I found the opening scene incredible and terrific, given the epic scope of the story. But the director, Tom Hooper, abandons this perspective almost immediately for profound personal angst; he uses the closeup to hamstring the individual's performance with no reaction on screen of other characters within the shot. Hooper did provide crowd scenes, but it was of the over the top cliche of dirty thoughtless masses variety, with an all too brief interplay, for example: Gavroche and the children of the streets with the wealthy class in the opening to Paris sequence (Look Down).
While Hooper succeeded in bringing out great performances from the characters, I thought the staging and photography was abysmal. The number of true ensemble shots within a song could be counted on the fingers of one hand. For over two hours, to watch a singer in closeup singing to the sight of tonsils and nose-dripping realism can be effective only once or twice. The performance that sells the song is the singers in reaction, not just the endless
Closeup 1.
Closeup 2.
Closeup 1.
Closeup 2.
Ad nauseum, without an actor's chance to react in the moment of the shot of two faces.. It just didn't happen.
I don't remember any medium shots with establishing background of significance. You don't realize how important these are until they are missed. Hooper did this intentionally, and I think he ruined many more potentially great scenes than he created with it.
Long shots would have been so helpful to break the minutia or to establish mood of the cast in their setting. Again too few of count, and the beauty in the hope and the redemption in the story is muddled by the dirty thoughtless masses who cluttered the screen. One Day More should be more, instead it was without the emotional punch for me. Victor Hugo wanted the reader to identify with the characters; watching this movie, you start to wonder Hooper's vision of the suffering; was he having us wallowing in dirt cynically?
The camera jitter was omnipresent and absolutely not necessary. Why Hooper felt this need to optical realism to a already dark and somber movie is redundant to me. With a film of this length, it does become very distracting, and strikes me as indulgent, and not in a "cut the artiste some slack" way.
Sorry if you don't agree, but I thought Hooper delivered us poor telling of the musical masterpiece. And if Cameron Macintosh thought this was a good vision, shame on him too.
Having said all this, I still cannot advise not seeing Les Miz. Forgive the double negative and go see the movie. Just be sure to attend with a caution. It is not a filmed version of the stage production; it is the vision of a director, maybe one who has recorded a number of his daughter's dance recitals from the 10th row, and his Sony camcorder set to 40X closeup focus.