This essay is why I'm here. I included it as part of my application into the film program at CSULB in the "critical essay" portion. It incorporates elements from my original review of Les Misérables, but focuses on more specific (and academic) qualities of the film and omits some of my... non-professional sentences.
Notable omissions: The phrase "You guys, Les Misérables is friggin’ incredible." Also pictures.
I would like to take this moment to state once and for all that my references cited at the end of this work are complete and utter horsesh!t. I made them up. Sorry, mom.
The December 25th release
of Les Misérables made for a not so merry Christmas. Popcorn
and tears covered theater floors in equal proportions. Les Mis is a film which paints its emotions in broad strokes and
isn’t afraid to demand that you feel exactly what it wants you to feel. It is
over-the-top, bombastic, and occasionally full of itself. However, while those
qualities might kill a normal movie, the normal rules do not apply to this
larger than life musical; they only serve to enhance the spectacle that
provides the lifeblood of its narrative.
While there are certainly
no parts of the plot that can be considered subtle by any definition of the
term (The film can’t be blamed for this; the stage musical it is based on as
well as the 1862 Victor Hugo protest novel that provides the source material
both seek to pummel rather than suggest [Hugo].), the filmmakers deftly scale back the
grandiosity, bringing the film a more organic and accessible onscreen quality.
The three most important things utilized in maintaining the balance between the
spectacle and the humanity of Les
Misérables were the technique of recording the vocals live in camera, the
cinematography, and the color scheme.
Singing live in camera is
something that has never been attempted on such a scale before and it
overwhelmingly, undeniably, works. Almost the entirety of the
musical is sung-through (there are some 20-odd brief lines of dialogue here and
there), and thus the vocal performances are the one factor that holds the most
weight in the success of the movie as a whole. This method allows the actors
much more freedom to emote and act
through song, much more than if they were lip-syncing to a track that had been
pre-recorded in a studio, a process which produces some absolutely stellar
performances. Anne Hathaway’s I Dreamed a Dream is undeniably the
absolute best performance of that song that has ever been sung.
Occasionally vocal polish
was traded for emotive quality, but it is a worthy price to pay. Russell Crowe
was clearly laboring to sing the notes properly and Eddie Redmayne sounded like
Kermit the Frog more often than not, but the former’s portrayal of the upright
Inspector Javert humanized a character whose staunch, one-note devotion to the
law can sometimes, in the hands of a lesser performer, be utterly inaccessible [Behr]. Likewise, the latter’s
performance of Empty Chairs at Empty
Tables perfectly reflected the anguish of the entire film and provided the
tonal turning point between the battle at the barricades and Valjean’s ascent
to the afterlife.
As the actors threw
themselves full-tilt into their performances, they achieved an incomparable
level of audience immediacy. Such an intense close-up experience of human
tragedy enhanced the grand emotive measures of the film, underscored greatly by
the cinematography. Director Tom Hooper was limited in a sense by the decision
to use live performances, because, to capture the entirety of a song or a line,
the performer had to be in the shot the whole time, and cutting between shots was
a near impossibility.
To counteract this
limitation, he compensated with handheld camera shots and extreme close-ups,
both of which did their part in bringing the spectacle of Les Mis to the level of the cinema audience. The handheld shots
allowed the performers free reign over their movements and their improvisations
led the camera’s movements, rather than the other way around. The close-up
shots worked in tandem with the handheld, keeping us in tight focus on the
human face of tragedy [Mercado],
instead of soaring with the songs and taking us farther away. This works for
the same reason that Anne Hathaway’s I
Dreamed a Dream was so superb. Instead of being merely a beautiful moment
in a musical, it feels like an authentic moment in a real person’s struggles.
The need to scale down can
be reflected in the enormity of the film’s themes, represented in the tagline:
“Fight. Dream. Hope. Love.” However big, these themes are still central to the
narrative and are heavily reflected in the color scheme. The overall design of
the film is drab and grey, reflecting the poverty and struggles of daily life
in 19th century France. The only times bright colors are used are
when the central themes are present, because they all exemplify a way to escape
from the grey world of reality.
The Fight at the barricades
is marked by the vivid reds and blues of the French uniforms and the flags of
the rebels as well as the deep, oaky earth tones of the barricade. Fantine’s
Dream is represented by her pink outfit – contrasting with the washed out blue
of the other factory workers – and her daughter Cosette’s Dream is reflected in
the vivid hues of the doll shop at which she wistfully gazes across the avenue.
The most color in the entire film – glowing oranges and yellows, elegant
silvers and golds - can be found in churches, the strongholds of Hope. The Love
that fuels the second half of the movie is likewise heavily featured in the
purple and silver buds in the garden where Cosette and Marius meet in secret,
as well as the deep emerald of forlorn Éponine’s dress.
Les Misérables is an ensemble musical and no single part could function
without the others. The tableau provided by the vocals, the camera work, and
the color scheme functions in the same way. Each part is essential and it all
works together to create a spectacular, yet singularly human narrative.
Works Cited
Behr,
Edward. The Complete Book of Les Misérables. Little Brown & Co,
1990.
Hugo,
Victor. Les Misérables. A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven & Cie., 1862.
Mercado, Gustavo. The Filmmaker's Eye:
Learning (and Breaking) the Rules of Cinematic
Composition. Focal Press, 2010.
Word Count: 1147
Word Count: 1147
No comments:
Post a Comment