Rating summary
Movie | | 3.5 |
Video | | 4.5 |
Audio | | 5.0 |
Extras | | 2.5 |
Overall | | 3.5 |
Les Misérables 4K Blu-ray Movie Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 21, 2023
Kind of incredibly, it's been over ten years since Universal first released Les Misérables on (1080) Blu-ray, and while perhaps not
quite
as relentless as Javert's pursuit of Jean Valjean, the studio is back again now chasing after prospective consumers with a 4K UHD release. For
convenience sake, I'm repeating
relevant portions of my original 1080 review below, though of course the technical analyses are new to this version.
Hi. My name is Jeff and I love musicals. There, I’ve said it and there’s no turning back, and if it means I'm a
charter member of Musical Lovers Anonymous, so be it. I’ve joked for years that
my father, who was a Major General in the United States Army, got a little concerned when my interests strayed from
West Point to West Side Story when I was still a child, but I actually ended up a happily married man with kids
(let’s face it, my Dad’s concern had nothing to do with musicals per se). I just happen to love musicals.
This is evidently a love which skips a generation, for when I attempted to sit my own sons down to watch Oliver!
one day, they both ran screaming from the room as if I had asked them to willingly submit to torture (which in their
minds, it may well have been). I’ve been lucky to have conducted many musicals in my career as a musician, and
there’s no denying the rush that comes from a well knit combination of story and song, especially with great actors and
singers (and instrument players) helping to, in the words of Stephen Sondheim, put it all together. Even those who
love this particular genre have had to admit that film musicals have
had a rather rocky road of it over the past several decades. The supposed “reboot” of the genre with Chicago in 2002 did not in fact usher in a
grand new Golden Era of singing and dancing, and the few musicals that have appeared since the Kander and
Ebb opus have met with decidedly mixed critical reactions. That trend seems to be continuing with the disparate
responses to Les Misérables, despite the film’s multiple Academy Award nominations (and eventual three wins,
including Anne Hathaway as Best Supporting Actress). Have we simply become too jaded en masse to be able
to suspend disbelief when a character suddenly lapses into song (and/or dance)? Or are there other issues which are
endemic to the form that prevent it from being more readily enjoyed by the public at large? Les Misérables has
been rather successful as far as film musicals go and some would argue it is one of the most thoughtful
adaptations of a stage musical to the medium of film. But does that necessarily mean it’s good, let alone great?
Aside from announcing my charter membership in Musical Lovers Anonymous, I also need to make a confession: I was
wrong. When this feature film version of
Les Misérables was announced on the
Les Misérables in Concert: The
25th
Anniversary Blu-ray in 2010, I warned fans not to hold their breaths for the trumpeted 2013 release. Knowing
the
gargantuan nature of this piece, I frankly doubted the ability of anyone to be able to marshal the forces necessary in
time
to meet that deadline. This only proves what dedicated creative crews are capable of (and in fact they beat that
prediction by a year), for no matter what else you may
say about the film of
Les Misérables, it is in fact gargantuan in every sense of the word, teeming with thousands
of
extras, huge sets, and a hefty running time.
Are there many people who don’t know at least the outlines of
Les Misérables sprawling plot? Jean Valjean
(Hugh Jackman) has been imprisoned for close to two decades in post-Revolutionary France for the heinous crime of
stealing a loaf of bread to help feed his family. As the film starts, he’s finally granted parole by the vicious Javert
(Russell Crowe), though due to the laws of the time, he’s forced to “wear a scarlet letter” of sorts, carrying around
papers that identify him as a danger to society at large. Valjean finally finds some respite from a kindly bishop (Colm
Wilkinson, who originated the role of Valjean on stage), though Valjean’s darker tendencies initially seem to put him in
danger of returning to prison. The Bishop’s mentoring saves Valjean from himself and the story segues forward several
years where Valjean has broken his parole and adopted a new identity to become a respected business owner as well
as Mayor of a French village.
One of Javert’s factory workers is a young woman named Fantine (Anne Hathaway) who is harboring a secret which
gets her fired under Valjean’s nose. That in turn leads the hapless girl into a life of prostitution. In the meantime Javert
has shown up in Valjean’s town and the obsessed official is convinced that the Mayor is in fact the long lost Valjean.
These two competing storylines come to a head when Valjean rescues Fantine from her sordid existence and Javert
reveals that a (completely innocent) man has been arrested as the long lost Valjean. Fantine dies, but not before
Valjean promises to devote himself to her young daughter Cosette (Isabelle Allen as a child, Amanda Seyfreid as a
young woman). Valjean’s crisis of conscience also leads him to showing up at the trial of the innocent man and
revealing that he, Valjean, is in fact the long lost “criminal”.
Now, that might seem like enough for several films right there, but the fact is that doesn’t even get you to the midway
point of
Les Misérables, which continues to unspool over years as the continuing battle between Valjean and
Javert colors both of their lives, and Cosette’s maturation includes a number of other tangential characters and plot
points. This all unfolds within the context of France’s roiling sociopolitical turmoil which found the oppressed underclass
rising—again—to fight their horrible living conditions and the injustices that were regularly perpetrated against them.
There have been a large number of adaptations of
Les Misérables through the years (and in fact I just recently
reviewed the
1958 version starring
Jean Gabin as Valjean), but this particular one had a built in anticipation factor due to the overwhelming success of the
stage musical (for a little background on
that story, I refer you to my
Les Misérables in Concert:
The 25th Anniversary Blu-ray review).
Les Mis (as it’s frequently referred to by its ardent fan base) is often
lumped in (incorrectly in my not so humble opinion) with another gargantuan musical,
The Phantom of the Opera, and those who were
let down by
that film adaptation might have approached this one with a fair degree of trepidation.
The fact is, there are both hugely compelling things about this film adaptation as well as some serious problems that
even the most rabid
Mis-head may have issues with. Hooper made the startling decision to have his cast sing
live on set, which gives the film a rather visceral immediacy. (This was trumpeted as a
revolutionary—no pun intended—approach, though
real musical fans will know that Michael Ritchie did more or
less exactly
the same thing with his little seen or appreciated film version of the immensely popular Schmidt and Jones musical
The Fantasticks.) When this gambit works—and it does quite a bit of the time—it’s unforgettable, as in Anne
Hathaway’s incredible rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream”, certainly one of the high points of this film and (some might
argue) the entire history of cinematic musicals. But there are other times when the vocals aren’t especially well done,
including rather surprisingly by Jackman at times, who has an unflattering nasal quality in his upper register that almost
makes him sound like Alvin (or one of the other Chipmunks). Crowe brings perhaps too much of a pop sensibility to his
singing (he of course has his own rock band), and supporting players like Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron
Cohen (evidently thinking they’re in a sequel to
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street) simply don’t have
the vocal chops to adequately deliver the semi-operatic music by Claude-Michel Schönberg.
As with the vocals, there are both pluses and minuses to the approach that director Tom Hooper (
The King's Speech) adopts to
transfer the venerable stage property to a new medium. The opening sequence shows what Hooper does best, namely
opening up the film and investing it with a real sense of time and place. That includes a perhaps overly gritty ambience
that some people will find distinctly at odds with the more typically glossy atmosphere that inhabits most film musicals.
But Hooper also indulges himself in a bunch of arty effects rather similar to those he employed in his
John Adams miniseries. These include
lots of “shaky cam” up close and personal sequences and, even more oddly, a huge reliance on fish eye lenses which
distort things and give several key sequences a quasi-hallucinatory ambience, something which is distinctly at odds with
the obvious intent to give this
Les Misérables an overriding feeling of absolute realism.
Perhaps the most ironic issue with
Les Misérables is one which would seem at first blush to help ameliorate one
of the big problems that a lot of people have with musicals, namely people just willy-nilly springing into song. As fans of
the stage musical know,
Les Mis is almost entirely through sung, with only a handful of spoken dialogue
moments. That makes it of course much more in keeping with opera, but it also gives this film a strange stilted quality
at times, especially in the so-called
recitatives (i.e., quasi-dialogue moments which are sung, as opposed to out
and out songs). That’s especially noticeable when actors (including Jackman quite a bit of the time) adopt a
sprechgesang approach, hovering somewhere half between speech and singing. What's especially ironic about
this is that Tom Hooper reveals in his commentary that the first draft of the screenplay did in fact follow the older
tradition of dialogue segueing into song, but that Hooper wanted the film to more closely resemble the stage musical.
The final issue with
Les Misérables is one which probably couldn’t be avoided. As with virtually every adaptation
of this humongous piece of fiction, there are issues in depicting the vast panoply of characters as well as the immense
passage of time. That second issue is especially true in this musical, where events are telescoped to make them readily
part of any given song or sequence. What that means is, for example, Fantine’s degradation into a life of prostitution
seems to take place within seconds, and suddenly she’s an emaciated, beaten woman, with no real context or
emotional through line. It’s even more of an issue with the central ongoing conflict between Valjean and Javert, for
there’s little feeling of decades flying by, other than on screen textual announcements that we’re now in a new
timeframe.
With everything delineated above, some may come to the conclusion that this is a failed adaptation, but on the whole,
I’d actually argue otherwise. Hooper and his team have rather radically reinvented the property for film, including some
very smart editing decisions that give new life to several key songs (fans may be upset, however, by
another
kind of editing, namely missing sequences and pieces of songs). And despite some qualms with the vocals, there’s
a uniform excellence to the actual performances that gives this
Les Misérables an emotional heft, especially as it
careens towards its simultaneously tragic and uplifting conclusion. The hopes were
so high for this film that
meeting (let alone exceeding) them was probably a pretty hopeless task to begin with, but there is a
lot to
admire about this film. It may indeed not be great, but it
is good, and I would argue it is at times
very
good indeed.
(For those with a sense of humor about musicals in general and
Les Misérables in particular, I highly recommend
spending ten
minutes or so listening to the delicious
Forbidden Broadway parody of the show which is available on YouTube
here.)
Les Misérables 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 1080 disc in this package.
Les Misérables is presented in 4K UHD courtesy of Universal Studios with an HEVC / H.265 encoded 2160p transfer in 1.85:1. There are some
noticeable differences
in this presentation when compared to the 1080 version, and rather interestingly one of them to my eyes is the much more modulated ebb and flow of
the grain field in this new version. Parts of the 1080 version looked fairly heterogeneous at times due to what I assume was pretty aggressive tweaking
in post, but while there are certainly spikes and valleys to grain in this new presentation, it struck me as being more consistently organic looking. You
can see clear differences in grain thickness in any number of moments, but simply compare the first mountainside moment with Jean after the opening
watery sequence for just the first of several marked jumps in grain visibility. I know a lot of people who felt the 1080 version was too dark and my
hunch is they may have that same complaint with this version, but I found HDR to at least marginally improve shadow detail, especially in the first third
or so of the film. That said, there are also noticeably more vivid pops of color even in this first section that are arguably more vivid than in the 1080
version. The middle section of the film actually looked a bit cooler to me in this version, with a somewhat blanched, desaturated palette, before things
warm up again for the climactic sequences. Throughout the film, the emphasis on blues and golds offers some subtle changes in hue in this version.
Detail levels are consistently impressive, at least when "arty" framings or manically moving cameras aren't
being employed.
Les Misérables 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
I gave top marks to the 1080 disc's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track, and all of the positives I mentioned in my Les Misérables Blu-ray review are not only duplicated but both figuratively and literally
topped by new immersive aspects added by this disc's Dolby Atmos audio. Almost from the get go, with the huge swoop down to Jean Valjean in his
first of many maelstroms, the Atmos speakers resonate with activity, and one of the thrilling things about this mix is that while, yes, of course the score
is omnipresent throughout all of the surround channels, there's a really beautifully layered mix adding in ambient environmental sounds at times that
was to my ears more clearly and realistically presented in this Atmos version. As I mentioned on the 1080 release, the "live singing" element can lead
to occasional lapses in comprehensiblity and frankly at least at isolated moments actual audibility, but this is a really spectacularly immersive
track that I can't imagine fans of the musical not enjoying.
Les Misérables 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
The 4K UHD disc ports over all of the supplements from the 1080 disc, with the sole exception of the kind of quaint BD Live functionality that was
offered on the 1080 release.
- Feature Commentary by Director Tom Hooper. Hooper provides an interesting, in depth commentary
that covers a wealth of material. Some of the information is anecdotal, such as the change of placement of "I Dreamed a
Dream" which allowed Anne Hathaway to tear into the number with a raw emotionalism, while other moments are filled
with technical details, such as his decision to have the actors perform the vocals live, and how that was handled on set.
Hooper fills the time rather well with very few down moments.
- Les Misérables: A Revolutionary Approach (HD; 1:03:54) is an excellent multi-part featurette that
admittedly is nothing
more than a slightly longer EPK than usual, but which contains some good interviews with the cast and crew and which
has a glut of interesting
behind the scenes footage (it's fascinating to watch that first water logged scene being prepped, to give just one
example). There are
segments devoted to the casting, production design, the barricade scene and fittingly a look at the original West End
production. Original
producer Cameron Mackintosh has a fun interview in costume.
- The Original Masterwork: Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (HD; 11:11) is a decent look at the source
novel, again with
Mackintosh (this time not in costume) and Tom Hooper, who may bring a laugh to some viewers' lips when he
says Les
Misérables is a perfect bedtime story to read to children. It's probably no coincidence that there's a close-up of a
page in the novel with a
section heading called "He Bears His Cross", since Hooper so obviously exploits Christ imagery in his depiction of Valjean.
Additionally, a digital copy is included and packaging features a slipcover.
Les Misérables 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
I know a lot of professional theater people, including several who did different national tours of Les Misérables
(some in major roles), and their reaction has been about as disparate as the public at large. Some of these people
absolutely love this film adaptation while others absolutely despise it. My personal reaction falls somewhere in the middle,
with at least a tilt toward the favorable. I am not a fan of "shaky cam", especially in musicals, and Hooper's repeated use
of fish eye lenses is just plain odd. The film also rather uneasily manages its quasi-operatic roots, and while its through
sung approach is commendable, that doesn't necessarily mean it works as a film. On the other hand, the film has an epic
sweep and an undeniable emotional heft that can't be denied. The performances are uniformly excellent and few will be
able to ever forget Hathaway's commanding one take performance of "I Dreamed a Dream". Les Misérables may
still work better on stage, but this film is a rather valiant attempt to reinvent the property for a different medium.
Does it completely succeed? No, but like the rabble who join Jean Valjean in a struggle for justice, the mere fact that it
tries is worthy of admiration. The 4K UHD presentation offers overall improvements in both video and perhaps especially audio, and comes
Recommended.