. Oddly enough, for my money, stage veteran Jackman actually comes out the worst: he seems to have the hardest time acting while trying to stay on key, and doesn't quite know what to do with his face while he makes the attempt. (It would help, no doubt, if Hooper didn't have the camera shoved right up Jackman's nose during the big numbers.) Russell Crowe, on the other hand, can't really sing at all, but maintains a certain dignity in the attempt: he does less, and comes across the better for it. Redmayne and Seyfried have passable voices, but neither of these rather bland characters inspired the love in me that they seem to inspire in each other. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen—who are supposed to be the "comic relief"—are in a completely different movie from everyone else. (I don't know what horrible, cartoonish movie that is, exactly—perhaps a pantomime version of "Mr. Punch"—but it's one I expect to play in my nightmares for years to come.)

So, the pleasant exceptions: the first is Samantha Barks, who has the regrettably small role of Éponine, the daughter of the odious innkeepers who harbors an unrequited love for Marius. A 22-year-old stage actress making her film debut, Barks played the role in London, and her brief scenes in the second half of the film—and her touching rendition of one of the better songs, "On My Own"—demonstrates to the rest of the cast what a tremendous difference it makes when you actually know what you're doing.  Every time she appeared, I kept wishing that the story had been about Éponine, or else that Barks could have somehow played most of the other female roles in the film.

The other exception, of course—as you have no doubt already heard—is Anne Hathaway, who is simply stunning in another all-too-brief role. Hathaway's rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" is not only the best musical number—by a country mile—but is three minutes or so of some of the best acting I've seen all year. I expect some viewers will find her performance a little too emotional—even melodramatic—but there's really no other way to go with this material, and if Hathaway's rendition seems out of place here it's only because it's a world apart from the shallow, surface-level pastiche that is the rest of the film. It's the perfect example of what the live-singing experiment should have yielded: a raw, intimate, heartbreaking performance that could only be achieved in the film version of a musical. It helps that Hooper—for basically the only time in his career—has the good sense to just put the camera on her and leave it the hell alone: he clearly realized that the best thing he could do here was to sit back and capture this magic, without interfering, and then put it in the trailer and try to convince the world that the rest of the movie was as good.

But the rest of the movie is nowhere near as good, and—since this song comes about half an hour in—it's an early triumph that makes the long slog through the rest of a horrible film that much worse in comparison. Three good minutes out of 157 do not make for a good return on investment, so I can't recommend the movie, but try to catch the scene when someone inevitably posts it to YouTube. Heartfelt, honest, and staggeringly moving, it's the perfect example of what Les Misérables could have been, and should have been, and yet so tragically fails to be.

Michael G. McDunnah

Leave a comment, 6 thoughts on “les misérables (2012)”.

I like the Ogden Nash version…

"Jean Valjean, no evil-doer, He got chased through the sewer. The end."

I am going to suggest a Grease and Grease 2 evening for you and N. Your description of Anne Hathaway's movie-stealing reminds me very much of Pfieffer's amazing "Cool Rider" (see avatar). Though, I suppose you will now say you have never seen Grease 2.

I've never seen Grease 2. (And if I were being honest, I'd admit I'm not that big a fan of Grease . But then you'd lose respect for me. So I won't admit that.)

And to think I used to allow you to tell me to put my whiskey in an opaque container. Pfft.

I have a bias: I like musicals that are good stories, which happen to have songs: Grease is one of those shows that's a collection of songs with a bare bones plot to make it a story. It's not a show, it's a greatest hits album.

Hi but isnt les mis a fantastic story? i saw it tonight, cried about 10 times, and the voices are not bad at all, its the SONGS that are pretty mediocre. There are about 2 great songs, the rest had me wonder why they are singing at all, it takes longer to say what they need to say, so it was a bit tedious sometimes, but other than some dodgy focus pulling, I thought it was a great production and I, an atheist, was touched by it. Mark

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LES MISERABLES (2012) – Film Review

I Dreamed a Dream

DIRECTED BY TOM HOOPER/2012

There’s a reason why Victor Hugo’s timeless masterpiece,  Les Misérables,  is as relevant and meaningful today as it was over a century and a half ago when it was first written.  Simply put, it’s one of the greatest stories every told; a poignant parable of life and death, humanity and inhumanity, love and loss, despair and redemption, and the perilous relationship between the way of the law and the way of grace.

Since its initial publication, Hugo’s epic novel has been adapted nearly a hundred times, first on the stage, and later on film and television, and in radio plays.  The most famous adaptation is probably the Broadway musical from the eighties, which quickly became a pop culture sensation and a global phenomenon, with its powerful and moving songs by Claude-Michel Schlönberg and Herbert Kretzmer (in the English version).

The last major American motion picture version of the story was made in 1998, and starred Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean, Geoffrey Rush as Javert, Uma Thurman as Fantine, and Claire Danes as Cosette.  Now, fourteen years later, this first film adaptation of the 1985 English-language musical recasts the parts with movie stars who all have musical backgrounds, and who are able to sing nearly as well as they can act.  Hugh Jackman, who plays Valjean this time around, actually spent a good bit of his career in musical theatre before breaking into feature films in a big way in the role of Wolverine in 2000’s  X-Men , a character whom he continues to portray to this day.  Amanda Seyfried, who plays Cosette in the 2012 film, studied voice and opera, and previously starred in the film adaptation of  Mamma Mia!   Russell Crowe, appearing as Javert, has fronted the band TOFOG for many years, although he finds himself a bit over his head here.  And finally, there is Anne Hathaway, who despite only being in a handful of scenes as the tragically beautiful Fantine, steals the show whenever she appears onscreen.  If you can witness her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” and not tear up, then your heart must be made of stone.  Just go ahead and give her the Oscar now.

The film itself is making Oscar waves, under the accomplished and expert direction of Tom Hooper ( The King’s Speech , which netted Hooper two Oscars in 2010 [Best Picture and Best Director]), and well it should, because Hooper has hit another home run with this film.  As a  Les Mis  virgin (more or less; I had seen clips of the ’98 film, and my younger brother is a  huge  Les Mis  fan, and went through a big phase in high school where it was all  Les Mis  all the time, so I heard plenty about it from him—plus I’ve heard countless sermon illustrations about  Les Mis  over the years.  So let’s just say that I had probably made it to second base with  Les Mis,  but had never gone all the way.), Hooper’s adaptation was all that I could have hoped for.  A sweeping, epic scope, set against the background of French revolution; songs that I had only previously heard bits and pieces of (or in the case of “I Dreamed a Dream,” the whole enchilada courtesy of Susan Boyle [and all respect to Ms. Boyle, but she no longer owns that song]) drifting out of my brother’s bedroom while he emphatically sang along [I distinctly remember him sing-shouting “My  name  is  Jean Valjeaaan!!! ”]), huge set pieces captured by a camera that swoops, ducks, and dives, caught up in the emotion even as I was caught up—swept away, as it were, lost in the world of the film.  As cliché as it is to admit, this movie made me laugh and cry, as well as leap out of my seat, applaud—almost as if I were seeing it live on stage, happening right in front of me, performed by some of the finest actors in the world—and yet, all the better, as a stage could never contain the full and terrible grandeur of the massive Bagne of Toulon, the Elephant of the Bastille, or the June Uprising.  This is a great, old-fashioned Hollywood musical that must be experienced on as big a screen as possible; large and loud.

As  Les Mis  unfolded on the screen before me, I found myself transported to early 19 th -century France.  I was there with Valjean as he laboured on the chain gang, and when he found God in the convent.  I cried with Fantine in Montreuil-sur-Mer.  I gasped when Valjean and Javert dueled in the hospital.   Les Misérables  had me at the opening number, and never let me go until the amazingly redemptive and uplifting finale.  My heart soured and I applauded with gusto.  I hope that you will, too.

Maybe it’s because I’ve always been a sucker for musicals.  Maybe it’s because I love a redemptive story.  Or maybe I was just in the Christmas spirit, for whatever that’s worth.  But whatever the reason,  Les Miserables  has earned a special place in both my heart and in my list of the top films of 2012.  Don’t wait for this to hit DVD.  See it now, on the big screen!  The dream is alive!  Viva la France!

Les Miserables (2012) (United Kingdom, 2012)

Les Miserables , believed by some to be the best novel ever penned in French, has been adapted in nearly every form imaginable, including dozens of movies, television mini-series in French and English, loose "thematic reworkings," and comic books. But Victor Hugo's epic historical drama is perhaps best known for its musical version, which opened in the West End in 1985 and bowed on Broadway two years later. A motion picture interpretation of this lavish production has been in the works since the early 1990s but, as it churned in development hell, no less than three major non-musical adaptations of Les Miserables were made - Claude Lelouch's remarkable 1995 re-imagination , a major 1998 English-language version directed by Bille August and starring Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush, and a celebrated 2000 French mini-series featuring Gerard Depardieu and John Malkovich. The musical motion picture finally gained traction in 2011 when The King's Speech's director, Tom Hooper, came on board. Now, twenty years after the earliest attempts to make the movie, it has reached the screen.

Fans of the stage version will not be disappointed. While successfully "opening up" the musical far beyond the limitations of a theater-bound production, Hooper retains its heart and soul. In many ways, the movie is more opera than musical. There's very little dancing and even less spoken dialogue. Most of the lines are sung recitative-style and the arias often focus in close-up on the singer's face. Les Miserables understandably cuts some of the stage production's numbers, but all of the major anthems are intact and wonderfully presented. There is one new song, included in large part for Oscar eligibility.

Visually, Les Miserables is a splendid spectacle, with set and costume design unparalleled in any 2012 period piece, including its chief rival in those categories, Lincoln . Hooper does an excellent job recreating 19th century France and it's in this area that the motion picture separates itself from the live version. What it lacks in the intimacy of singers performing directly to an audience, it gains in cinematic achievement.

When Les Miserables debuted in the West End in 1985, many Hugo purists were horrified. Of necessity, the narrative was stripped down and condensed. To the extent that this can be considered a flaw, it is maintained in the movie. Pacing is also uneven, with the first two-thirds (up to what would have been the intermission if there was one) more emotionally involving than the final third. The battle at the barricade is not Les Miserables ' most compelling sequence.

The story begins in 1815 France, where Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is being freed from prison after serving a 19-year sentence for the theft of a loaf of bread. After breaking his parole and deciding to live a good life, he changes his name to avoid the dogged pursuit of Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), who is obsessed with bringing Valjean to justice. Eight years later, he has become a wealthy factory owner and mayor in the town of Montfermeil. While there, he risks exposure to Javert by saving a prostitute, Fantine (Anne Hathaway), from arrest. Fantine is mortally ill, however, but before she dies, Valjean agrees to care for her young daughter, Cosette (Isabelle Allen). When Javert gets close, Valjean must again disappear, this time with Cosette posing as his adopted daughter. Nearly a decade later, back in Paris, a now-adult Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) falls in love with a revolutionary, Marius (Eddie Redmayne). Their chance at happiness, however, is complicated by three factors: the interference of Eponine (Samantha Barks), a young woman who suffers unrequited love for Marius; a city-wide uprising that is ruthlessly crushed by the military; and Valjean's own misgivings about losing Cosette to marriage.

The performances are as good as advertised, and even the weakest singers, Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, are better than one might expect. Everyone sings their own lines and Hooper employs the unconventional approach of having the songs recorded live (rather than pre-recording them and having the actors lip synch during filming). Considering how little spoken dialogue there is, this makes abundant sense. None of the actors suffers the indignity of being overdubbed by a more accomplished performer. Marni Nixon's participation was not required.

Two performances are locks to receive Oscar consideration. Hugh Jackman's work as Jean Valjean, a good man who has done bad things and is seeking redemption, is multifaceted and arresting. He plays Valjean successfully as the scraggly, thin prisoner we see in the opening scene and as a much older man. He has the pipes for the songs. Anne Hathaway has a strong chance in the weak Best Supporting Actress category for her work as Fantine. Not only is her singing better than expected, but this is the most accomplished acting she has ever done. This is an instance in which an actor has raised her game to meet the demands of the role.

As Javert, Russell Crowe is surprisingly understated. His singing is workmanlike but not likely to be overpraised. Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne (the male lead in My Week with Marilyn ) are also good, although both are better singers than actors, at least insofar as this production is concerned. The two weak spots are Cohen and Carter, who play Monsieur and Madame Thenardier. Their voices are not up to the high standards set by the rest of the cast. And, although both are excellent at oozing odiousness, their overly broad interpretations of the characters seem a little out-of-place. (This is the kind of thing that works better on stage than on screen.)

The filmmakers have made every attempt to pay homage to Les Miserables ' long screen history. The "original" Jean Valjean, Colm Wilkinson, has a not insignificant part as The Bishop of Digne. Another initial cast member, Frances Ruffelle, has a cameo as a prostitute. Samantha Barks, who was Eponine for a year in the London stage production (as well as in the 25th Anniversary concert), reprises the role here. Additionally, many of the tertiary characters are played by those who appeared at one time or another on stage.

In keeping with the story's serious tone, Hooper does not attempt to "out-spectacle" other recent high profile musicals like Chicago , Dreamgirls , and Nine . Instead, he draws inspiration as much from the source material as from the musical. The result is an engaging production that is guaranteed to enthrall audiences and become a holiday season commercial success. 20 years may have been a long time to wait for this motion picture but, with this result, who can dispute that it was worth it?

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Looking at Film from Every Angle

Review: Les Misérables (2012)

Wesley Lovell

Les Misérables

Buy on Blu-ray

Source material.

Review Borrowing generously from the styles of musicals past, Oscar winning director Tom Hooper adapts the beloved 1985 stage musical Les Misérables with a master’s paintbrush. Reminiscent of the great crowd-pleasing musicals of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Hooper’s story of a 19th century criminal seeking redemption takes the audience on a spectacular excursion into 19th Century Paris and the class warfare that has eerie similarities to conflicts in evidence today.

Hugh Jackman ably carries the Claude-Michel Schonberg-Alain Boublil musical (with English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer) based on the classic Victor Hugo novel as Jean Valjean, a poor man imprisoned for several years for the simple act of stealing a loaf of bread. The movie opens as Valjean is being released from incarceration. Jumping bail to try and make a better life for himself, he assumes a new name and identity before becoming a patron to a young girl named Cosette (Isabelle Allen as the young girl and Amanda Seyfried as the grown woman) whose mother’s (Anne Hathaway) death Valjean feels is a result of his calous disregard of her plight.

Valjean’s plight is complicated by a persistent policeman named Javert (Russell Crowe) who wants to arrest and re-imprison Valjean for his simple act of disobedience. As Valjean attempts to atone for his life’s misdeeds, Javert refuses to allow him respite, pursuing him for much of the musical.

Jackman seems a natural fight for Valjean, a gifted vocalist with acting talent so seldom used to its potential. Valjean is a compelling and endearing character thanks to Jackman’s unflinching conviction. Yet, there are two performances in the film that outclass his. Hathaway has a very brief role in the film, playing the put-upon mother Fantine. She only has one song with which to shine, but it’s a pinnacle number of the film. “I Dreamed a Dream” was the highlight of early previews for the film and the full version delivered by Hathaway is sensational. Actors able to sing unerringly while performing with such honesty and emotional drain are few and Hathaway showcases just how it should be done.

The other most notable performer is Eddie Redmayne. While his career has been restricted largely to British dramas, he had a pivotal role in last year’s My Week with Marilyn where he managed to hold his own against the outstanding Michelle Williams. Here, Redmayne plays a wealthy young man intent on supporting the poor and indigent in their fight to escape oppression. Redmayne has a few good numbers, but it’s his rendition of “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” that defines his performance. The pain and guilt his Marius conveys is heartbreaking as is much of the second act of the film.

Crowe is far better than I expected, never having heard him sing previously. While his Javert is the traditional bad guy, he gives him sympathetic characteristics that give his convictions meaning even if we revile his actions. Amanda Seyfried showcases some surprising talent after a rather lackluster career in Hollywood thus far, while musical theatre notables Aaron Tveit as Marius’ co-conspirator and rebel leader Enjorlas, and Samantha Barks as overshadowed love interest Eponine are excellent in the only key roles not doled out to prominent Hollywood players. While neither is particularly well known off the musical stage, their performances here deserve all the attention they can get, adding immeasurable talent to the film’s ensemble.

Les Misérables doesn’t have a small cast. Like its grand, and epic nature, the film features a large array of colorful characters, some of whom seem rather unnecessary to the plot. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter play two of those characters. As the innkeepers Thénardier and his wife, their past experience on Tim Burton’s execrable Sweeney Todd makes them seem like natural fits for the film. However, as they play characters that aren’t particularly deep or interesting, the fact that their performances are near carbon copies of their work in Sweeney Todd only exacerbates their semblance of uselessness.

Director Tom Hooper is no stranger to period dramas. Two popular TV miniseries, Elizabeth I and John Adams , highlighted his ability to handle large casts and larger ideas, but his big screen debut The King’s Speech was less than satisfying. Apart from not deserving an Oscar for his serviceable work on the film, it created a doubt in me that he could handle the largesse of big screen work. Filling the entire cineplex not only with the sound of music, but the visual panache of spectacle seemed like it might be a daunting cast. Conveyong grandeur on the small screen is no easy feat, so I shouldn’t have doubted his ability to handle massively larger medium, but Les Misérables more than proves he could handle it.

Gathering some very talented artisans, Hooper crafted a gorgeous recreation of the dingy streets of Paris in the early 19th Century, juxtoposing the obscenely wealthy with the poor and downtrodden. Cinematographer Danny Cohen’s lense beautifully captured the detailed production design of Eve Stewart and costuming by Paco Delgado. It’s a sumptuous visual feast that envelops the audience into its setting.

Les Misérables became popular in a period of World history when little of international importance was occurring. Its historical references were simply a compelling adaptation of the legendary Hugo novel. It was incredibly popular for reasons other than political. Releasing today, there are a number of compelling parallels to the film’s themes. While it would be easy to highlight the violence in the Middle East as part of the Arab Spring, there are subtle jabs at the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, wherein protestors shut down Wall Street in an effort to highlight the disparity of wealth between the wealhiest Americans and the poorest. Much of that protest went peacefully, due to the global attention that was paid, but comparing it to the events of Les Mis assures me that a little of that rebellion is enshrined in this film. Replace the guns and violence of the film with the media burial of the cause and you have a more tenuous, but no less astute comparison.

That being said, the revolution in Syria bears a striking resemblance to the historical period of French Revolution wherein the people brought down the corrupt government that kept them at heel for too long. Les Misérables is a fitting comparison to the violence in Syria, even if what takes place in Les Misérables is a small precursor to the events that would best act as simile to Syria.

Political statements aside, Les Misérables remains the crowd-pleasing sensation it was nearly thirty years ago. While the revolutionary aspect of the film is but a small aspect of the grander theme of atonement and redemption as part of Valjean’s character development, there’s no question that both play intimately well together and that the end result is a rowsing and celebratory experience. Not since the glory days of the movie musical in the 1950’s and 1960’s has a film so effectively captured an emotional zeitgeist. Easily comparable to the likes of West Side Story , The Sound of Music or Oliver! , Les Misérables is a musical for the ages. It’s my personal favorite production from the last decade and will likely rank as one of my all-time favorites. Oscar Prospects Guarantees: Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup, Sound Mixing Probables: Picture, Director, Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway), Original Song, Film Editing Potentials: Actor (Hugh Jackman), Supporting Actor (Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne), Supporting Actress (Samantha Barks, Amanda Seyfried), Sound Editing Review Written December 10, 2012

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2 responses to “Review: Les Misérables (2012)”

Love the book

Loved the musical

Loved The King’s Speech

Love the Cast

So I’m very excited about this adaptation

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