"Les Misérables': Stage vs. screen

How does the new film version of Les Miz differ from the stage musical? In a word: radically.

Tom Hopper's film hews closely in tone to Victor Hugo's somber novel of misery and poverty— emaciated faces, yellowing teeth and all. It also stays faithful to the script of the stage musical.

But the film omits much of Hugo's plot as well as his discourses on French history and the topography of Paris, not to mention his criticism of the Church and the courts. I missed Hugo's emotional pleas for rational causes like education and science: "C'est pourquoi nous crions: Enseignement! Science!"

The stage musical, on the other hand, always was artificial and prettified, with its turntable and its revolutionaries marching in place. Its pretense is even more noticeable when you revisit the show after seeing the film, as I recently did. Fantine, the grubby factory-worker, appears clean and healthy in a white dress. The street revolutionaries look like they've just come from a frat party at the Paris campus of the Wharton School.

Jackman's surprise

But musical theater, like opera, requires suspension of disbelief. The show's appeal lies in its the cumulative impact of its catchy score (sung full-out by genuinely big voices), its large orchestra and its big chorus. In the new stage cast, Peter Lockyer as Valjean and Andrew Varela as Javert were outstanding. A pleasant surprise was Beth Kirkpatrick powerfully stepping in as a replacement Madame Thénardier.

Fantine's and Eponine's songs are meant to be belted in the Broadway tradition, while Javert's numbers sound like Verdi baritone arias. That aspect was abandoned in the film, where the musical line is broken into short phrases, half-whispered with sighs and sobs interjected, and the orchestra is barely audible.

Hugh Jackman made a convincing movie Jean Valjean, and he surprised me by singing "Take Him Home" in the original key, ascending to a soft B-flat ending. Anne Hathaway encompassed Fantine's persona and sang "I Dreamed a Dream" touchingly.

Critic's complaint

But Russell Crowe was miscast as Javert. Not only was his husky voice inadequate; he was nowhere near as fanatical as this intrepid police inspector should be. Samantha Barks put across her solos as Eponine, a role she played previously in the musical's 25th anniversary concert. Aaron Tveit was excellent as Enjolras and Sacha Baron Cohen hilarious as Thénardier (although his over-the-top portrayal distracted from the drama).

The film runs 160 minutes, much longer than the show, and moves at a slower pace. Charles Isherwood of the New York Times complained that he fell asleep and, whenever he awoke, invariably saw someone suffering, usually "with a tear- or sweat-stained face stretched across the screen so that no nuance of misery will go unrecorded." Well, yes— but the film provides a valuable service by reminding us that suffering is what this story is all about.

Teenage perspective

I attended both the show and movie with two teenage relatives, who provided a fresh perspective. Both were skeptical of Jean Valjean's heroic stature. Of course they commiserated with his imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread, but they were not sympathetic to his repeated escapes and the crimes he committed while on the lam. Why, they asked, are we praising a recidivist?

They preferred the movie, partly because it was more understandable and realistic and partly as a matter of taste: They don't share my love for big voices and orchestras.

Old at 50?

Some of the problems in both the play and the film can be blamed on Victor Hugo himself. For instance, if Jean Valjean went to jail as a teenager, he must be in his 30s when the story begins and barely 50 when he apparently dies of old age. True, life expectancy was low in those days, but mainly because people contracted fatal diseases. Valjean contracts no apparent illness; he just slows down ("I am old") and expires.

Then there are the extraordinary coincidences: Wherever Jean goes, Javert turns up too, and the Thénardiers pop up repeatedly, like Michaele and Tareq Salahi, that social-climbing couple who crashed a White House dinner and went on to a reality TV show in 2009.

The Thénardiers are abusers and criminals— villains in the novel, but transformed into clownish music-hall performers in the musical as a way of injecting comic relief into an otherwise relentless grim saga.

The story endures in the stage version because most people are touched by Jean's triumph over adversity and the redemption he finds in forgiving. And who is not in favor of democracy and justice and the ending of starvation? For that matter, who among us— rich or poor— couldn't use a little comic relief in our lives?