Oscar-down #4: Les Miserables

(Will ranks his favorite Best Picture noms! #9, #8, #7, #6, #5)

#4: Les Miserables

   Escaped convict Jean Valjean tries to make a redemptive life for himself while dodging the pursuit of the tenacious Javert. Also, there's some singing.

Why it should be higher:
   I went into this film having never seen the stage play Les Miserables, never read the book, never heard any songs not named "I Dreamed a Dream", and knowing nothing of the plot beyond 'Javert hunts Valjean'. I left the theater understanding why legions of fans have flocked to this material for decades. Les Mis' story is grand, expansive, and gripping, but it's the strength of its music that elevates the work to another level. The songs of Les Miserables are wonderful, great pieces that play up the scope of what you're watching while letting you into the minds and souls of the characters.

   Praising performances in these films is beginning to get repetitive so I'll keep it brief: they're great, phenomenal, amazing, insert synonym of your choice here. In a powerhouse cast Anne Hathaway manages to steal the show, delivering a performance so raw and affecting that she makes you forget how underwritten of a character she is asked to play. But pretty much everyone has already written about the cast's talents so instead let's talk about Russell Crowe. Several critics seemed to find him and his voice the film's weakest link. He's not. Sure Crowe's 'pub' singing pitch is different from those of Hugh Jackman and the others, but that's a good thing. It makes sense for Javert to be more direct than flashy, and Crowe's performance works well to humanize the zealot officer.

Why it isn't:
   Look, the film major in me could rant all day about the directing choices Tom Hooper made and why they hold the film back nine times out of ten. Here's a much better (if lengthy) explanation of Les Mis' central visual problem than I could give but if you want the bullet points: I hope you like jittery close-ups because Hooper shoots every important scene with them. There are moments in which that style works perfectly ("I Dreamed a Dream", *tuberculosis cough*), but the rest of the time it's a questionable choice whose repetition calls attention to itself.

   I mentioned above that my only vague inklings if Les Mis' story concerned Jean Valjean's unjust imprisonment and Javert's unyielding pursuit of him. The actual plot has a lot more going on than just the cat-and-mouse game between these two characters. Unfortunately, none of the other threads are nearly as interesting. The film's second half deals with an ultimately doomed revolution of idealistic students, but its hard to care about their plight in anything more than a general sense. Les Mis spends doesn't establish the motives for the rebels beyond 'France has a lot of inequality', banking heavily on the audience's historical knowledge to fill in the gaps and make them empathize with Marius' band. That might work if the event in question was the well-known French Revolution but instead the film covers a much more minor and unreported revolt. As a result, viewers are removed from the students' justification for their outrage and the group comes across as more fool-hardy than noble (There were many moments where they reminded me of some of the more irritating crusaders of my own liberal arts alma matter: a band of well-off youth who take up a cause for 'social justice' but then, in Marius' case at least, run back to their lives of wealth and privilege as soon as they face real consequence and struggle). Meanwhile, a pair of innkeepers played by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter constantly intrude into the proceedings; intended as comic relief showing how opportunists continue on and evolve with the times, they take up too much screentime for too little gain.

"Wait, we'll get shoot at? Screw it, I'll just post some flyers in the quad."

   Also, as good as the performances may be the actors are frequently better than the characters they are called to play. Marius and Cosette's love-at-first-sight plot hits almost all of that trope's worst cliches and never once did I either believe or care about their connection. And considering how much the specter of Fantine hangs over the proceedings her character is exceedingly one-note, with an arc that goes martyr -> still a martyr -> actual angelic being.
   So why, given how much I just ripped into the film, is Les Miserables even this high? Because when the movie works it simply swept me away. Hathaway's painfully raw rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" is one of my favorite scenes of the year, and the stories of Javert, Valjean, and spurned Eponine are genuinely engaging and tragic. For all its faults, Les Miserables rises above the sum of its parts and tells a truly epic and emotional story.