Where do I begin? I'm really not sure. But how about with one of the most obvious elements of the mise-en-scène: the makeup and costuming. Oh boy.
Overdone makeup that piles on the sores, bruises, decaying teeth, dirt and mud -- to comical levels. Stephanie Zacherek suggests calling it "hobo chic", and I'm inclined to agree. The film has been art directed to death, with the only apparent direction being "More! More grime! More dirt!" The hyperbolic level of grime that covers every surface in an attempt at bludgeoning the audience with Misery is a dangerous romanticizing of what suffering is. The melodramatic form, of course, asks the audience to share in its characters' suffering as a cathartic roller-coaster of emotions -- one that I am often very glad to take a spin on. But here, the romanticization of misery strikes me as a particularly dangerous** style of kitsch, as it turns past, real-life suffering into spectacle. This becomes acceptable for some because this suffering is so far away from us: the film is a period piece in France with British accents and talk of Kings and lots of old-fashioned poverty. But the situation depicted is also oh-so-close, with the contemporary repetition of an increasingly wealthy and powerful elite towering over massive income gaps, while reinforcing their statuses through more and more drastic legal measures.
But such social commentary is beyond Les Misérables. Instead, such analysis is reduced to a simple "Be nice to those less fortunate, and Trust in God." The musical asks us to surge with some sort of pride or hope when we see good-doers do good-things, and empathy for those who are covered with lots of really really gross sores and dirty dirt.
"Strive for your dreams!", it seems to be saying in a kind of vague self-affirmation mantra. I, of course, find such proverbial affirmations to be misguided, ineffective and flatly irritating. Good intentions and a belief in a god are not enough to change the world, as Victor Hugo seemed to be slyly, faintly aware of as he sets his epic's climax the failed revolution of June 1832. Much like Baudelaire or Flaubert, I appreciate Hugo's attempts to highlight social problems, but find his crude sentimentality and aestheticizing to be misguided.
And thus enter Schönberg and company. The novel has proven a popular source for adaptations, but I have not seen or heard any of these other versions, and my familiarity with Hugo's material has been second-hand exposure to Les Miz through friends and a high school production of the score's "highlights" (a term I use loosely). I remember four songs: "Castle on a Cloud", "Master of the House", "Do You Hear the People Sing" and, of course, the power-ballad "I Dreamed a Dream".
I don't want to spend too much time analyzing the score, as there really isn't much to say about it. Let's all admit something: it's mostly forgettable. Kretzmer's English lyrics are an endless surge of rhyming couplets and recitative, bludgeoning the audience with easily digestible narrative cues and nary a clever phrase. How many of the songs end with a ringing final note, Jackman or Crowe or whomever belting out the piece's final lyric as if it's the most significant existential cry or a perfect encapsulation of the song's Theme? These criticisms have surrounded the musical for years, with most critics regarding the show as middle-brow popera.
As a film theorist, my problems with the movie are with its technique and its ideology. Much has been made in the popular press about Les Misérables' supposedly groundbreaking technique of live-set recording. It's a neat trick, I guess... that's been done before. (Notably, Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love from 1975 with Cybill Shepherd and Burt Reynolds, of all people.) And what are we supposed to take away from this stunt? A more raw emotional performance, as if the practice of dubbing isn't done in virtually every other film made since the 30s? Sorry, I don't buy it. I didn't get anything more out of Hathaway's performance if she had recorded her vocals afterwards. And maybe if they hadn't made such a fuss around this technique, they wouldn't have thought twice about re-recording Russell Crowe's vocals, which are often off-key, restrained and sound as if he's daydreaming. Big mistake.
Oh, but it's more "realistic" that Seyfried's sky-high notes are a bit strained, that Hathaway catches a few notes in her throat as she cries, or that Jackman occasionally falters? I see.
So what? Why are we so obsessed with pseudo-realism?
If the filmmakers were so keen on realism, why the shunning of deep focus? The rapid-style editing, which is as far away from DeSica as possible? The bombastic camera swoops through obviously-CGI Paris streets and ships? Hooper's auteurist stamps of canted and expressionist ultra-high angles? Realism and the musical form are often uncomfortable bedfellows, with the successful examples I can think of being those whose goals are near-Brechtian irony, or at the very least, some sort of edge. Pennies From Heaven or New York, New York blend gritty noir and some realist touches to create biting, jarring films that leave the audience deeply uncomfortable, and A Star is Born or West Side Story aim for touches of pathos amongst their beautiful, jazzy numbers. Les Misérables is utterly without edge, and any possible prickly bits are sanded down with bombast. Everything is ramped up to the highest level of superficial emotion, with only the Thénardiers (Helen Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen) appearing as the requisite "comic relief". But the Thénardiers seem to have dropped in from a different movie (a French Sweeney Todd through kabuki) and just don't blend in with the attempts at realism and, in fact, are a jarring trumpet blast announcing realist failure. They also serve to remind us just how lacking in any humour the rest of the film is, which takes itself much too seriously.
And I'm not sure where to fit this, but one scene really struck me as gratuitous and... ugh. I speak of the romanticizing of shit. You know what I'm talking about it. The scene could have been filmed without this wonderful element, but instead we witness our characters swimming in it, emerging from the water with their faces caked in it, probably having swallowed some of it. I couldn't help but be reminded of Salo at this point. The petty bourgeoisies savour their meal of shit, just as we are supposed to watch this scene and gush "Oh, how horrid!"
"The misery! How delightful!"
I understand melodrama. I often crave the purging elements the form offers. But Les Misérables offers too much, and seems to be primarily designed --nay, constructed-- to be a big sob-fest. Instead of being sucked into its emotional sway, I found myself chortling. Rolling my eyes. Staring at audience members who were duped into becoming blubbering messes. And I'm the kind of person that will gleefully gasp, coo and "aww" at the most cliché-ridden Bollywood epic. Perhaps it's that Les Misérables tries too hard in its attempts to be "about something", its underlining of Hugo's Christian elements, and its hammer-blow emotional subtlety. Marius and his fellow young, idealistic men seem to me as sharing the same goals of the film: full of hopeful ideas, and relying on rousing people's superficial emotions to get them to join in the choir.
But who are these people, and why should I care? The eponymous "miserables" are archetypes drowning in period gear and slathered with mud. They don't strike me as real people. And as for the rest of the revolving-door cast, we have Éponine, played by Samantha Barks, as the insufferable child who somehow grows into a self-sacrificial lamb, for no apparent reason other than her capital-L love for freckled Eddie Redmayne's Marius. Some annoying blonde, blue-eyed boy whose name I don't think was even mentioned, foolishly playing with the big boys. Hathaway's Fantine, a hyperbolic martyr figure, is only in the first act. Valjean is just pathetic, Javert is too one-note in his conviction (WHY is he so obsessed with capturing Valjean, other than to be a representation of The Law?), and I've just stopped caring to continue or bother editing this more.
Oh, and Russell Crowe.
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