The theater all made audible noises of "Eghh" or cringing when they heard the noise after Javert fell.
"Javert's giving the dead Gavroche the medal made zero sense"
THANK YOU. This is Javert for heaven's sake. He wasn't moved by Fantine's hooker with dying daughter and a heart of gold, he is not going to pin one of his (probably precious) medals to someone he sees as a traitor. When Javert commits suicide, his viewpoint of the world has not changed, his viewpoint of Valjean has and that's what's incompatible with his worldview. That's why he can't reconcile the two and that's why he commits suicide.
I thought that "Bring Him Home" was terrible but for me the song has never made much sense, anyway. I get the gist of it but the "He's like the son I would have known" line grates on me. Valjean has literally never met this kid at this point in the musical. Their relationship in the novel is far more contentious, too.
Both times I've seen the film, the reaction to Javert's suicide was a variation of "...ouch." I don't understand why we need to see his body hitting a cement embankment. I don't understand why we need to hear it. It's a tall bridge over a river and Javert's not dressed for a swim. We understand what's going on.
I saw it Saturday night. I neither loved nor hated it. It just... was. I liked Hathaway, I didn't think Crowe was as bad as I'd been hearing and expecting, I thought Bonham-Carter was trying to perform the Mrs. Lovett Tim Burton wouldn't allow her to play, and Hugh Jackman was a bit miscast -- a valiant effort on his part but no more.
The best performances and moments belonged to Aaron Tveit and Samantha Barks. They, more than anyone else in the film, really got the material and brought the movie to flickering, momentary life whenever they were on screen. I kept wishing they were playing Marius and Cosette.
Regarding audience giggles, a group of women started snickering when Valjean comes into Cosette's room with his shirt open. "Wow, he's HOT" I heard them say. And I can see their point - no way should Valjean look that hearty and virile, when he dies not long after. Another of the women whispered, "That's awkward. He looks like he's going to kiss her!"
I thought Crowe's stiff manical like singing was a conscious acting choice. Javert is a very precise, regimented individual. If he as a person sang he would focus more on hitting the notes than being emotional. He is stiff, mechanical, and inflexible as as 'the law'.
As for Redmayne and Seyfrieds singing. They are both playing teenagers, who would very raw and untrained voices, with clear and present beauty to them but without all the flair of a Broadway star. They haven't had the time to polish their gift and perfect their craft, they are young.
It also seemed a conscious choice to me to have all the 'good guys' aka Valjean, Marius, Enjolras, Eponine to have the 'prettier voices'. This way we immediately like them more just because they sound pretty. Whereas we don't like people who sound bad. Javert, Thernadiers etc.
"They are both playing teenagers, who would very raw and untrained voices, with clear and present beauty to them but without all the flair of a Broadway star. They haven't had the time to polish their gift and perfect their craft, they are young."
I hate when people say that to justify poor singing in movie musicals. We've already established that singing is the way of expressing emotion in musicals and we're not supposed to be thinking of them as literally randomly bursting into song, so it's not like the voices have to be realistic. Furthermore, using that reasoning, why would Eponine have a good voice then? She's the same age as Cosette and with her upbringing would have had less time to "perfect her craft" when she's living impoverished on the streets. If anything, Cosette should be a good singer because she's educated (in the 19th century, education for young women usually included music) and grew up in a convent that probably sings a lot.
Sorry, it's just I heard this a lot with Johanna in the Sweeney Todd movie. People leave comments on videos of other Johannas saying "I liked the movie Johanna better, she sounded more innocent and young like Johanna should be." Usually innocent and young = weaker voice. People said that same thing about Emmy Rossum's Christine, too.
Yes and the emotions be expressed would be those of impassioned, volatile and vulnerable. Not Broadway standard. Eponine in particular seemed to have that quality especially during on my own. To me Seyfried didn't seem particularly bad except for her breathing and her thin voice, something approiate for a repressed naive schoolgirl experiencing and singing about the emotions of a repressed naive schoolgirl. Your background effects your emotions and how you respond to things. Just the truth.
My biggest problem with the "young lovers" in this musical is that they are cardboard cutouts essentially there to sing a lot and fall in love incredibly quickly. Ken and Barbie have as much depth.
I thought both Amanda and Eddie performed admirably considering we know next to nothing about how they're feeling outside of "I love you." We know a lot of Cosette's backstory without hearing much if anything as to how she feels about it or the world or her life or her mother. The fact that Amanda made her seem (almost) human is a credit to her. She was seriously fighting the odds. It's a thin role. Let's start with that before we even get to her thin voice.
And Marius is even worse. All we know is that he's fighting with the rebels (Why? How did he come to join them? What else has be been doing up to that point?) And then he sees Cosette for five seconds, and that's "who he is" for the rest of the story. A horribly dull character, and a huge credit to Redmayne for making something out of (quite literally) nothing.
Empty roles with lots of singing. It's one of the reasons the second half of this musical plot sags so much. It focuses on the young lovers and gives us nothing to learn from them or about them. They just swoon and moon within their own story.
And Eponine's sole purpose in this entire story is to delay Marius from reading Cosette's departure note. She loves him from a distance. That's her entire character.
Good for these actors for at least attempting to "live" inside the shallow roles.
After 50 years, it would be great if we could get beyond "Tuptim and Lun-Tah" as the secondary lovers, and even they had more known about them and going for them (and against them) with less songs and stage/screen time.
You could tell that Samantha Barks was consciously making that choice as an acting decision. Amanda Seyfried just sounded as though she didn't have the ability to make those high notes soar. Plus maybe that nervousness makes sense for "A Heart Full of Love," but IMO not "Everyday," when she's trying to soothe Marius.
Edit: Yeah, I agree that Cosette is a thin role. I wish they hadn't given her character development to Eponine. Although I was reading that a lot of people criticize even the novel (where her character is more developed) for Cosette being a passive, underdeveloped "doll" who exists only to be the object of people's affection.
Spork you probably aren't yelling to heaven when you try to soothe someone. If you did they would freak the **** out. Your voice is probably very soft and quieter than normal. So it makes perfect sense there as well.
I always though that Cosette is a stand in for what happens when you love, despite all the odds otherwise. Seyfried plays a role who is essentially a vessel for the two protagonist to express love - Fantine and Valjean. I think she is supposed to be innocent and light and love personified. And, for that particular role and purpose, I had no problem with her somewhat childlike voice and demeanor.
I did not like her voice at all in Mama Mia. But, I really did not have problems with it here.
I wonder how much Cosette remembers about those early years with her mother. How her life was then, even before the Thenardiers. Does she remember the way men treated her mother or her? Does she even remember much about life with the Thenardiers? And how much of that rubbed off on her outlook on life? How did she change when Jean Valjean took her in? How was her life in the convent? What did that do to her views of good and bad and love and hate?
How does she know (in all of three minutes) that Marius won't leave her or abandon her the way her own (natural) father did? Why does she decide to trust him so openly and confidently?
And PJ, so far I've heard three people comment about Fantine's hair in the last scene. Why was it still chopped off? Wouldn't she have her long beautiful hair again in the Heavenly vision? I didn't think about it at the time, but it's bugged several people I know enough to mention it.
I'm thinking Jean Valjean bought some of Fantine's teeth to make him prettier and to always carry her memory with him every time he chomped down on a meat pie.
" I don’t think people have any idea how much changing we did to the musical."
Well, Hooper certainly hasn't read our threads!
Oh and apropos of nothing in particular, SBC had a cold just b4 they shot MotH, had 2 shut down production for a week so he could get better enuf to sing it live BUT in the quote about this he mentions that they DID have a track of him singing he could lip synch to & Hooper insisted on live. My point is, sweetening was definitely possible and should have been done in certain *ahem* cases.
Also when it comes to Marius and Cossette I think we forget one simple fact. They're teenagers, nothing teenagers do makes any sense to anyone even them.
I have the same problem with Anthony and Johanna in Sweeney Todd. They have no personalities. Maybe it's just because I don't believe in that whole "love at first sight" thing, but it always seems to kill the pace every time they're on stage/screen no matter how well they're performed. It's just so cheesy. Can't they at least speak to each other a little while before they decide to spend the rest of their lives together?
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joined:7/27/05
Posted: 12/31/12 at 11:07am