Les Misérables Blu-ray Review
No, not that one.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, February 10, 2013
Is your Oscar office pool all set? This is a rather odd year for the Academy Awards, at least when utilizing
other
awards shows to gauge how the Oscars will play out. Several high profile directors were snubbed by the Academy
despite the fact that
their films received multiple nominations, and one of them (Ben Affleck) has seen his film (
Argo) do quite well at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild and
Directors Guild Awards shows. Some of the categories are sure locks (it would take a miracle for Daniel Day-Lewis to
lose in the Best Actor category for his stunning work in
Lincoln), though other categories, notably Best Actress and perhaps even Best Supporting
Actor,
are quite a bit more competitive. There seems to be little doubt, however, that Anne Hathaway is poised to capture the
Best Supporting Actress trophy for her performance as Fantine in
Les Misérables. Aside from the sheer technical aspects of Hathaway's work,
there's also a personal story at stake here, the very kind that Academy voters simply love. Hathaway's mother Kate
McCauley played Fantine in the first national tour of
Les Misérables and the very young Anne was in the
audience for some performances, a situation which made an indelible imprint on her and made her determined to
capture this role in the film version. Hathaway is nevertheless one of the few elements in the newest film version of
Les Misérables to receive near unanimous praise. The film has been pilloried for being too bloated, too
grandiose and too lengthy for its own good. One has to wonder what these same critics would have said about the
1958 version of
Les Misérables, a nearly three and a half hour epic that some audience members may have
jokingly thought
was forcing them to relive Jean Valjean's long incarceration themselves. (This particular version runs just over three
hours, as evidently several European DVD versions do, but I've been unable to find a reliable source as to what if
anything was cut from the film.)
I arrived at Victor Hugo by a somewhat circuitous route. I had become enamored of Ayn Rand when I was a teenager,
marauding through all of her books when I was probably around sixteen to seventeen or so (in fact, I've often thrown
up
my hands in dismay over adults who espouse her "philosophy" as if it were delivered from Mt. Sinai—it was obvious to
me
by the time I was probably
nineteen that Rand had her points, but that Objectivism was hardly the answer to all
of
the world's problems). Rand was a huge proponent of Hugo's writing, and I felt it was incumbent upon me to find out
what "the deal" was, so I settled down to a rather long and frankly tortuous reading experience, finally managing to
drag
myself through
Les Misérables simply by pure force of will. This may strike some as absolute heresy, but as
riveting as Jean Valjean's story was, I actually found Hugo's actual writing style, at least insofar as it was delivered in
the English translation I read, simply not riveting
enough for
my then
quite
young
sensibility (I really should revisit the novel now to see what my reactions might be, as my hunch is they'd be radically
improved).
Anyone who has had the fortitude to actually read Victor Hugo's immense novel will know the sheer audacity that
any adaptation of
the
source must have in order to even come close to capturing the sheer scope of the story, let alone the glut of characters.
Some editions of
Les Misérables weigh in at well over 1,000 pages, and trying to cram that much information into a
reasonable film running time is well nigh impossible. Part of the story of
Les Misérables is of course the huge
span of time that Jean
Valjean spends in prison, not to mention the years that pass after his eventual freedom, and time, not to make too fine
a point of it, requires
time itself to make the reality of the situation feel real. There's a fine tightrope to be walked between making that time
viscerally real while
not weighing the audience down to the point of torpor.
At a bit over three hours, this
Les Misérables has the luxury of exploring the long unfolding relationship
between Jean Valjean (Jean Gabin) and Javert (Bernard Blier), but it also takes certain liberties with Hugo's source
novel due to the rather large age differences between Gabin and Blier. In this version of Hugo's venerable story, Javert
first "meets" Valjean when Javert is still a child, seeing the prisoner break out of his shackles to help save another
prisoner, only later as an adult developing his near obsession with the supposed criminal. This version also dwells a bit
more on Valjean's (somewhat iffy) redemption at the hands of the Bishop (Fernand Ledoux) than either the novel or
many of the other film adaptations.
These are fairly inconsequential diversions from what is overall a very faithful (some might argue almost
reverential) treatment of Hugo's novel. That said, there are some things to be aware of. The "new" (musical)
Les Misérables has been faulted (unfairly in my estimation) for being too "grimy" for a blockbuster musical, but
the exact opposite criticism might be lobbed at this version, for it is, in its own widescreen, Technicolor splendor way,
very much in line with historical epics from the Golden Age of Hollywood, when even supposed "lowlifes" were squeaky
clean and the streets of Paris were absolutely immaculate.
What ultimately saves this version from its own good intentions is the acting
gravitas of Gabin as Valjean, as
well as several stellar supporting performances. Gabin brings an incredibly stolid, understated precision to his portrayal
of the long suffering hero, managing to sum up a lifetime of indignities in one doleful gaze. If Blier isn't
quite his
equal as Javert, he does a reasonably well rounded job in displaying both Javert's nastiness as well as his own internal
sense of failure which in fact colors his relationship with his perceived prey. Several of the more minor characters are
simply wonderful, including a wonderful Bourvil as one of the best ever screen Thernardiers and a rather touching
Daničle Delorme as Fantine. Béatrice Altariba as the adult Cosette also has some heart tugging scenes, especially
toward the end of the film.
Director Jean-Paul Le Chanois (rather bizarrely listed as Jean-Louis Le Chabois on the back cover's text even though
the credits below spell his name
almost correctly) was an "old school" French writer and director who became
one of the main
whipping
posts of the New Wave of French filmmakers who were becoming all the rage almost exactly when this
Les
Misérables was debuting. It's not hard to understand the antipathy: there's very little innovation or even
movement in La Chanois' stagings. He plants his Technirama camera down and lets the action unfold in the action
scenes, and letting medium two shots suffice for the bulk of the dialogue scenes. This deprives the film of some visual
momentum, though it must also be stated that this
Les Misérables is often quite scenic.
