Misery takes its toll
Even if you are unfamiliar with the Victor Hugo novel or the long-running musical it has inspired, you will immediately realise a film with the title of Les Miserables is not exactly promising viewers a good time.
And without the songs, this interpretation of Hugo's novel makes for grim viewing. It is unrelenting actually: two hours and five minutes of operatic anguish.
Only in the last minute of the action, when one of the leading characters actually smiles, do you realise what Les Miserables has been missing. Misery loses its effectiveness when it is unleavened by other emotions.
Les Miserables is tough-going on the actors, too: Liam Neeson, as the much-put-upon Jean Valjean, is required to express non-stop anguish throughout, while Geoffrey Rush (Shine), as the menacing Chief Inspector Javert, hits a sadistic high note early on and then runs out of ways to vary it. This is a shame, because these two actors are both brilliant and brilliantly cast here. The book, I suppose, has its emotional structures and director Bille August (The House Of The Spirits) is unwilling to vary them.
Les Miserables is an epic: a telltale sign is the hops, skips, and jumps it makes through time. When we first meet Valjean, he has just completed 19 years of hard labour for stealing food and is on parole. Helped by a kindly priest, he rejoins society and makes his fortune, eventually becoming mayor of Vigo, but he has committed a sin by skipping parole.
And nine years later, Javert joins the Vigo police force and recognises the former convict.
Misery then takes centre stage in this production, with Valjean befriending Fantine (Uma Thurman), a single mother who, in rapid succession, is fired from her job at Valjean's factory, forced to become a prostitute, is physically abused both by her clients and Javert, and then becomes terminally ill. So much for Fantine.
Valjean then heads off - with Javert in hot pursuit - to rescue Fantine's daughter Cosette (Claire Danes) from her miserable life of servitude and the two wind up in Paris - we are skipping another 10 years here - in time for the revolution and a date with the menacing Javert.
On and on it goes, with no one cracking so much as a smirk. Neeson is a good actor and a perfect physical match for the role of Valjean, but eventually his rendition of noble distress becomes tiresome. Rush plays Javert with overtones of repressed homosexuality which threaten at all times to dip into the cartoonish.
There is a thunderously portentous score which theatrically signposts moments of high drama - as if we could not see them coming an hour ago anyway.
August, who made such a clumsy attempt at adapting The House Of The Spirits, demonstrates the same heavy-handedness here. His version of Les Miserables is sadly leaden and without nuance. All the actors give it their best shot, but they are swimming against the tide.
Les Miserables is an old-fashioned film, and it has failed, thus far, to find an audience willing to go back to Dickensian times with it. This is surprising, as one would imagine the wildly successful play has its own in-built audience.
Les Miserables, Broadway Cinematheque and Cine-Art
