Les Miserables

We screened this last week and I haven't been able to get the songs out of my head since then!!!

Here are my notes:

Les Misérables

UK 2012                      158 minutes

Director:                      Tom Hooper

Starring:                       Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen

Awards and Nominations

• Won three Oscars, including Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway) and a further five nominations including Best Film and Best Actor (Hugh Jackman)
• Won three Golden Globes (Best Film (Musical or Comedy), Best Actor (Hugh Jackman) and Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway))
• Won four BAFTAs, including Best Actor (Hugh Jackman) and Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway), plus five further nominations

“Like a diabolically potent combination of Lionel Bart and Leni Riefenstahl, the movie version of Les Misérables has arrived, based on the hit stage show adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel set among the deserving poor in 19th-century France, which climaxes with the anti-monarchist Paris uprising of 1832.  Even as a non-believer in this kind of "sung-through" musical, I was battered into submission by this mesmeric and sometimes compelling film, featuring a performance of dignity and intelligence from Hugh Jackman, and an unexpectedly vulnerable singing turn from that great, big, grumpy old bear, Russell Crowe.”

Peter Bradshaw

 The global success of the stage production of Les Misérables, which has been running in London since October 1985, quickly led to plans for a filmed version, with reports in 1988 that Alan Parker would direct the film, although by 1992 the production had been abandoned.  In was only after the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the show in 2005 that Cameron Mackintosh finally resurrected the idea of a film, and in 2011 it was announced that Tom Hooper, fresh from the global success of The King’s Speech, would direct from a script by William Nicholson. 

Tom Hooper brought production designer Eve Stewart and cinematographer Danny Cohen with him from The King’s Speech and also appointed Chris Dickens, who had won an Oscar and a BAFTA for his work on Slumdog Millionaire, as film editor.  The resulting look of the film, which combined both stylised and realistic views of Paris, drew its inspiration from nineteenth century French painters such as David, Delacroix and Gustav Doré, and secured BAFTA and Oscar nominations for both Costume and Production Design.

Hooper’s major innovation in filming the musical numbers was to have all the singing recorded live on set, with the performers listening to a pianist via earpieces and with the orchestration added later.  Most of the leading performers are able to sing well, with Hugh Jackman in particular having played leading roles in musical theatre.  Minor roles are played by performers who had played in various stage productions and include Colm Wilkinson (who created the role of Jean Valjean) and Samantha Barks who had performed the role of Eponine both in the West End and the Twentieth Anniversary Concert.  With almost all the dialogue set to music Hooper’s action allowed the entire cast to bring dramatic vitality to their performances.

In 2005 a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of Number One Essential Musicals placed Les Misérables at number one: in fact it took more than 40% of the vote.

 Here's te trailer:

One Day

Another month and another film... Here are my notes for this week's screening:

One Day

UK 2011                      108 minutes

Director:                      Lone Scherfig

Starring:                        Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Jodie Whittaker, Ken Stott, Patricia Clarkson, Rafe Spall, Romola Garai

 “In a season of movies dumb and dumber, One Day has style, freshness, and witty bantering dialogue. Anne Hathaway is so attractive that she would be advised to sometimes play against type (the eyeglasses she wears at the beginning are a bit over the top).  Jim Sturgess contributes the film's most versatile performance, one that depends on exact timing and control of the balance between pathos and buffoonery.  It's a decent night at the movies, if however a letdown after An Education, the previous film by Lone Scherfig.”

Roger Ebert

Upper class Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working class Emma (Anne Hathaway) graduate from the University of Edinburgh on 15^th July 1988; they spend the night together but decide to remain just as friends.  The story then follows their respective lives on the same date over the next twenty years. 

The film is based on the award-winning novel of the same name by David Nicholls.  He worked as an actor for a number of years before writing several number novels as well as a number of TV and film scripts.  His screenplays include adaptations of two his novels: Starter for 10 (2006) and One Day (2011). 

 In the book the unusual structure of following the protagonists on just one day over a twenty year period works well, although in the film it is possible to see this just as a gimmick.  However as author of both the original novel and the screenplay there must be a reason for its retention and in The Guardian film blog David Cox proposes an interesting theory:

“Emma and Dex throw away what should have been the prime of their lives. He wraps himself up in coke and self-love; she hides herself in her own cocoon of denial. The book's annual audit anatomised their folly in meticulous detail. Their wasted years were mercilessly ticked off and the course of their delusion was unerringly charted until they were subjected to deserved punishment.

This is the chronicle of wasted youth, rich in emotional nuance and period detail, that the book's snapshots encapsulated so tellingly. In the film's necessary haste, they reveal only blurry banality. Perhaps this key element of the book could have been conveyed through some means other than annual snapshots in a way that would have been more compatible with a two-hour film. Perhaps not.”

There was also criticism of Anne Hathaway’s Yorkshire accent, with one critic describing it as all over the shop (“Sometimes she's from Scotland, sometimes she's from New York, you just can't tell.”).  Anne Hathaway subsequently claimed that she watched Emmerdale to help her as she found the accent “a challenge”.

 Lone Scherfig started her career in Denmark, but she gained worldwide fame when she directed the internationally successful An Education in the UK.

Here's the trailer: