Second miserable thought: The hell she’s living

People of certain intellectual and literary pretentions often promise themselves that one of these days they’re going to get around to reading Proust, as if it’s a requirement for getting into intellectual and literary pretentious person heaven.  For them I bring good news!

You are absolved from ever having to read Proust if you’ve read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.

The reverse is not true. Even if you’ve read Proust, all seven volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu, in French, you are still required to have read Les Miserables. It’s all right if it’s only once and in translation, but you must have read it.

It is one of the greatest stories ever told.

This is why I think it would be very hard to make a bad adaptation. As long as you follow Hugo’s story, hit the major plot points, cast strong actors, and let the characters speak for themselves and as themselves (as opposed to as spokespersons for the themes), the power and the pathos and the beauty of the tale of the reformed convict but still wanted man Jean Valjean and his decades on the run from the implacable Inspector Javert will come through and carry the audience away.

But when it came to adapting the musical Les Miserables for the screen, director Tom Hooper has found a way to make a bad adaptation or a bad adaptation of an adaptation. 

He didn’t make one. But he risked it.

By the way, this is not my review of Hooper’s Les Miserables.  Just some thoughts I’m mulling over as I work out how I’m going to approach my review or whether I’m going to write a review at all.  I might just go with “Wow!” and <sob> and leave it at that.  We’ll see.

At any rate, what Hooper has done is adapt the musical but stage and film significant portions of it as if he’s doing a straight-forward adaptation of the novel for television---all those overwhelming close-ups will play much better on a flat screen than on the big screen; at least, they won’t be quite as frightening in their intimacy. 

Hooper has cast fine actors but non-singers in his three most important roles: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, and Anne Hathaway as Jean Valjean, Javert, and Fantine. (To be fair, Jackman can sing but he doesn’t sing that well through most of the movie. I suspect Hooper asked him to tone it down in his scenes with the non-singers or, probably more accurately, hold himself back for his big solos.)  Then he has his leads sell their songs through their faces and bodies more than through their voices, turning the usual practice upside down.  Most musicals use songs to express character.  Hooper has the songs arising out of the expression of character.  We’re meant to like the song because of who’s singing it and why and what they’re saying, instead of like them for what they’re singing.  The risk Hooper’s running is offending what I’d assume is his prime audience, fans who love the musical for the music.  Hooper asks us to love the story and the characters first.

Works for me.

But I’ve never seen Les Miserables on stage.  I went to the movie for the story.  And all an adaptation has to get really right to satisfy me is Valjean’s escape over the rooftops of Paris with Cosette on his back and Javert’s end.

Hooper does fine with the chase. Javert’s end is (and if you’ve seen the movie you’ll know this is a pun) way over the top.

But Hooper’s done something I wasn’t expecting and I don’t remember its being the case in other versions. He’s brought Fantine front and center as the female lead.

In my two favorite versions---a 1978 TV movie starring Richard Jordan and Anthony Perkins and the 1998 movie with Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush---and even in the novel, Fantine’s role is to bring about Cosette and present her to Valjean as his opportunity to do his greatest good deed by which he finally redeems himself in his own eyes.  Basically, Fantine is Cosette’s past.  In this version, Cosette is the shadow Fantine casts into the present.  Her role is to remind Valjean of his failure to save Fantine.  Taking care of Cosette is his obligation.  He owes it to Fantine, but however well he does by the daughter he can’t make it up to the mother.

What I’m getting at is that Fantine’s suffering isn’t exposition. It’s the heart of the movie.

Anne Hathaway doesn’t have a strong enough voice to sell I Dreamed a Dream as a song by itself.  But she has infused her Fantine with what it takes to sell it as an expression of her character’s anguish.

An anguish that’s fed with self-loathing.

Fantine has been failed by the man who seduced her and then ran out on her and their child.  She has good reason to suspect she’s being failed by the people she’s paying to take care of Cosette.  She’s failed by the women she works with who ought to be her friends and protectors but who, because of a system of every man and woman for his or herself that has turned the people against each other, see her as competition to be eliminated. She is failed by the man who is, abstractly, her benefactor, Valjean, who, in his new identity as the benevolent and beneficent Mayor Madeleine, is so caught up in the business of being a good employer and philanthropist he has lost sight of the individuals in his employ and in his care.  And she is failed by fate---or is it God?---when a chance arrival distracts Valjean at the moment Fantine is most in need of his help.  But finally and most heartbreakingly she fails herself.

Fantine knows who is to blame for her troubles and to what degree, they’re at fault, but she can’t help faulting herself most at all. 

Hathaway’s performance is more than a matter of letting her hair get chopped off and submitting to be photographed at unflattering angles.  She fills Fantine’s eyes and then her face and ultimately twists and racks her whole body with the growing pain and terror of a soul turning against itself.

_________________________

PS. I’m not saying you shouldn’t bother to read Proust. I plan to get around to it someday myself.  But if you’re looking around for great 19th Century French novels to read as your ticket into intellectual and literary pretentious person heaven, after Les Miserables, you should try Lost Illusions, Pere Goriot, and Cousin Bette by Balzac, The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendahl, Nana by Zola, and Bel Ami by Maupassant. Madame Bovary is a given.

Comments

[Kevin Wolf]

Another reminder of all the novels on my list which remain unread. The movie? I have no interest in seeing it, not knowing (or really wanting to know) the musical. I did recently watch a fine version starring Michael Rennie (best known as Klaatu) and Robert Newton (best known as Long John Silver) -- another reminder of all the novels etc etc etc.

[Ken Houghton]

"To be fair, Jackman can sing but he doesn’t sing that well through most of the movie. I suspect Hooper asked him to tone himself down in his scenes with the non-singers or, probably more accurately, hold himself back for his big solos."

For Lance's next understatement, he will declare that Kobe Bryant can play basketball.

This will serve as a reminder that Jackman was The Boy from Oz [a.k.a. Peter Allen] long before he was Wolverine. Which almost requires me to note that Crowe was the lead vocalist for 30-Odd Foot of Grunts before he was John Nash--thought I'll stipulate that 30OFoG vocals are more in the actor-doubling-as-a-singer range than Axl Rose/David Coverdale or the writer/singer of "Paris at 21."

Also Hathaway sang at the end of Ella Enchanted ("Don't Go Breakin' My Heart"). Thin but serviceable voice.

Shorter Ken: If you know the careers of the actors involved, you don't go to the film expecting a musical; you expect a film with music. (More Chicago than Annie.)

[minstrel hussain boy]

a hard and fast rule that i have when i am involved with a musical comedy (i've been musical director of four professional shows) is

1. always, always, always, take an actor who cannot sing over a singer who cannot act.

there have been many people (notably rex harrison, yul brenner, richard burton) who have acted their way through songs with great skill, even to the point of making their lack of singing chops a virtue and something else to love about the character they portrayed.

also, on film, there is the easy process of dubbing in a singer (marnie nixon made an entire career out of making folks believe that audrey hepburn and natalie wood could sing).

when i first heard about russell crowe attempting javert my thought was not that he would not be up to the task musically, but that he wouldn't be able to act his way out of any hole his lack of chops dug him down into.

[Teresa]

I haven't seen the musical staged, but fell in love with the soundtrack long ago. I was looking forward to the film, but have to admit the poor singing took me out of the story. Listen to Phillip Quast sing "Stars" as Javert. Sung right it adds much more complexity and nuance to the character of Javert and makes his suicide poignant rather than pedestrian. http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=urxk4mveLCw&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Durxk4mveLCw

[Batocchio]

You can have this madeleine when you take it from my cold, dead hands, Lance. (Just kidding. I'm currently on page 1000 of Les Misérables.) I haven't see the film of the musical yet. Nor have I seen the Jordan and Neeson film versions yet, although I plan to. (Danes' bad British accent annoyed me in the trailer, and I'm alternately amused and annoyed by what I call the Masterpiece Theater convention of making everyone in a period movie use British accents even when the story is not set in friggin' Britain. Uniformity of accents make some sense, but I don't think that's the only reason they do it.) I also want to see the Depardieu version, though, and apparently a new DVD edition is coming out soon. Meanwhile, the Lelouch-Belmondo version, while a loose adaptation, is an extraordinary film. Alas, a good region 1 DVD version does not seem to exist yet, but it's well worth seeing.

I've seen the stage version of the musical three times now – the first time, by luck, with Colm Wilkinson and the original Broadway cast in DC before they hit Broadway, and now the revival tour twice (once to take a family member). The 10th Anniversary concert is the best CD version, although other recordings have their virtue. (Teresa's link of the killer performance from Quast is from this one.)

There's something great about Hugo, for all his digressions and excess, that survives even flawed adaptations. I've seen mediocre film versions of Notre Dame that are nevertheless moving. The leitmotifs in the musical Les Misérables, particularly the parallels and contrasts between the moments of conscience for Valjean and Javert, are really powerful. Javert is simply a fascinating character, and I'll have to write a piece about him and his worldview at some point. Anyway, cheers.

[Lorettadillon]

I have to second the comment by Ken H. above regarding Jackman's musical talent. If you want to see what he's capable of, just watch his Oscar opening when he hosted a couple of years ago. And that was LIVE. He's great.

Once again, I loved the book, have yet to see any adaptation of it either theatrically or on film, and not sure I ever will. Some books need to be left alone. (See also, Karenina, Anna!)