It’s 0325 AM and after spending 14 hours in the office a few hours with the daily commute, some television, anime and Friday Night Lights I have to say that I am writing because it’s as if it is the only way I can grasp at things that seem to loom over me.
I watched Les Mis with Angela at GB1 the second week it was showing and it contributed to less than optimal viewing experience. We now had the people who didn’t want to be left out, people who don’t like musicals but disdain being not in the loop more. This is probably why during less frantic times I liked watching movies the first showing of the morning time. It’s during these times that you find more people in the front row center where I love sitting and less of the back people who more often than not are really out on a date, not really caring what was showing. It is with this mellow sometimes disrespectful audience that I watched Les Mis.
I’d have to say that I understand that the self imposed limitations and rules that Tom Hooper chose pleased a lot of people I just happen to not be one of those people. See, I believe that each medium and form has attributes that allows it self certain advantages and disadvantages that if one is aware of will be a game of balance or imbalance. My quibble with Les Miserable is that for my taste the choices Tom Hooper makes were not the choices I would have made either during the act of creation or even after seeing the final piece.
I appreciate the hard work that all the actors did to give birth to this beautiful but flawed musical.
If he wanted the continuous take then tell your actors that that’s what you are going to do but edit it or have them record the songs separately.
This leaves me to think that he was actually playing the soundbites game of wow you did all the singing in one take for the whole day, what dedication. Unfortunately we do not judge only the effort we have to also judged the creation and save for the inspired work of Anne Hathaway or the flashes of brilliance of Hugh Jackman and the pitch perfect portrayal of the young Gavrosh everything else seems a poor off broadway performance not worthy of the musical that I so loved.
Because it is a film musical, not only a film, not only a musical, but a melding of the two and to sacrifice the musical to heighten the film part is a choice that a big part of me can just not accept.
PS I wrote this before reading the negative review from The New Yorker Magazine. This is unfinished but the seeds of the core of my disappointment is already here.
Giancarlo Angulo's Blog