Les Miserables

Two-and-a-half-hour long movies are not for everyone. Two-and-a-half hour long musicals appeal to even less. Make that 150+ minute musical a period piece and you're appealing to a sort of niche market. So if those things are not what you're looking for in a movie-going experience, we can stop right here. Les Miserables is not for you, and you're not going to like it.

However, if you're still reading this, this indicates that you're probably interested in those things, and to you, I say this: you're going to really like Les Miserables.

A film adaptation of the immensely popular musical, Les Miserables is the story of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a successful businessman who is on the run, physically and metaphorically, from his dark past as a felon. Pursuing him doggedly is Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), a French policeman who will stop at nothing to bring Valjean to justice. Along the way, matters get complicated with a destitute factory worker (Anne Hathaway), her daughter (Amanda Seyfried), meddlesome innkeepers (Sascha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter), and a young French Revolutionary (Eddie Redmayne). If it sounds like a lot to keep up with, you're right. It kind of is. But it is so worth it.

Les Miserables is being especially noted in the musical film world because it does not rely on vocal tracks. That means that there are no dubovers of flubbed notes or lip-synching involved. Although it sounds like nothing more than a novelty, it has a direct effect on the power of the film's emotions. The movie's entire script is in song, so it is incredibly important that the music tells the story of the characters' thoughts and emotions. The live taping of the actors' voices keeps their characters in the moment, making the audience feel  everything the characters do.

That being said, there are things that keep Les Miserables from being a perfect movie. Like most musicals,  the runtime is disproportionately long to the amount of content in the story. When everything is sung, musicals tend to spend more time than need be to convey a thought. This film is no exception. I found myself not paying attention at times because a song had spent so much time on one idea that I was just waiting for it to be over.

Despite its marathon running time, Les Miserables is a fantastic movie. Every actor pulls their weight (even poor Russell Crowe, who has a subpar singing voice, was awesome), and the filmography is just beautiful. I will be honestly surprised if Anne Hathaway does't win Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards next week. I give Les Miserables 8 and a half emotional ballads full of strife out of 10.