Les Miserables

   The beloved musical that shook the world of theatre has finally made it's way to the big screen, and after the results of the film, one might wonder, what on earth took them  so long? Being a theater person myself, I was excited to see another musical made into a movie. It's been a while since they have had a really successful musical to movie released, the last being, in my opinion, The Phantom of the Opera.
   The way Les Miserables was filmed was entirely original and had Oscar written all over it. The camera work was fresh and a relief from the same old techniques of filming movies. There were several instances where a "fish lense" was used to give the movie a different sort of perspective. What really made this movie stand out though, was how brutally real it was. For the first half of the movie, whenever an actor was finished singing a solo and there was silence....you  could hear a pin drop in the theatre. Nobody wanted to be the person who coughed during the silence, let alone breathe. There was a very nerve wracking feel to the first 30 minutes of the movie. Many of the solos in the movie were filmed using close-ups of the actors. It was incredibly effective, and set the tone of the film excellently.
   Anne Hathaway played the character of Fantine in the movie, and I am surprised to report that she did an excellent job. I do not like Anne Hathaway. I have not liked Anne in a very long time because of  all her work after her disney movies. I never see any personality on screen other than her own annoying self. However, her portrayal of Fantine was superb, and in my mind, will undoubtedly win her best supporting actress at the Oscars.The cast was wonderful all around, except for Russel Crowe's inability to sing, and the inability of the audience to watch the character of Marius sing for long intervals of time. His facial expressions were just too bizarre and distracting.  The director, Tom Hooper, did a wonderful job of integrating special effects and actual sets. Some movies use too much CGI (computer generated imagery), and some just don't use enough. Les Mis successfully used the right amount of both.
    I found the movie to be beautifully made, and successful in holding the attention of the audience. This can be a difficult feat for many musicals because let's face it....a lot of musicals have that one song we all wish just didn't exist. For the most part, Les Mis managed to avoid this issue. And for the people who don't know, when it comes to movie musicals, this one was groundbreaking in the sense that every song was sung live by the actors, on set. Up until this movie, every musical has had actors previously record their songs, and then lip sync to them when filming. I thought this new freedom of singing live was very effective for the actors, and definitely embellished the experience. There were definitely times when the actors exercised this new-found freedom too much, and simply acted their way through a song when they should have been focused on the right tune...or focused on making it sound like a song. This problem was fairly rare, but did show itself a couple times.
    It will always be important for a movie that's a musical to understand the difference between a musical reality, and actual reality. People do not break out in a made up song that everyone around them just automatically knows. It's important to maintain the same reality throughout the movie. If you try and make a musical too much like actual reality...then the two will clash and make for moments. I only bring this up because Les Mis was definitely on the verge of clashing, but managed to avoid it for the most part. Overall I thought it was a wonderful experience that will keep you singing Les Mis songs for a very long time. This movie has definitely set a bar for movie/musicals, and it will not be so easily topped.