Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables translates better on screen than on stage
Every time, after I watch this movie (it has been three times now), I feel like Oprah Winfrey in a good mood. “You get an Oscar! You get an Oscar! Everybody gets an Oscar!”
There isn’t a single weak link in the entire performance. Anne Hathaway faces immense pressure as Fantine but delivers. After her hair is severely lopped off with a blade, she brings the theatre to tears, singing “I Dreamed a Dream,” arguably the song around which the rest of the film is centered.
Russell Crowe’s voice is shy of extraordinary but is impressive enough to hold Javert’s songs up with those of the rest of the cast.
Eddie Redmayne comes out of nowhere and takes over the third portion of the film as Marius with his strong, opera-esque voice and superb emotional range from when he falls in love with Cosette, to singing “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.”
Applause aside, Les Misérables as a film has an entirely different effect than it does as a play. Having watched an impressive production on stage in London in 2012, I enjoyed watching the film more. The film loses the booming power of the voices that, in the play, overwhelm the audience. The voice projection on stage makes the audience feel the impact of the violence, especially in songs like “Do You Hear The People Sing?” and “At The End Of The Day” which both have powerful choral parts.
In the film, we gain the emotional connection to the characters, which I found captured Victor Hugo’s message of the people’s struggle during and after the French Revolution in the original literary work. Because we see the characters up close, the film better demonstrates their pain. We see their tears, the dirt on their cheeks, and their rotting teeth, something not achieved on stage simply by virtue of the fact that we are further away and cannot read facial expression as well.
The film lets us get much closer to the characters physically and emotionally, so while the play may be more impressive to witness, the film pulls you down into the gutters alongside the characters, making it an overwhelming emotional experience.
By Alex Hum, Features Editor
