Reading/Watching Log
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, though it’s been a pretty hectic few weeks, what with my aunt and uncle visiting from England whilst I’ve consecutively been knee-deep in painters. This is thanks to the insurance company deciding that earthquake compensation involves a free interior paintjob. I’m not sure how exactly that adds up, but hey - never look a gift horse in the mouth.
As predicted, the changes made to Photobucket have caused complete havoc in my ability to simply upload pictures and transfer them onto LiveJournal (which is having glitches of its own now that it’s not maintaining paragraphs when I switch from HTML to Rich Text). So after an inordinate amount of time trying to work my way around it, I’m now using Tinypic as a hosting site to get the pictures you see here. Doing stuff should not be this complicated.
So it’s been a pretty slow few weeks in terms of reading and watching (though I’ve been getting a lot of writing done) but there are two enjoyable things on the horizon - first of all, I’ve managed to track down the final two episodes of Dancing on the Edge, and I’m looking forward to writing a follow-up post to see whether I judged it fairly based on the first three parts. Stephen Poliakoff managed to surprise me a couple of times.
The other thing is that Elementary has started on New Zealand television. I don’t think I’ll comment on it on a week-by-week basis, but I’m definitely enjoying it, and I’ll make a post at the end of the season.
Oh, and I’ve started on Middlemarch. I’m aiming for a chapter per day, though it’s a doorstopper of a book.
But here’s the reading/watching log for the past several weeks.
Halloween Party by Agatha Christie
This is one of my favourite Agatha Christie novels, which is odd in a way since it was one of her last ones, and therefore not considered anywhere near her best. By this stage, she was clearly starting to slow down, but there is enough atmosphere and intrigue in this one to make it memorable.
It’s especially creepy in one very distinct way: the murder is that of a child. Halfway through a Halloween party, Joyce Reynolds pipes up with an extraordinary statement: that she once witnessed a murder, though it wasn’t until years later that she realized it was a murder. Since the girl is known to be a liar, the rest of the gathering summarily dismisses her. But by the end of the night, Joyce has been drowned in the bobbing-for-apples bucket.
Christie’s Author Avatar, the apple-munching authoress Ariadne Oliver immediately calls up Hercule Poirot for his assistance. Poirot decides to take Joyce's claim that she once witnessed a murder seriously, and so asks his police contacts to dredge up any unsolved murder or disappearance cases in the area. One of them may have been the murder that Joyce claimed to have seen.
What's striking about Halloween Party is its eerie, spooky atmosphere. Though it's set in an English village and so has every appearance of a typical cosy, there is a fairytale quality about it. This is particularly noticeable when Poirot explores a sunken garden in an old quarry. Commissioned by an elderly widow before her death, rumoured to be the site of a hidden well, and frequented by a strange, otherworldly little girl, it puts Poirot in mind of the Garden of Eden. But naturally, even Paradise had its serpent.
The suspects are more lightly sketched than usual, which means that there is less human interest than in her very best work, but there is an exploration of the darker side to childhood: telling lies, keeping secrets, their strange ideas, their need for attention, their capacity for manipulation and the susceptibility that can result in tragic foolishness.
The ITV adaptation was a bit of a disappointment, all the more so because it was written by Mark Gatkiss, who did a fantastic job with Cat Among the Pigeons. But he didn’t capture the creepy ambiance of the novel or the genuine horror that surrounds the murder of a child, two things which could have covered for the patchy plot. Without the dark atmosphere that the book sustains, the characters and situation go from disturbing and unnerving to ridiculously melodramatic.
Take the sunken garden for instance. In the book, it is simultaneously a place of great beauty and sinister design. Many characters are fascinated by it, though none are quite sure why. It may or may not be the setting of a murder, a grave, a hidden well, or all three. As mentioned, Poirot is reminded of the Garden of Eden and all that such an allusion implies: that somewhere among the trimmed hedges and the neat flowerbeds hides the serpent. Here, it's just a garden and its contextual significance has been lost.
Likewise, Christie's fascinating portrayal of children is gone. In her three child characters, Joyce, Leopold and Miranda, Christie presented an interesting subversion of the Children Are Innocent trope. Joyce Reynolds was written as a sullen, dishonest girl - yet here she's a buffoon, complete with a ridiculous bumblebee costume. Leopold is a non-entity. Miranda's otherworldliness (which admittedly, was always going to be hard to translate) unfortunately comes across as utter stupidity. Needlessly added to the cast are two smarmy teenagers who not only don't exist in the book, but who take up a disproportionate amount of screen-time and don't add anything to the plot.
The shock and horror of a child's murder is all but glossed over, as beyond a few casual words of sadness, it's business as usual in the village. Not even the grieving mother seems all that concerned. At the denouement of the case, Poirot cheerfully announces that he's going to tell everyone a "Halloween story!" which is hardly the demeanour one should take when recounting the deaths of two children and the attempted murder of a third. This wrap-up is ultimately played as a melodrama (complete with lovers throwing themselves at each other's feet) instead of the terrifying race-against-time chase of the book.
It feels like someone - the screenwriter, the actors, the director, just didn't quite get the book. Still, if you're not as fussy as I am about the original text, it makes for a fun watch. Taking place in dark dingy parlours and cold autumnal gardens, there is a certain chill about the production, and you can certainly expect a lot of thunderstorms and jack-o-lanterns, as befits a story set on Halloween.
Zoe Wanamaker and David Suchet are as wonderful as ever, and it’s always fun to play “spot the British thespian”. This has two Merlin alumni: Julian Rhind-Tutt (Edwin Muirden) and Georgia King (Princess Elena), as well as Fenella Woolgar (who ironically played Agatha Christie in Doctor Who) and Deborah Findlay (who had the best scene of Torchwood: Children of Earth).
Whitechapel
This is one of my favourite shows at the moment. Last year I mentioned how much I enjoyed the first series, which was simply called Whitechapel at first, but which now has The Ripper Returns added to it (at least on some DVD releases). The premise was simple: a team of contemporary detectives are faced with a copy-cat killer who is murdering women in Whitechapel, attempting to re-enact the crimes of Jack the Ripper. As far as ideas for a crime-drama-suspense-thriller series goes, it was a brilliant one, with the investigators forced to utilize their own up-to-date procedurals as well as historical precedent in an attempt to keep two steps ahead of the most famous serial killer of all time.
As an added bonus, the characterization was rock-solid, with old copper Ray Miles (Phil Davies) being paired with inexperienced, over-promoted Joe Chandler (Rupert Penry-Jones) in order to give the latter a quick bout of credibility before his superiors can hoist him up the food-chain. Naturally, the two dislike each other on sight and are soon arguing incessantly over how their latest case is to be handled. Neat-freak Chandler thinks that they all look and act unprofessional, Miles counters that this is how real policemen get their work done, appearances (and hygiene) be damned. Naturally, by the end of it all, they’ve met each other halfway: Chandler gets everyone eating “brain-food” and wearing ties, and Miles has Chandler loosen up as to some of the minutia of the usual police procedure.
Also on board is Edward Buchan (Steve Pemberton) a self-proclaimed “Ripperologist” who specializes in the carnage wrought by the original Jack the Ripper, who first alerts the men as to the possibility of a copy-cat killer and then providing valuable information about his murders. It’s a great performance by Pemberton: a man who is simultaneously intelligent yet pathetic, insightful but pompous, wildly enthusiastic but absurdly self-important, and played with relish by Pemberton. A lot of the time he is called upon to provide exposition, but does it with so much obvious enjoyment that you can’t help but get excited too.
But that’s just the first series. After its popularity became evident, a second series was commissioned, which might have caused a stir in the writing studio considering Whitechapel was initially a standalone project. It’s not like they could deal with another Ripper copycat, and so writers Ben Court and Caroline Ip turn to another famous criminal that once haunted the streets of Whitechapel - or rather, two famous criminals: Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Once again a copycat killer seems to be on the loose, but this time it’s more personal to Miles, whose own father was involved in the original brothers’ crime syndicate.
Yet by this point, the whole copycat killer angle was beginning to pall a bit, and the third series wisely goes in a different direction. Instead of a three-episode miniseries, the season is divided into six two-part episodes that have been inspired by famous cases of the past. Buchan is brought on as a consultant, with Chandler working by the hypothesis that the past can be used as a blueprint to solve contemporary crimes - even if it’s just by not repeating the mistakes of history.
This season is legitimately scary (seriously, it gave me nightmares at one point) and seems to subscribe to the theory that everything, no matter how mundane, should be made as disconcerting and creepy as possible. For example, one episode has the team questioning a witness who just happens to be a creepy old voodoo lady. She's in the episode for less than half a minute, and she could just as easily have been a benign housewife in a dressing gown, but the show opts for a spooky old voodoo lady instead.
Why You Should Watch This: You’re about to be astonished because I’m actually going to endorse a bromance. It’s the one that exists between Chandler and Miles, which could even be described as a love triangle if you count Edward Buchan. Now in the supplementary material on the DVD for the first series this trio was described by the writers as Chandler being the offspring of two divorced parents squabbling over him. I honestly didn’t get that vibe, but it’s a particularly unique bond to pin down. Neither brotherly nor fatherly nor even particularly friendly, the Chandler/Miles dynamic is best described as two complete opposites forced to work together and finding that their friction actually gives them an edge. When they first meet they hate each other - that is, genuinely hate each other. Neither thinks the other knows what he’s doing and they have several nasty, full-on verbal smack-downs. Even without the conflict that exists over how each chooses to do his job, they’re still chalk and cheese. I can’t think of a single thing they have in common.
And so the key to their relationship is that their eventual trust of each other feels earned, and they perfectly fit the bill if you’re looking for an example of Fire Forged Friends. By series three, they clearly have each other’s backs. Chandler gets Miles to open up about his wife’s illness, and Miles helps Chandler with his OCD and tries to set him up with various women in the precinct. One sequence that’s typical of their relationship is when Miles gives a scathing speech to his peers about how Chandler was ostracized for not catching the Ripper, instead choosing to save an injured Miles’s life - but when Chandler tries to thank him for it later, Miles brushes him off, saying: “doesn’t mean we’re engaged.” In another episode Miles gives Chandler hell for putting himself in the line of fire, pointing out that because he doesn’t have a wife or kids, he thinks he’s expendable and that he’ll be “the only one crying at your funeral”.
Even by the end of series three, you don’t really get the sense that they like each other - but they trust each other. I don’t think I really realized it until this show, but you don’t have to love or even like someone in order to trust them, and in this case it makes for a great dynamic. Basically, these are two very different men who nevertheless make a great team - other people note with interest that they work best by arguing incessantly with each other, and though there’s an unfortunate “bros before hoes” storyline to one episode, they definitely make up the central relationship of the series.
Also on board is Buchan, who is essentially a third wheel to their bromance. There’s not much love lost between Miles/Buchan at this stage (Miles can’t stand him) but the rapport between Chandler/Buchan is amusing. You get the sense that Chandler is the first person that’s ever treated Buchan seriously, so naturally it goes straight to Buchan’s head. As I said, he’s a great character: very earnest and passionate about detecting (plus somewhat flabbergasted by Chandler’s “it’s just a job” mentality) but also rather ridiculous, veering close to a Man Child persona at times.
It’s clearly not an estrogen-filled show, but unlike the likes of Sherlock and Merlin which seems to hold thinly-veiled contempt for its female characters, Whitechapel does right by (most of) the women who do feature. Caroline Llewellyn is the pathologist, with an important role to play in solving the mysteries, and series three adds Megan Riley to the team, a woman who integrates herself seamlessly among the boys, rolling her sleeves up and putting in the hard labour, but also demonstrating a warm, comforting persona when dealing with victims (and who isn’t above whacking one of her college’s around the head when he deserves it).
There is an overwhelming amount of Disposable Women in the show, which was only to be expected when dealing with the Ripper case, but which continues to bleed into the third series. However, it’s worth noting that they’re treated with a surprising amount of respect. Initially the writers had access to the real post-mortem photographs of the Ripper victims, but decided against using them on moral grounds, instead photographing actresses who were made up to look like corpses. In the third series, the team begins to find the body parts of young women (in a story based on the Thames Torso Murders) and in lieu of any other form of identification, Chandler gives them all names from poetry, telling the others: “I want to give her a name that invokes beauty, not death and dismemberment,” and on seeing Miles’s face, “it’s just poetry, not some weird fetish.” If dead women are necessary to your plot, then this is the way in which to treat them.
Though in saying that, I do have to concede that there is one female character who falls prey to the Derailing Love Interests trope (followed by a Bros Before Hoes showdown) and a second who falls victims to a quintessential Stuffed In the Fridge Diabolus ex Machina. So...yeah. Pinch of salt, there.
But the show is also hugely informative when it comes to grisly murder cases of the past, and as I said, Buchan’s enthusiasm and love of history is contagious. Because the show relies so heavily on historical crimes, it’s quite informative and cases such as the Ratcliff Highway Murders and the Thames Torso Murders (which are used to inform the episodes in series three) are easily found on Wikipedia and other websites. So the whole thing definitely has my highest recommendation.
Mrs Henderson Presents
I was given this DVD by my great-aunt to watch, being told that it was one of her favourite movies. This is somewhat surprising considering she’s in her eighties and it’s about nude showgirls in the 1900s, but people can be surprising.
Okay, so it’s not really about nude showgirls, it’s about the Windmill Theatre, a variety and revue theatre which featured nude tableaux vivants. It’s main claim to fame was its motto “we never closed”; a reference to the fact that the theatre remained open throughout the Second World War, with performances continuing even at the height of the Blitz. The showgirls, singers and crew even moved into the theatre for a period of time in order to take advantage of its two underground floors.
Laura Henderson bought the theatre in 1932 after her husband’s death and hired a theatre manager, Vivian van Damm, who developed the idea of the Revudeville-a programme of continuous variety that ran from 2.30pm until 11pm. To boost attendance, they hired women to pose in various stages of undress during their performances, under the strict government regulation that none of them were permitted to move. After Henderson’s death, she left the Windmill to Van Damm, who in turn left it to his daughter, who struggled to keep it going. However, it was unable to compete with strip joints in the area and so closed its doors in 1964.
Steven Frear’s film attempts to illustrate the historical significance of the Windmill Theatre, ticking all the bullet points of the above summary (at least up until Laura Henderson’s death) and centring the film on the platonic friendship that blossoms between Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) and Vivian van Damm (Bob Hoskins). The nudity, as it exists in this film, is presented as a celebration of female beauty, and Frears does all he can to gloss over, or just plain ignore, the potentially sordid aspects of nudity on the stage.
Now, I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, or that the film had to be an expose of public nudity for an admission fee; I’m mainly interested in the steps he takes in order to “sanitize” the subject a little (and make it acceptable viewing for my eighty-something year old great-aunt). Obviously Frears isn’t interested in the question of potential exploitation or voyeurism or titillation; he needs the girls to be respected and empowered in order to achieve the light drama/comedy that he’s going for. So it doesn’t delve too deeply in the girls’ opinions or backstories (only one gets a subplot of her own) and Frears steers his way through potentially murky waters by glossing over everything with comedy and nostalgia.
It results in a mixed bag. On the one hand, the story recognises that the girls would naturally be jittery about disrobing in front of an audience, and has Van Damm to insist that they’re works of art and that he would never submit them to anything sleazy. This is followed by a scene of equal opportunity nudity, in which all the stagehands strip alongside the girls in order to alleviate their nerves. Later one of the girls insists on how well they’re being treated, stating (perhaps a little wryly) that “who’d have thought that being naked in front of hundreds would be the safest place in the world?” There’s also an emphasis on the girls faces (one of them is chosen for her beautiful smile) and the camera certainly doesn’t pander to the male gaze.
And yet on some level it still doesn’t change the fact that they’re performing every night to a rowdy bunch of soldiers that cheer every time they see a breast. There’s another scene in which a mouse is put on stage to frighten the girls into moving, made worse by the reveal that it was Van Damm who organised the stunt, thus betraying the girls’ trust (not that they ever find out about it, and it’s all just a throwaway gag anyway).
By the end, Ms Henderson shares her true reasons for wanting nudity on the stage: her own son died in World War I at age twenty-one without ever seeing a naked woman, as she assumed on discovering a French postcard in his room. Now she wants to ensure that no other young man ever suffers the same fate. That’s a reasonably touching sentiment, though again, some of its innocence is lost when one considers the Windmill eventually closed because it couldn’t compete with strip-joints in the area.
It’s impossible to criticize a film for not being something that it never intended to be in the first place, and though it would have been quite interesting to explore what it meant for England (and these girls) to have nudity on the public stage for the first time in its history (at least as far as I know), this is simply not the focus.
Instead the emphasis is on Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) and Vivian van Damn (Bob Hoskins) and their tempestuous relationship. Laura Henderson is brazen, eccentric and rather rude most of the time, but what could have been a charmless character is made likeable by Judi Dench's charisma. In many ways Laura is going through her second childhood and treats the theatre much like an elaborate game, but at the film's conclusion she reveals the aforementioned much more complex side than her colleges ever gave her credit for. Bob Hoskins as Vivian Van Damm holds his own as her stage manager, and it's clear that despite (or perhaps because of) their disagreements, bickering and insults, they are happiest in each other's company. It’s always nice to have a film centre on a platonic male/female friendship, and these two make good business partners and eventually confidants.
There are a few plots that go nowhere: one of the girls gets pregnant and then promptly killed, Henderson’s friend disappears without explanation for the final act, and Van Damm’s wife is introduced for one scene only for Henderson to get jealous (urgh) and never again be seen or mentioned, giving the film a sense of padding in certain places. But Kelly Reilly and Natalia Tena are in this as two of the showgirls, who have naturally gone on to bigger fame as Mary Morstan in the Sherlock Holmes movies and Nymphadora Tonks in the Harry Potter franchise. It’s rather amusing to think of all the hand-wringing that went on in the Game of Thrones fandom when “Tonks” disrobed (I recall at least one “my childhood is ruined!” lamentation), as long before that, she was skipping about topless here as well. She’s great actually; there’s an especially cute scene in which she’s dressed as a mermaid, and though she has no lines she keeps busily adjusting her Godiva hair in the background. Kelly Reilly gets a good moment too, in which she’s performing whilst the Blitz is going on, and after a particularly violent bombing, breaks the “no movement” rule in order to stride forward and flip the bird at the ceiling.
Basically, Roger Ebert put it best: "Mrs. Henderson Presents is not great cinema, and neither was the Windmill great theatre, but they both put on a good show."
Les Misérables
Yes, I finally got around to seeing it. It was my birthday present actually, and though I perhaps wouldn’t have chosen a movie whose title translates into “the miserable” as a birthday treat, it’s the thought that counts and I’m glad I saw it on the big screen. That said, we didn’t have surround sound and the ushers left the door open (which meant I had a rectangle of light from the foyer shining in the corner of my eye throughout the film’s duration) and so I never felt fully immersed in what I was seeing/hearing. Grumble, grumble.
A lot has been made of Tom Hooper’s decision to have all the actors to sing live, a decision that paid off. Though none of them (at least as far as I know) are professionally-trained singers, the idea was clearly to let the actors be actors and for the emotions to be paramount in the performing of the songs. This creates a singular advantage over the stage performance, simply by having the audience up close and personal to the actors’ emotive range - their expressions and nuances. This is in contrast to the stage, where such things have to be carried (mostly) by the voice.
In terms of Les Misérables being adapted specially as a musical...well, I have a lot of thoughts on musicals as movies. Personally, I think the best musical of recent times has been Chicago, not necessarily for the subject matter, but for the way in which the film justified the presence of singing. In an ordinary musical, characters break into song as though it were an everyday occurrence. In Chicago, the director uses the neat conceit of presenting all the musical numbers as the result of Roxy Hart’s hyperactive imagination. Furthermore, thanks to some slick editing these songs are also interspersed with scenes of what’s happening in real life.
I think this review puts it very succinctly:
As any drama student knows, one of the strengths of the theatre is its propensity to eschew "reality" and head straight for the underlying metaphor. Conversely, mainstream cinema, even when depicting fantastic or absurd subject matter, has often boxed itself into a kind of straightforward realism of treatment. What Chicago does is to combine the imaginative conceits of vaudevillian stage with the visual freedom of cinema by intercutting between a relatively realistic depiction of events and stagey musical interpretations of those same events.
The story is staged principally through the eyes of the main character, Roxie. Throughout the course of the film, we constantly see two different versions of the same events: what’s actually happening, and what Roxie’s vaudeville-soaked imagination conjures from real-world events - fantasy sequences that reveal the inner meaning of events in her mind.
Thus, for example, in Roxie’s first press conference, the members of the press as well as Roxie herself are alternately seen as real people and as marionettes and dummies on the stage performing "We Both Reached For the Gun." The conceit of Roxie and the press as puppets could be realized on the stage, but Marshall exploits the capabilities of the cinematic form, not only by shuttling between reality and fantasy, but also with surreal shots of Billy Flynn above the stage, larger than life, controlling the puppet press - an effect impossible in the theatre, but unlikely to be found in a non-musical film.
No other musical before or since (at least that I know of; I’m hardly an expert) has ever tried to rationalize the inclusion of impromptu singing in this way, or used the three-prong approach of Chicago in combining theatre performance and cinematic freedom.
My point in all this is that post-Moulin Rouge/Chicago musicals have sometimes felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of characters suddenly bursting into song, or at least never been able to reach the heights of creativity that their predecessors managed in combining the theatricality of musicals with the cinematic freedom that films allow. Now, I’m not saying that Chicago’s technique of having all the songs the work of a character’s imagination would have worked here, or anywhere else - just that with the exception of several incredible sweeping shots of France, in which we whizz up and down the side of buildings, see everything from a bird’s eye view, and get expansive panorama shots, Les Misérables isn’t hugely imaginative in the way the songs are shot and edited.
Basically, they didn’t make the most of the film medium to allow images or metaphors to accompany the songs - for the most part, people just stand and sing. Sometimes this pays off, as with Anne Hathaway’s one-shot take of “I Dreamed A Dream” or to a lesser extent, Eddie Redmayne’s “Empty Chairs At Empty Tables.” But sometimes it doesn’t, as with Hugh Jackman’s “Bring Him Home”, which just involves Valjean pacing a room and occasionally staring out at the window at Marius. Even on the stage, I recall this song being combined with Valjean carrying Marius through the sewers, which gives it a far more powerful context.
As a musical which happens to be filmed, Les Misérables is great. As a film which incorporates the songs and emotions of a musical - well, I think the producers/directors and so forgot how much freedom they had in presenting these songs to the audience. You have to use the tools and creativity of cinema, not just in getting close-ups of the singers’ faces, or else I might as well be at the theatre.
But hey, that’s just me. As I said, if you discount the musical aspect of the film and take it as a musical which just happens to be filmed, then it works just fine. I won’t go through all the songs, but I’ll pick out two: “Do You Hear The People Sing?” was well-played, with the students flanking the funeral procession and quietly chanting to themselves before it builds up to the usual roar. They made it a quite literal call-to-arms which was a brilliant, innovative idea. This also played out nicely in the final reprise: at first I bristled that Epinone wasn’t there to sing her part when Valjean dies, but it worked when he walked away from his body and daughter to discover the priest waiting for him at the door (and did anyone else notice the candlesticks were kept by Valjean all through the film?). The final number on the barricades was stagey, but fitting.
Jean Valjean/Javert
So here’s the thing. Before going to see it, the internet informed me that Hugh Jackman was brilliant and Russell Crowe was terrible. So naturally, my mind overhyped one and pre-emptively dismissed the other, and inevitably came out thinking the exact opposite of what I’d been told to expect. I think Jackman handled the physicality of Valjean very well, but often his voice sounded quite nasal to me. Crowe on the other hand, I thought was pretty good. Though he appeared virtually expressionless most of the time, his voice was quite rich and deep to my ears. His rendition of “Stars” in particular was a nice surprise - he played it as rather quiet and thoughtful, almost as though he was singing to himself rather than the actual stars, and his placement on top of a high building was a nice bit of foreshadowing for his suicide later.
Fantine
I didn’t watch the Oscars (and in light of what I heard afterwards about some of what went on, I’m extremely thankful for that), but apparently Anne Hathaway picked up an Oscar for her performance here? Yeah, I can buy that. Her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” was exceptional and certainly made me tear up. Right there on her face was the progression of emotions: nostalgia, hope, regret, heartbreak and despair - it was an incredible performance.
Eponine
Samantha Barkis (who I believe was a professional singer who previously played Eponine on the stage) reprised my favourite role. There’s just something about unrequited love that gets me every time.
There’s a moment at the climax of “On My Own” when she sings the line: “I love him...” and her entire body slumps back against the wall behind her - it’s a spine-tingling moment when she seems to be swooning either with love or despair or both, and that exact moment in the song is wedded perfectly to her body language.
Her death scene was a little contrived this time around. I like that she was mortally wounded in bringing Cosette’s note to Marius, thus making him indirectly responsible for her death, but here they naturally have to go for maximum drama by having her save Marius’s life. Girl, it’s great to save a man’s life by grabbing hold of a rifle butt and pulling it away from him, but don’t point it at your own chest in the process!
Having said that, Samantha Barkis was exactly how I pictured Eponine - like Lea Salonga who played her on Broadway (I saw her in The Dream Cast production) - the waif-like figure, the long dark hair and the big eyes are essential for any version of this character.
Regarding the love triangle, I know a lot of people ship Eponine/Marius (I can’t believe I’m applying that term to a musical based on a 19th French novel), but as much as I empathize with Eponine and unrequited love, I feel that writing a quick “fix-it” fic in order to hook her up with the man of her dreams is to undermine the entire point of her character, life and story. To simply “reward” her with Marius is to strip away the power of what she represents; rather like all those Phantom/Christine fics that inevitably have our young ingénue settle down in domestic bliss with the deformed psychopath who lives in the sewers. I’m sure there are also fics out there that have Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after, or provide a more uplifting ending to the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain.
Hey, if people want to write these things, more power to them. But for me at least, it defeats the inherent tragedy of the story. And without that tragedy, what’s the point of the story in the first place?
Cosette/Marius
These two have the utterly thankless task of trying to sell love at first sight. Only a handful of actors in a select number of stories have ever been able to pull this off - and Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne are not two of them. But it’s not their fault, it’s really not, and to their credit they each manage to be very sweet and winsome with each other.
I think the key to making the Love At First Sight trope work (at least in the eyes of the audience) is to establish each character as the perfect match for each other well before they meet. That way, the audience has a better chance of buying instant attraction and enduring love, as they already know they’re compatible. Take Aladdin and Jasmine for example, from Disney’s Aladdin. By the time they meet in the marketplace, each one has been established separately, and the viewer knows full-well that they’re perfect for each other.
In this case, we barely know Marius and Cosette, and so the love has to be carried by their interactions alone. It’s not a major flaw (as it’s only a relatively minor part of the story) and the audience that is familiar with the source material will already be prepared to suspend disbelief - but there you have it. They didn’t quite pull it off, which is a shame, for if played well, Cosette and Marius and their love is a shaft of light in a very dark story.
The Thénardiers
In an odd way, they are a distorted reflection of Cosette and Marius - not just in the sense that they’re a married couple (the only other one in the show) but that they find a semblance of happiness too - a dark, seedy, defiant happiness in the face of squalor and corruption. Heck, they’re the embodiments of squalor and corruption. That their part is so wrapped up in comedy removes them from the likes of Fantine’s despair and Valjean’s paranoia; they lighten the mood, but are not themselves light.
Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter clearly decided to have fun with the roles, and the comedy surrounding them was surprisingly slapstick, with “Master of the House” filled with little visual gags and asides. As such, they didn’t quite fit into the tone of the tone of the rest of the movie; they were clearly the requisite comic relief in a way they’re not on the stage (there they also form a real menace to Cosette and are indirectly responsible for Fantine’s death by lying to her about Cosette’s health).
They were certainly entertaining enough, but at times felt as though they belonged in a different film, so drastic was the tonal shift when they appeared. Though it was a great gag when Thénardier mispronounced Cosette as “Corgette”.
So those were my thoughts on what is considered the best musical of all time (right?) It moved me to a few tears and granted me a few tingles, so it obviously achieved what it set up to do - but I wasn’t as overwhelmed as I was when I saw the stage musical for the first time - which is probably inevitable.
***
And before I go, check out the latest Doctor Who trailer! I definitely spotted Jenny in there, so yay! Oh, and was that Liam Cunningham, aka Ruadan from Merlin? The Doctor Who/Merlin crossovers continue...
As predicted, the changes made to Photobucket have caused complete havoc in my ability to simply upload pictures and transfer them onto LiveJournal (which is having glitches of its own now that it’s not maintaining paragraphs when I switch from HTML to Rich Text). So after an inordinate amount of time trying to work my way around it, I’m now using Tinypic as a hosting site to get the pictures you see here. Doing stuff should not be this complicated.
So it’s been a pretty slow few weeks in terms of reading and watching (though I’ve been getting a lot of writing done) but there are two enjoyable things on the horizon - first of all, I’ve managed to track down the final two episodes of Dancing on the Edge, and I’m looking forward to writing a follow-up post to see whether I judged it fairly based on the first three parts. Stephen Poliakoff managed to surprise me a couple of times.
The other thing is that Elementary has started on New Zealand television. I don’t think I’ll comment on it on a week-by-week basis, but I’m definitely enjoying it, and I’ll make a post at the end of the season.
Oh, and I’ve started on Middlemarch. I’m aiming for a chapter per day, though it’s a doorstopper of a book.
But here’s the reading/watching log for the past several weeks.
Halloween Party by Agatha Christie
This is one of my favourite Agatha Christie novels, which is odd in a way since it was one of her last ones, and therefore not considered anywhere near her best. By this stage, she was clearly starting to slow down, but there is enough atmosphere and intrigue in this one to make it memorable.
It’s especially creepy in one very distinct way: the murder is that of a child. Halfway through a Halloween party, Joyce Reynolds pipes up with an extraordinary statement: that she once witnessed a murder, though it wasn’t until years later that she realized it was a murder. Since the girl is known to be a liar, the rest of the gathering summarily dismisses her. But by the end of the night, Joyce has been drowned in the bobbing-for-apples bucket.
Christie’s Author Avatar, the apple-munching authoress Ariadne Oliver immediately calls up Hercule Poirot for his assistance. Poirot decides to take Joyce's claim that she once witnessed a murder seriously, and so asks his police contacts to dredge up any unsolved murder or disappearance cases in the area. One of them may have been the murder that Joyce claimed to have seen.
What's striking about Halloween Party is its eerie, spooky atmosphere. Though it's set in an English village and so has every appearance of a typical cosy, there is a fairytale quality about it. This is particularly noticeable when Poirot explores a sunken garden in an old quarry. Commissioned by an elderly widow before her death, rumoured to be the site of a hidden well, and frequented by a strange, otherworldly little girl, it puts Poirot in mind of the Garden of Eden. But naturally, even Paradise had its serpent.
The suspects are more lightly sketched than usual, which means that there is less human interest than in her very best work, but there is an exploration of the darker side to childhood: telling lies, keeping secrets, their strange ideas, their need for attention, their capacity for manipulation and the susceptibility that can result in tragic foolishness.
The ITV adaptation was a bit of a disappointment, all the more so because it was written by Mark Gatkiss, who did a fantastic job with Cat Among the Pigeons. But he didn’t capture the creepy ambiance of the novel or the genuine horror that surrounds the murder of a child, two things which could have covered for the patchy plot. Without the dark atmosphere that the book sustains, the characters and situation go from disturbing and unnerving to ridiculously melodramatic.
Take the sunken garden for instance. In the book, it is simultaneously a place of great beauty and sinister design. Many characters are fascinated by it, though none are quite sure why. It may or may not be the setting of a murder, a grave, a hidden well, or all three. As mentioned, Poirot is reminded of the Garden of Eden and all that such an allusion implies: that somewhere among the trimmed hedges and the neat flowerbeds hides the serpent. Here, it's just a garden and its contextual significance has been lost.
Likewise, Christie's fascinating portrayal of children is gone. In her three child characters, Joyce, Leopold and Miranda, Christie presented an interesting subversion of the Children Are Innocent trope. Joyce Reynolds was written as a sullen, dishonest girl - yet here she's a buffoon, complete with a ridiculous bumblebee costume. Leopold is a non-entity. Miranda's otherworldliness (which admittedly, was always going to be hard to translate) unfortunately comes across as utter stupidity. Needlessly added to the cast are two smarmy teenagers who not only don't exist in the book, but who take up a disproportionate amount of screen-time and don't add anything to the plot.
The shock and horror of a child's murder is all but glossed over, as beyond a few casual words of sadness, it's business as usual in the village. Not even the grieving mother seems all that concerned. At the denouement of the case, Poirot cheerfully announces that he's going to tell everyone a "Halloween story!" which is hardly the demeanour one should take when recounting the deaths of two children and the attempted murder of a third. This wrap-up is ultimately played as a melodrama (complete with lovers throwing themselves at each other's feet) instead of the terrifying race-against-time chase of the book.
It feels like someone - the screenwriter, the actors, the director, just didn't quite get the book. Still, if you're not as fussy as I am about the original text, it makes for a fun watch. Taking place in dark dingy parlours and cold autumnal gardens, there is a certain chill about the production, and you can certainly expect a lot of thunderstorms and jack-o-lanterns, as befits a story set on Halloween.
Zoe Wanamaker and David Suchet are as wonderful as ever, and it’s always fun to play “spot the British thespian”. This has two Merlin alumni: Julian Rhind-Tutt (Edwin Muirden) and Georgia King (Princess Elena), as well as Fenella Woolgar (who ironically played Agatha Christie in Doctor Who) and Deborah Findlay (who had the best scene of Torchwood: Children of Earth).
Whitechapel
This is one of my favourite shows at the moment. Last year I mentioned how much I enjoyed the first series, which was simply called Whitechapel at first, but which now has The Ripper Returns added to it (at least on some DVD releases). The premise was simple: a team of contemporary detectives are faced with a copy-cat killer who is murdering women in Whitechapel, attempting to re-enact the crimes of Jack the Ripper. As far as ideas for a crime-drama-suspense-thriller series goes, it was a brilliant one, with the investigators forced to utilize their own up-to-date procedurals as well as historical precedent in an attempt to keep two steps ahead of the most famous serial killer of all time.
As an added bonus, the characterization was rock-solid, with old copper Ray Miles (Phil Davies) being paired with inexperienced, over-promoted Joe Chandler (Rupert Penry-Jones) in order to give the latter a quick bout of credibility before his superiors can hoist him up the food-chain. Naturally, the two dislike each other on sight and are soon arguing incessantly over how their latest case is to be handled. Neat-freak Chandler thinks that they all look and act unprofessional, Miles counters that this is how real policemen get their work done, appearances (and hygiene) be damned. Naturally, by the end of it all, they’ve met each other halfway: Chandler gets everyone eating “brain-food” and wearing ties, and Miles has Chandler loosen up as to some of the minutia of the usual police procedure.
Also on board is Edward Buchan (Steve Pemberton) a self-proclaimed “Ripperologist” who specializes in the carnage wrought by the original Jack the Ripper, who first alerts the men as to the possibility of a copy-cat killer and then providing valuable information about his murders. It’s a great performance by Pemberton: a man who is simultaneously intelligent yet pathetic, insightful but pompous, wildly enthusiastic but absurdly self-important, and played with relish by Pemberton. A lot of the time he is called upon to provide exposition, but does it with so much obvious enjoyment that you can’t help but get excited too.
But that’s just the first series. After its popularity became evident, a second series was commissioned, which might have caused a stir in the writing studio considering Whitechapel was initially a standalone project. It’s not like they could deal with another Ripper copycat, and so writers Ben Court and Caroline Ip turn to another famous criminal that once haunted the streets of Whitechapel - or rather, two famous criminals: Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Once again a copycat killer seems to be on the loose, but this time it’s more personal to Miles, whose own father was involved in the original brothers’ crime syndicate.
Yet by this point, the whole copycat killer angle was beginning to pall a bit, and the third series wisely goes in a different direction. Instead of a three-episode miniseries, the season is divided into six two-part episodes that have been inspired by famous cases of the past. Buchan is brought on as a consultant, with Chandler working by the hypothesis that the past can be used as a blueprint to solve contemporary crimes - even if it’s just by not repeating the mistakes of history.
This season is legitimately scary (seriously, it gave me nightmares at one point) and seems to subscribe to the theory that everything, no matter how mundane, should be made as disconcerting and creepy as possible. For example, one episode has the team questioning a witness who just happens to be a creepy old voodoo lady. She's in the episode for less than half a minute, and she could just as easily have been a benign housewife in a dressing gown, but the show opts for a spooky old voodoo lady instead.
Why You Should Watch This: You’re about to be astonished because I’m actually going to endorse a bromance. It’s the one that exists between Chandler and Miles, which could even be described as a love triangle if you count Edward Buchan. Now in the supplementary material on the DVD for the first series this trio was described by the writers as Chandler being the offspring of two divorced parents squabbling over him. I honestly didn’t get that vibe, but it’s a particularly unique bond to pin down. Neither brotherly nor fatherly nor even particularly friendly, the Chandler/Miles dynamic is best described as two complete opposites forced to work together and finding that their friction actually gives them an edge. When they first meet they hate each other - that is, genuinely hate each other. Neither thinks the other knows what he’s doing and they have several nasty, full-on verbal smack-downs. Even without the conflict that exists over how each chooses to do his job, they’re still chalk and cheese. I can’t think of a single thing they have in common.
And so the key to their relationship is that their eventual trust of each other feels earned, and they perfectly fit the bill if you’re looking for an example of Fire Forged Friends. By series three, they clearly have each other’s backs. Chandler gets Miles to open up about his wife’s illness, and Miles helps Chandler with his OCD and tries to set him up with various women in the precinct. One sequence that’s typical of their relationship is when Miles gives a scathing speech to his peers about how Chandler was ostracized for not catching the Ripper, instead choosing to save an injured Miles’s life - but when Chandler tries to thank him for it later, Miles brushes him off, saying: “doesn’t mean we’re engaged.” In another episode Miles gives Chandler hell for putting himself in the line of fire, pointing out that because he doesn’t have a wife or kids, he thinks he’s expendable and that he’ll be “the only one crying at your funeral”.
Even by the end of series three, you don’t really get the sense that they like each other - but they trust each other. I don’t think I really realized it until this show, but you don’t have to love or even like someone in order to trust them, and in this case it makes for a great dynamic. Basically, these are two very different men who nevertheless make a great team - other people note with interest that they work best by arguing incessantly with each other, and though there’s an unfortunate “bros before hoes” storyline to one episode, they definitely make up the central relationship of the series.
Also on board is Buchan, who is essentially a third wheel to their bromance. There’s not much love lost between Miles/Buchan at this stage (Miles can’t stand him) but the rapport between Chandler/Buchan is amusing. You get the sense that Chandler is the first person that’s ever treated Buchan seriously, so naturally it goes straight to Buchan’s head. As I said, he’s a great character: very earnest and passionate about detecting (plus somewhat flabbergasted by Chandler’s “it’s just a job” mentality) but also rather ridiculous, veering close to a Man Child persona at times.
It’s clearly not an estrogen-filled show, but unlike the likes of Sherlock and Merlin which seems to hold thinly-veiled contempt for its female characters, Whitechapel does right by (most of) the women who do feature. Caroline Llewellyn is the pathologist, with an important role to play in solving the mysteries, and series three adds Megan Riley to the team, a woman who integrates herself seamlessly among the boys, rolling her sleeves up and putting in the hard labour, but also demonstrating a warm, comforting persona when dealing with victims (and who isn’t above whacking one of her college’s around the head when he deserves it).
There is an overwhelming amount of Disposable Women in the show, which was only to be expected when dealing with the Ripper case, but which continues to bleed into the third series. However, it’s worth noting that they’re treated with a surprising amount of respect. Initially the writers had access to the real post-mortem photographs of the Ripper victims, but decided against using them on moral grounds, instead photographing actresses who were made up to look like corpses. In the third series, the team begins to find the body parts of young women (in a story based on the Thames Torso Murders) and in lieu of any other form of identification, Chandler gives them all names from poetry, telling the others: “I want to give her a name that invokes beauty, not death and dismemberment,” and on seeing Miles’s face, “it’s just poetry, not some weird fetish.” If dead women are necessary to your plot, then this is the way in which to treat them.
Though in saying that, I do have to concede that there is one female character who falls prey to the Derailing Love Interests trope (followed by a Bros Before Hoes showdown) and a second who falls victims to a quintessential Stuffed In the Fridge Diabolus ex Machina. So...yeah. Pinch of salt, there.
But the show is also hugely informative when it comes to grisly murder cases of the past, and as I said, Buchan’s enthusiasm and love of history is contagious. Because the show relies so heavily on historical crimes, it’s quite informative and cases such as the Ratcliff Highway Murders and the Thames Torso Murders (which are used to inform the episodes in series three) are easily found on Wikipedia and other websites. So the whole thing definitely has my highest recommendation.
Mrs Henderson Presents
I was given this DVD by my great-aunt to watch, being told that it was one of her favourite movies. This is somewhat surprising considering she’s in her eighties and it’s about nude showgirls in the 1900s, but people can be surprising.
Okay, so it’s not really about nude showgirls, it’s about the Windmill Theatre, a variety and revue theatre which featured nude tableaux vivants. It’s main claim to fame was its motto “we never closed”; a reference to the fact that the theatre remained open throughout the Second World War, with performances continuing even at the height of the Blitz. The showgirls, singers and crew even moved into the theatre for a period of time in order to take advantage of its two underground floors.
Laura Henderson bought the theatre in 1932 after her husband’s death and hired a theatre manager, Vivian van Damm, who developed the idea of the Revudeville-a programme of continuous variety that ran from 2.30pm until 11pm. To boost attendance, they hired women to pose in various stages of undress during their performances, under the strict government regulation that none of them were permitted to move. After Henderson’s death, she left the Windmill to Van Damm, who in turn left it to his daughter, who struggled to keep it going. However, it was unable to compete with strip joints in the area and so closed its doors in 1964.
Steven Frear’s film attempts to illustrate the historical significance of the Windmill Theatre, ticking all the bullet points of the above summary (at least up until Laura Henderson’s death) and centring the film on the platonic friendship that blossoms between Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) and Vivian van Damm (Bob Hoskins). The nudity, as it exists in this film, is presented as a celebration of female beauty, and Frears does all he can to gloss over, or just plain ignore, the potentially sordid aspects of nudity on the stage.
Now, I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, or that the film had to be an expose of public nudity for an admission fee; I’m mainly interested in the steps he takes in order to “sanitize” the subject a little (and make it acceptable viewing for my eighty-something year old great-aunt). Obviously Frears isn’t interested in the question of potential exploitation or voyeurism or titillation; he needs the girls to be respected and empowered in order to achieve the light drama/comedy that he’s going for. So it doesn’t delve too deeply in the girls’ opinions or backstories (only one gets a subplot of her own) and Frears steers his way through potentially murky waters by glossing over everything with comedy and nostalgia.
It results in a mixed bag. On the one hand, the story recognises that the girls would naturally be jittery about disrobing in front of an audience, and has Van Damm to insist that they’re works of art and that he would never submit them to anything sleazy. This is followed by a scene of equal opportunity nudity, in which all the stagehands strip alongside the girls in order to alleviate their nerves. Later one of the girls insists on how well they’re being treated, stating (perhaps a little wryly) that “who’d have thought that being naked in front of hundreds would be the safest place in the world?” There’s also an emphasis on the girls faces (one of them is chosen for her beautiful smile) and the camera certainly doesn’t pander to the male gaze.
And yet on some level it still doesn’t change the fact that they’re performing every night to a rowdy bunch of soldiers that cheer every time they see a breast. There’s another scene in which a mouse is put on stage to frighten the girls into moving, made worse by the reveal that it was Van Damm who organised the stunt, thus betraying the girls’ trust (not that they ever find out about it, and it’s all just a throwaway gag anyway).
By the end, Ms Henderson shares her true reasons for wanting nudity on the stage: her own son died in World War I at age twenty-one without ever seeing a naked woman, as she assumed on discovering a French postcard in his room. Now she wants to ensure that no other young man ever suffers the same fate. That’s a reasonably touching sentiment, though again, some of its innocence is lost when one considers the Windmill eventually closed because it couldn’t compete with strip-joints in the area.
It’s impossible to criticize a film for not being something that it never intended to be in the first place, and though it would have been quite interesting to explore what it meant for England (and these girls) to have nudity on the public stage for the first time in its history (at least as far as I know), this is simply not the focus.
Instead the emphasis is on Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) and Vivian van Damn (Bob Hoskins) and their tempestuous relationship. Laura Henderson is brazen, eccentric and rather rude most of the time, but what could have been a charmless character is made likeable by Judi Dench's charisma. In many ways Laura is going through her second childhood and treats the theatre much like an elaborate game, but at the film's conclusion she reveals the aforementioned much more complex side than her colleges ever gave her credit for. Bob Hoskins as Vivian Van Damm holds his own as her stage manager, and it's clear that despite (or perhaps because of) their disagreements, bickering and insults, they are happiest in each other's company. It’s always nice to have a film centre on a platonic male/female friendship, and these two make good business partners and eventually confidants.
There are a few plots that go nowhere: one of the girls gets pregnant and then promptly killed, Henderson’s friend disappears without explanation for the final act, and Van Damm’s wife is introduced for one scene only for Henderson to get jealous (urgh) and never again be seen or mentioned, giving the film a sense of padding in certain places. But Kelly Reilly and Natalia Tena are in this as two of the showgirls, who have naturally gone on to bigger fame as Mary Morstan in the Sherlock Holmes movies and Nymphadora Tonks in the Harry Potter franchise. It’s rather amusing to think of all the hand-wringing that went on in the Game of Thrones fandom when “Tonks” disrobed (I recall at least one “my childhood is ruined!” lamentation), as long before that, she was skipping about topless here as well. She’s great actually; there’s an especially cute scene in which she’s dressed as a mermaid, and though she has no lines she keeps busily adjusting her Godiva hair in the background. Kelly Reilly gets a good moment too, in which she’s performing whilst the Blitz is going on, and after a particularly violent bombing, breaks the “no movement” rule in order to stride forward and flip the bird at the ceiling.
Basically, Roger Ebert put it best: "Mrs. Henderson Presents is not great cinema, and neither was the Windmill great theatre, but they both put on a good show."
Les Misérables
Yes, I finally got around to seeing it. It was my birthday present actually, and though I perhaps wouldn’t have chosen a movie whose title translates into “the miserable” as a birthday treat, it’s the thought that counts and I’m glad I saw it on the big screen. That said, we didn’t have surround sound and the ushers left the door open (which meant I had a rectangle of light from the foyer shining in the corner of my eye throughout the film’s duration) and so I never felt fully immersed in what I was seeing/hearing. Grumble, grumble.
A lot has been made of Tom Hooper’s decision to have all the actors to sing live, a decision that paid off. Though none of them (at least as far as I know) are professionally-trained singers, the idea was clearly to let the actors be actors and for the emotions to be paramount in the performing of the songs. This creates a singular advantage over the stage performance, simply by having the audience up close and personal to the actors’ emotive range - their expressions and nuances. This is in contrast to the stage, where such things have to be carried (mostly) by the voice.
In terms of Les Misérables being adapted specially as a musical...well, I have a lot of thoughts on musicals as movies. Personally, I think the best musical of recent times has been Chicago, not necessarily for the subject matter, but for the way in which the film justified the presence of singing. In an ordinary musical, characters break into song as though it were an everyday occurrence. In Chicago, the director uses the neat conceit of presenting all the musical numbers as the result of Roxy Hart’s hyperactive imagination. Furthermore, thanks to some slick editing these songs are also interspersed with scenes of what’s happening in real life.
I think this review puts it very succinctly:
As any drama student knows, one of the strengths of the theatre is its propensity to eschew "reality" and head straight for the underlying metaphor. Conversely, mainstream cinema, even when depicting fantastic or absurd subject matter, has often boxed itself into a kind of straightforward realism of treatment. What Chicago does is to combine the imaginative conceits of vaudevillian stage with the visual freedom of cinema by intercutting between a relatively realistic depiction of events and stagey musical interpretations of those same events.
The story is staged principally through the eyes of the main character, Roxie. Throughout the course of the film, we constantly see two different versions of the same events: what’s actually happening, and what Roxie’s vaudeville-soaked imagination conjures from real-world events - fantasy sequences that reveal the inner meaning of events in her mind.
Thus, for example, in Roxie’s first press conference, the members of the press as well as Roxie herself are alternately seen as real people and as marionettes and dummies on the stage performing "We Both Reached For the Gun." The conceit of Roxie and the press as puppets could be realized on the stage, but Marshall exploits the capabilities of the cinematic form, not only by shuttling between reality and fantasy, but also with surreal shots of Billy Flynn above the stage, larger than life, controlling the puppet press - an effect impossible in the theatre, but unlikely to be found in a non-musical film.
No other musical before or since (at least that I know of; I’m hardly an expert) has ever tried to rationalize the inclusion of impromptu singing in this way, or used the three-prong approach of Chicago in combining theatre performance and cinematic freedom.
My point in all this is that post-Moulin Rouge/Chicago musicals have sometimes felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of characters suddenly bursting into song, or at least never been able to reach the heights of creativity that their predecessors managed in combining the theatricality of musicals with the cinematic freedom that films allow. Now, I’m not saying that Chicago’s technique of having all the songs the work of a character’s imagination would have worked here, or anywhere else - just that with the exception of several incredible sweeping shots of France, in which we whizz up and down the side of buildings, see everything from a bird’s eye view, and get expansive panorama shots, Les Misérables isn’t hugely imaginative in the way the songs are shot and edited.
Basically, they didn’t make the most of the film medium to allow images or metaphors to accompany the songs - for the most part, people just stand and sing. Sometimes this pays off, as with Anne Hathaway’s one-shot take of “I Dreamed A Dream” or to a lesser extent, Eddie Redmayne’s “Empty Chairs At Empty Tables.” But sometimes it doesn’t, as with Hugh Jackman’s “Bring Him Home”, which just involves Valjean pacing a room and occasionally staring out at the window at Marius. Even on the stage, I recall this song being combined with Valjean carrying Marius through the sewers, which gives it a far more powerful context.
As a musical which happens to be filmed, Les Misérables is great. As a film which incorporates the songs and emotions of a musical - well, I think the producers/directors and so forgot how much freedom they had in presenting these songs to the audience. You have to use the tools and creativity of cinema, not just in getting close-ups of the singers’ faces, or else I might as well be at the theatre.
But hey, that’s just me. As I said, if you discount the musical aspect of the film and take it as a musical which just happens to be filmed, then it works just fine. I won’t go through all the songs, but I’ll pick out two: “Do You Hear The People Sing?” was well-played, with the students flanking the funeral procession and quietly chanting to themselves before it builds up to the usual roar. They made it a quite literal call-to-arms which was a brilliant, innovative idea. This also played out nicely in the final reprise: at first I bristled that Epinone wasn’t there to sing her part when Valjean dies, but it worked when he walked away from his body and daughter to discover the priest waiting for him at the door (and did anyone else notice the candlesticks were kept by Valjean all through the film?). The final number on the barricades was stagey, but fitting.
Jean Valjean/Javert
So here’s the thing. Before going to see it, the internet informed me that Hugh Jackman was brilliant and Russell Crowe was terrible. So naturally, my mind overhyped one and pre-emptively dismissed the other, and inevitably came out thinking the exact opposite of what I’d been told to expect. I think Jackman handled the physicality of Valjean very well, but often his voice sounded quite nasal to me. Crowe on the other hand, I thought was pretty good. Though he appeared virtually expressionless most of the time, his voice was quite rich and deep to my ears. His rendition of “Stars” in particular was a nice surprise - he played it as rather quiet and thoughtful, almost as though he was singing to himself rather than the actual stars, and his placement on top of a high building was a nice bit of foreshadowing for his suicide later.
Fantine
I didn’t watch the Oscars (and in light of what I heard afterwards about some of what went on, I’m extremely thankful for that), but apparently Anne Hathaway picked up an Oscar for her performance here? Yeah, I can buy that. Her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” was exceptional and certainly made me tear up. Right there on her face was the progression of emotions: nostalgia, hope, regret, heartbreak and despair - it was an incredible performance.
Eponine
Samantha Barkis (who I believe was a professional singer who previously played Eponine on the stage) reprised my favourite role. There’s just something about unrequited love that gets me every time.
There’s a moment at the climax of “On My Own” when she sings the line: “I love him...” and her entire body slumps back against the wall behind her - it’s a spine-tingling moment when she seems to be swooning either with love or despair or both, and that exact moment in the song is wedded perfectly to her body language.
Her death scene was a little contrived this time around. I like that she was mortally wounded in bringing Cosette’s note to Marius, thus making him indirectly responsible for her death, but here they naturally have to go for maximum drama by having her save Marius’s life. Girl, it’s great to save a man’s life by grabbing hold of a rifle butt and pulling it away from him, but don’t point it at your own chest in the process!
Having said that, Samantha Barkis was exactly how I pictured Eponine - like Lea Salonga who played her on Broadway (I saw her in The Dream Cast production) - the waif-like figure, the long dark hair and the big eyes are essential for any version of this character.
Regarding the love triangle, I know a lot of people ship Eponine/Marius (I can’t believe I’m applying that term to a musical based on a 19th French novel), but as much as I empathize with Eponine and unrequited love, I feel that writing a quick “fix-it” fic in order to hook her up with the man of her dreams is to undermine the entire point of her character, life and story. To simply “reward” her with Marius is to strip away the power of what she represents; rather like all those Phantom/Christine fics that inevitably have our young ingénue settle down in domestic bliss with the deformed psychopath who lives in the sewers. I’m sure there are also fics out there that have Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after, or provide a more uplifting ending to the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain.
Hey, if people want to write these things, more power to them. But for me at least, it defeats the inherent tragedy of the story. And without that tragedy, what’s the point of the story in the first place?
Cosette/Marius
These two have the utterly thankless task of trying to sell love at first sight. Only a handful of actors in a select number of stories have ever been able to pull this off - and Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne are not two of them. But it’s not their fault, it’s really not, and to their credit they each manage to be very sweet and winsome with each other.
I think the key to making the Love At First Sight trope work (at least in the eyes of the audience) is to establish each character as the perfect match for each other well before they meet. That way, the audience has a better chance of buying instant attraction and enduring love, as they already know they’re compatible. Take Aladdin and Jasmine for example, from Disney’s Aladdin. By the time they meet in the marketplace, each one has been established separately, and the viewer knows full-well that they’re perfect for each other.
In this case, we barely know Marius and Cosette, and so the love has to be carried by their interactions alone. It’s not a major flaw (as it’s only a relatively minor part of the story) and the audience that is familiar with the source material will already be prepared to suspend disbelief - but there you have it. They didn’t quite pull it off, which is a shame, for if played well, Cosette and Marius and their love is a shaft of light in a very dark story.
The Thénardiers
In an odd way, they are a distorted reflection of Cosette and Marius - not just in the sense that they’re a married couple (the only other one in the show) but that they find a semblance of happiness too - a dark, seedy, defiant happiness in the face of squalor and corruption. Heck, they’re the embodiments of squalor and corruption. That their part is so wrapped up in comedy removes them from the likes of Fantine’s despair and Valjean’s paranoia; they lighten the mood, but are not themselves light.
Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter clearly decided to have fun with the roles, and the comedy surrounding them was surprisingly slapstick, with “Master of the House” filled with little visual gags and asides. As such, they didn’t quite fit into the tone of the tone of the rest of the movie; they were clearly the requisite comic relief in a way they’re not on the stage (there they also form a real menace to Cosette and are indirectly responsible for Fantine’s death by lying to her about Cosette’s health).
They were certainly entertaining enough, but at times felt as though they belonged in a different film, so drastic was the tonal shift when they appeared. Though it was a great gag when Thénardier mispronounced Cosette as “Corgette”.
So those were my thoughts on what is considered the best musical of all time (right?) It moved me to a few tears and granted me a few tingles, so it obviously achieved what it set up to do - but I wasn’t as overwhelmed as I was when I saw the stage musical for the first time - which is probably inevitable.
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And before I go, check out the latest Doctor Who trailer! I definitely spotted Jenny in there, so yay! Oh, and was that Liam Cunningham, aka Ruadan from Merlin? The Doctor Who/Merlin crossovers continue...
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