Directed by: Tom Hooper, director of Cats
Starring: Basically every famous person.
Four stars for effort, I guess. If you have to watch a musical with your family, I guess this is in the top ten. But if everyone's old enough that they don't need action to be occupied, you're better off watching one of the Anniversary concert performances, since they're better in virtually every way except that.
Basically, this got made 'cause Tom Hooper got nominated for twelve Oscars for The King's Speech (an excellent historical retelling film) and got license to do whatever he wanted, which is why he chose this. They cast a million famous people (it's easier to note who isn't a huge star - Eponine's actress) and pumped out this bad boy. And it got nominated for ten Oscars, so clearly the creative team are doing something well. But it wasn't actually that good. Beyond casting issues like Russell Crowe or Sacha Baron Cohen; beyond its weird decision to sing everything in the musical with no dialogue; beyond things like randomly writing an extra song so it could be nominated for best Original Song; beyond all that - the film just doesn't have the sense of flair it ought to.
This is a famously thorny issue. Musical theater fans are always divisive about the film versions. Most of the time it just has to do with casting (hiring inexperienced celebrities over great Broadway talents, for example), but sometimes it's other things, and this is one of those.
Musicals are meant to be larger than life, sweeping, and elegant. Most musicals are either set in the past (most of them), wildly romanticizing the setting of the present (Rent, In The Heights), or changing something so it's obviously not realistic (Avenue Q's puppets, Next to Normal's intentional over-acting). Musicals aren’t realistic - they dramatize so the emotions hit harder. That’s what singing does in the first place. That's why they're so good. But instead, Les Mis 2012 feels like it's trying to be a documentary recreation of the era ... that just happens to have singing. It’s rejecting the drama of the setting.
To give another example of how this works - rock concerts aren't just the band coming on and singing; there's lights and smoke and fireworks and giant screens, all done to heighten the emotional engagement with what's happening. Similarly, a film version of Les Miserables ought to be a show, with lights and drama, and meticulously painted frames. Instead, it goes for a more photorealistic look, with grey streets and grey rooms, and grey light. This works great when Tom Hooper's directing biopics - those are supposed to look photorealistic. It'd look weird if Prince Albert was in some lurid shot when the film's all about meticulously recreating grim reality. But musicals aren't about reality, so he should be comfortable abandoning it!
Look at the same scene on screen and on stage.
Hugh Jackman shuffles around a barricade. This guy says a prayer under a spotlight. Which is catching your attention? The one you can actually see! That paints a clear, vivid subject! The Jackman one stays close to him; five or six tracking shots with that view the whole time. His face dominates the whole scene; a bunch of facial dialogue. The stage one, in contrast, illuminates the scene, highlights the color, then uses a mix of long shots and close-ups to highlight both this powerful solitary image and then the actor's facial performance. This also lets the music take, ahem, center stage.
Musicals aren't meant to be realistic. If we wanted them to be realistic, we would just make a movie where everyone sings because they're performers in the story. Like Coco. The same way superhero movies aren't meant to be realistic. If we wanted them to be realistic, they wouldn't really be superhero stories. You have to let them go, and let them be a little bigger and grander than reality. Rock concerts aren't anything like a normal setting. But that's how you blow people's minds.
This is my main nerd concern about the In The Heights movie. I'm worried they're gonna think "authenticity of the neighborhood" is gonna be what draws people in, when it's the energy and excitement of the musical (which is about the neighborhood) that draws people in. But y'know what, I shouldn't be worried about that, because I just looked it up, and the director is Jon M. Chu, who directed two of the later Step Up movies, which means he is a god of heightening reality. Concern ceased.
Overall, this isn’t meant to be a huge deal, it’s just that I wish more creators knew and understood this principle. There’s power in dramatizing that makes the movie better; not more dislikable. The truth is that Les Miserables is probably gonna get remade in another ten years; it's one of those properties that's always gonna be being adapted. But the 2012 film invoked so much attention and prestige and celebrity power that it's gonna be hard to dislodge it from the top of the popularity scale; and it would've been nice if it had decided to be the great adaptation I know it could've been, so someone else doesn't have a harder time adapting it later.
No comments:
Post a Comment