Les Misérables (2012)
No other filmmaker had as controversial of a decade than Tom Hooper who followed up his 2010 Best Picture Winning film The King's Speech with a new adaptation of the classic novel/musical Les Misérables. Following the classic story of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), Les Misérables attempts to capture the captivating scale and drama of the story finding mixed results.
When it comes to creating a story of grandness and epicness, Les Misérables does overall find success. The cinematography coming from Danny Cohen is breathtaking painting some of the best visuals the decade. The sheer size of the world created through clever visuals and perspectives not only sets the relationship between Jean and the city against him perfectly but turns each shot into a work of art. The film constantly is changing and experimenting with its shot compositions and styles of filmmaking such as uses of handheld camerawork which constantly makes the film feel dynamic and visually interesting. It also helps make the film feel larger than life which is needed for the story to really connect. With the huge dramatic swells in music and long runtime, the film needs to have a certain size which the cinematography and production design achieves.
Unfortunately, despite the size of the film matching what is required for the film to work the screenplay doesn't reach the same highs. For the first portion of the film, the story of Jean Valjean is captivating and does draw audiences in largely thanks to an incredibly emotional performance by Hugh Jackman. As the film continues it quickly starts to add various side characters and side plots that distracts the film and creates a product that feels confused and incoherent. Each individual piece of the film works strong enough on its own but fails to come together to create a film that feels like it deserves to be told together. This makes a film that is enjoyable at first but hard to sit through as it loses the audience by the end and their emotional buy into the story and its characters. None of this is due to the acting or musical elements as the ensemble including the likes of Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, and Sacha Baron Cohen give impressively natural and effective performances that get hurt by the screenplay and editing of the film more than anything else.
2012s Les Misérables might be a controversial film for those who have a deep connection with earlier versions of the story, but for those new to the story, the film is serviceable and even inspiring at times. It sets up a grand world with effective characters going through the struggles of their lives but sadly can't put these pieces together fully. It's watchable but needed to be cleaned up if it wanted to come together as a solid single film and truly be declared one of the best of the decade.
2012s Les Misérables might be a controversial film for those who have a deep connection with earlier versions of the story, but for those new to the story, the film is serviceable and even inspiring at times. It sets up a grand world with effective characters going through the struggles of their lives but sadly can't put these pieces together fully. It's watchable but needed to be cleaned up if it wanted to come together as a solid single film and truly be declared one of the best of the decade.