Les Misérables

Les Misérables directed by Tom Hooper

 

Hello everyone, today I'm going with a musical, which probably everyone has watched by now!

 

So, Les Misérables tells the story of Jean Valljean's life, for over two decades. That's basically it and I will not go into detail because every story in this is way too complex to include it in a three line description. What you need to know is that, and that his past is going to be going after him for those two decades.

This is not the adaptation of the book written by Victor Hugo (which I am reading now), but of the musical based on the book. I haven't seen the stage production but I did knew the songs and more or less I knew what the story was about. Tom Hopper got involved with it, and since I loved his latest film, the best picture Oscar The King's Speech, and my interest for the film started to rise. Then the actors started to come in, and with all that, I knew that this was a must watch.

 

All the characters, as I mentioned, are very complex, and all the actors did terrific jobs (yes, I include Russell Crowe in the reference), specially Hathaway (she  won a very well deserved Oscar) who delivered one of the best scenes in recent film history (I dreamed a dream will go into history, I think). Even the voices of the actors were great for not being professional singers, which, if you add the fact that all the songs were sung live, is kind of amazing.

 

There's been too much talk about the direction in this. Tom Hooper did a great job (for me), maybe not as accurate as he did in The King's Speech, but a good job after all. And for the rest of the team, specially the Art director, this is an absolute win for them. 

 

The one thing I have to say is this: I had to watch the film twice to decide whether if I really liked it or not, because I had problems with the second half of the film (for being too long, and somewhat boring). After watching it for a second time, I went into it from the first minute to the last, so yes, I really liked Les Misérables.

 

MadHatterSays: Watch it!

                               4/5