Saturday, January 12, 2013

Film review: Les Miserables

Just got home from seeing this. Bemused by the fact that everyone in the cinema seemed to think it was wonderful - a ripple of applause at the end, people all around me saying it was the best film they'd ever seen...

I thought it was mainly drivel. Occasionally enjoyable drivel, mind, with some great art design and scenery, some nice actors to look at, but still drivel. It's a film of the West End musical, not a film of the book, and if you liked that you'll probably like this.

It's basically a melodrama with three themes - love conquers all, God redeems and forgives everyone (except the baddie inspector, who has to kill himself when confronted by an act of charity without strings), and revolution is ennobling but not anything to do with politics. The revolution/barricade scenes are the most stirring and have the best music, but they are completely vacuous. The revolutionaries are wealthy students who want the people to rise up in their support, but they don't. It's pretty funny that when the central character, Jean Valjean, dies at the end he goes not to Heaven but to Revolutionary Heaven, with a super big barricade and all the characters who died in the film singing and waving red flags and tricolours.

And like the West End musical, there's not one good song in it. Half an hour later and I have forgotten them all.

4 comments:

Jan Dawson said...
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Jan Dawson said...

It's so funny - your response was almost the polar opposite of mine.

Jeremy Green said...

You mean liked the music and hated the sets?

Jan Dawson said...

Generally liked almost everything about it, disliked very little (mostly Russell Crowe's terrible acting)