Les Miserables

Went and watched a musical movie for the first time at the cinema last week, this story had never struck any interest for me, it has to be one of the most famous musicals/stories of all time, but for me, probably knowing that it was a musical I never bothered. But we got some free tickets and so went to see this out of all the choices available.

Les Miserables

So, aside from being French, I had absolutely no idea what the story was about, so it turns out that the story is actually really interesting and that I should have paid more attention a long time ago, so this incarnation starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, and a whole bunch of others (including Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham-Carter), that’s why they call it an ensemble cast. So it’s based in historical France back around the Napoleon times (well after he got exiled), and follows Jean Valjean, an ex-con on his journey to redemption against the to-letter-of-the-law strict Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). That story then intertwines itself with another story with Fantine (Anne Hathaway) and her daughter Cosette, and so on and so forth, until the end story, that of the July Revolution in 1832 France merges them all together into one about love, revolution, loyalty, and friendship. So what about the singing, it’s basically 99.99999% of the dialogue, I don’t even remember the one bit where they weren’t singing (I just remember there was one tiny bit), for the most part if was ok, although maybe it is just me but Russell Crowe sounded a bit funny, but good effort especially the parts where multiple people are singing different lyrics/songs at the same time, that did seem really difficult, but it was also a bit hard to understand. Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham-Carter played their roles well and got the funny parts which I found the most entertaining but the whole film was watchable and I thought quite good, I think if I have to watch a musical, it’s better if it has some factual/historical context to it, for me it makes it much more interesting. That’s all I’m going to say about this one, good watch, good story most importantly, as I have Life of Pi waiting to be reviewed, just saw it last night but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Image taken from wikipedia.