Singing and Dancing

While my sister and I were growing up, our parents always wanted us to have a healthy appreciation for the arts and culture. Movies, museums and the theater were visited often, and those trips helped shape me into the man I have become, and continue to guide my perceptions of the world today. One I remember with some clarity was a showing at Boston's Wang Center of Les Miserables, the musical about poverty and revolution, crime and punishment in 1800's France. Even after all this time, I can remember the legendary musical numbers performed live by people who were masters of their craft. On Christmas, the whole country got a chance to see Tom Hooper's vision of that story on the big screen. Hooper, who could have done any project he wanted after scoring big with 2010's The King's Speech, decided to tackle the challenge of turning a story told 98% in song to a cinematic masterpiece. How did he do? Well, let's review.

Les Miserables follows Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) - a man who served 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's children - after he is paroled. While he at first cannot find work due to his reputation as a "dangerous criminal", Valjean eventually catches a break and manages to make some wealth and do some good for the people of France after fleeing parole and taking an assumed name. His nemesis and the man chasing him is Javert (Russell Crowe), an officer of the law who rigidly enforces the law and cracks down on even the smallest infractions. Valjean finds a purpose in life when he attempts to aid the sick and struggling mother Fantine (Anne Hathaway) and adopts her daughter Cosette upon her death. Meanwhile, a revolution is building as the downtrodden common folk take up arms against the oppressive King and bourgeoisie.

Hope you enjoy Hathaway's performance... it's damned short

The good news is, if you love the musical as much as some people I know, you won't have any problems with the big screen rendition of Les Mis. Hooper changes almost nothing about what makes the musical so impressive, from its memorable musical score to its multiple-threaded story full of entertaining characters. He augments only in the tiniest bits, most notably in the addition of a new song for Jackman at the midway point. Like the musical, the actors rarely speak in anything but verse, and the director gets great vocalization from his cast by having had them sing live during filming, rather than recording it in post production. While it takes some effort to get used to, and at a few moments the singing doesn't quite match the music, the result is a largely authentic emotional response from his actors, who really get into their performances as though they were really playing on Broadway.

She dreamed a dream, and then she was gone.

The cast of course is a big reason for why the whole thing turned out nicely, and the main credit for that can be attributed to Jackman and Hathaway. Hathaway especially steals the show, and considering she has MAYBE twenty minutes of screen time in a two-plus hour movie, that says a lot. She's assisted somewhat by Hooper's direction (the fall into degradation of Fantine just happens to be the most masterfully shot sequence in the whole movie), but for the most part she deserves all the credit in the world for taking an important bit part and wringing everything out of it that she could. I didn't even know she could SING, and here she is belting out solos like a veteran vocalist. She's an Oscar guarantee at this point, bringing talents to the role that very few people could have expected. Jackman, however, has a history with song and stage, and so his excellence as Jean Valjean comes as absolutely no surprise. The part plays to the best aspects of his theatrical abilities, and anybody who is used to seeing him play manly men in the X-Men films or Real Steel needs to see his work here. The rest of the cast are a step down, though both Eddie Redmayne and debuting Samantha Barks will completely surprise you with their acting and singing abilities. Both have long, excellent careers ahead of them at this point. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen put on strong performances as secondary villains (when am I going to stop being surprised by Cohen's talents?), and while Amanda Seyfried did not really impress me with her appearances, she was so barely present that it's hard to really give her a hard time. The only dud in casting was Crowe, who sports a fine singing voice but can't seem to loosen up and look natural for the camera. It's especially surprising when you consider what a good job he did in the unspectacular Man with the Iron Fists. Here, he puts on one of his lesser performances, the weakest part of an otherwise great group.

If it wasn't for Hathaway, everybody would be talking about her.

But while Hooper gets a lot out of his cast and puts on some great visuals, his story feels... exactly the same as the musical. At the core, you're getting pretty much the same experience you would on a stage, and while that is pretty impressive it also speaks to a glaring lack of individuality in his vision. The last time I saw a musical theater-turned-theatrical release, it was 2007's Sweeny Todd, which suffered from much the same ailment. There just wasn't enough to make it feel like more than they filmed a stage play. While Hooper's Les Mis is a far superior experience than Tim Burton's production, at times the director could have mixed things up a bit to make up for the play's... melodramatics, especially in the final act. The final ten minutes are largely underwhelming, shoehorning an obscene amount of plot into a few minutes of film, and the closing scene is almost as bad as Titanic's "applause" finale. So why did this make the final cut? Because it was that way in the musical, that's why.

And he's STILL the manliest man in Hollywood.

There are people who absolutely LOVE the stage version of Les Miserables. Usually when adaptations such as this are made, they alienate fans of the original by completely changing elements that made the original experience unique, whether major or minor. But fans of the stage Les Mis will have no such issues, as few changes and an excellent voice cast guarantee that diehards will walk out of the theater crying and sure they have just seen a masterpiece. For the rest of us, this musical is great, but doesn't live up to that impossible superlative. Keep Jackman and Hathaway earmarked for their exquisite performances, but otherwise this is "just" a great, deeply encompassing good time at the movies, not one of 2012's absolute best.

Or: The Trials of Mad King George the Stammerer

This past summer, I thought I wouldn't see a better trailer for a film in 2010 than those for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the comic-based film starring Michael Cera that I had been sure would be my number one film for the year. Sadly, the film did not live up to the standard set by Bryan O'Malley's comic series and while I still loved the film, one check of 2010's Top 10 films shows it not to have made the cut. Such is the danger of overly relying on a film's trailer to be an indicator of sed film's overall quality, and I learned my lesson from that experience not to set my expectations too high, lest I be disappointed again. Of course, Black Swan also had an excellent trailer and actually lived up to the hype, so it can be done. My favorite recent trailer, however, was for a film so completely unlike the two that though it has long been hailed by critics as one of the year's best, I wasn't sure if I would even have interest in seeing it. Of course, I did see The King's Speech yesterday, and now the only problem I have may be deciding where it falls in my Top 10.

Well of course he's having trouble: Who wouldn't in that hat?

The basis for the film comes from the true story of England's King George VI. While still serving as the Duke of York, Prince Albert (Colin Firth) begins to see speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) due to a pronounced stammer that made him terrified of public speaking, The creation of the "wireless" or radio means that the days of a member of the royal family simple being seen well not falling off his horse are over, and the King and his family are now expected to speak to their people through the airwaves. What culminates is a friendship between the future King of England and a commoner that is so unbelievable it must be true.

Don't you just want to buy him a drink?

Directed by noted British director Tom Hooper, The King's Speech is a film that lives and dies by its actors. Firth really pulls off the idea that he's a man with a serious verbal handicap, his speech impediment fully believable in its severity and adjustment throughout the film. The role of the future King George may not be as deep or as subtle as that of George Falconer from last year's excellent A Single Man, but that role was so amazing that to compare most any performance to it would be unfair, even for Firth. Still, Firth is an amazing presence on the screen, accurately and charismatically portraying one of the more famous nobles of the 20'th century with distinction. Rush is equally charming as the speech therapist Logue, whose treatment of the king involved some peculiar methods but mostly emphasized humor, patience and sympathy. Rush is disarmingly funny, but it would be wrong to simply call him a comedian and leave it at that. Logue is instead a strong character in his own right, driven by a need to help others that is admirable, especially in his charging expensive rates for his more affluent clients to cover care for those who can't afford his treatment. Rush is simply amazing, on par with Firth and better than any role I've ever seen him perform. Helena Bonham Carter is a surprise, as the woman who usually plays dark ladies in Tim Burton films proves she still can perform at a high level as the future Queen Elizabeth I. Carter plays both a loving wife and mother and a traditional monarch, and the blend makes for one of her best ever characters. Guy Pearce plays George's brother and predecessor, King Edward VIII, who so obviously doesn't want anything to do with the throne it almost makes you wince. Pearce has taken a step back from high-profile roles in recent years, but this minor role here is a good fit, and he manages to encompass in Edward everything that George has not, including confidence and excessive charm. The only real disappointment in the cast is Timothy Spall, whose attempt at a Winston Churchill impression works to some degree in the voice but looks like a scowling bulldog. For such a well-known historical figure, it would have been nice to get a more suitable actor for the role, as my eyebrows instinctively scrunched up every time he appeared on screen. Smaller roles my Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Eve Best and Jennifer Ehle successfully round out a talented cast that do a good job of looking like they fit the times.

Tattoos are just more efficient for note-taking

The sets and camera work is fantastic, with several amazing camera shots of scenes throughout England. Hooper definitely has an eye towards detail, deftly changing angles to best suit the mood he wants to evoke from the audience. The best use of this is when we see through George's eyes, especially in large crowds when he's expected to speak, and we can understand his hesitation and fear to do so. There's also a very old-timey feel to the film quality that makes it feel like a classic period piece while being wholly realistic in its implementation.

Will Firth (or any of the others) get top awards for their performances?

In the end, it was really down to whether to place this highly-renowned film atop my year's Top 10 List. There was little worry going in to see it  that it would rank highly among this year's releases, and reason enough to think it may come out number one. But the idea of the "buddy comedy" comes to mind as I write these words. In your standard buddy film, two characters or completely differing backgrounds coming together for a common cause, and while their differences make for some funny moments for the audience, they eventually come together as friends by the story's conclusion. That fits The King's Speech to a tee... but it also describes about half of Jackie Chan's American films. That I'm comparing Rush Hour to this great film may seem like a slight, I assure you it's not. I simply mean that the story is somewhat formulaic in it's telling, and while it's based on a true story and has outstanding acting, it still drops it slightly in my book. Besides, for a film with such amazing performances, stellar dialogue and beautiful camerawork, landing at #2 for the year isn't a bad deal in the slightest.