In Which Nick Goes to Les Miserables and Cries Tiny, Tiny Tears.

The presents were opened, the turkey was in the oven, and the ghost of Christmas Present had matured into a fine middle age (featuring a rather dignified graying of the temples) when my mother suggested that she and my dad could watch my 4 year old daughter while Trish and I went to the movies.  We agreed to take her up on it, and there was really only one movie I wanted to see:

Les Miserables.

True, if I was looking for a joyful, uplifting capstone to my holiday another movie may have served better, for I knew that Les Miserables wasn't exactly a happy story, but from my memory of seeing it on Broadway about 9 years ago I don't remember it being too bad.

I had gone on my own while co-oping in Red Bank, NJ as a college student.  I remember hoping that maybe I would have the opportunity to sit with one of them thar purty New York girls - how exactly my shy and awkward self would have managed to even speak to one is beyond me, but with a little Big Apple magic I reckoned that anything was possible.

As it turned out, I was flanked by two middle aged menopausal women who were bawling after the first 15 minutes.  I began to fear it was going to be a long afternoon, but they must have got it out of their system because for the rest of the show I don't believe a tear was shed.  I can't say I remember the show that well, but I remember being uplifted and as my wife and I stood in line for tickets I assured her through the murk of the years that there is something of a happy ending.

I couldn't have been more wrong.  The 2012 movie version of Les Miserables is really, really good -  incredibly well done with a number of good performances and one profound one -  but contrary to my memory of seeing the musical it was just emotionally devastating. It's plain to see why - the film has an immediacy and intimacy that watching a Broadway show from the cheap seats just doesn't match. It is one thing to watch an understudy Fantine plow her way through "I dreamed a dream"; quite another to watch Anne Hathaway, with the camera pulled tight to her, sing the song in such a way that will break your heart, as her character rails against the Hell she's living with a full sweep of bitter emotions.  I certainly hope she wins the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for it; it is true that the movie is very fresh in my mind, but I cannot recall a more moving performance by anyone in recent memory.

What else?  The film version - this film version - makes the 19th Century far more visceral.  Again, it is one thing to see costumes and sets from afar on the stage - it is another to see the filth of Parisian street life, the blood of starry eyed revolutionaries being shed, the shit of the Paris sewers.

Ah, but then there is the love story between Cosette and Marius.  Dare I say that this is the stuff of Broadway?  A love built on a mere glance of each other in the streets?  I don't know how Victor Hugo handles it in the book (I have yet to read it, though it's on the list), but on film the love story seems flimsy.  That's probably not the film-makers fault; It's flimsy on stage to.  But it works on Broadway better than it does in a film such this for some reason.  There is honestly no better entertainment than a Broadway show and it is easy to suspend one's disbelief that love could blossom the merest of glances.  It is far more difficult to suspend disbelief when the characters are running around a 19th Century Paris that is rendered with detailed digital clarity.  

So go and see it.  If you like Les Miserables the musical you will probably like the movie - if you don't like the musical to begin with it may be worth going just to see Anne Hathaway's performance alone.  Though $10.00 is probably a lot to pay for one performance.  Maybe if you go by yourself you'll get to sit next to one of them thar purty movie going gals and if you get up the gumption to do so maybe you can ask if she'd like to go for coffee afterwards - or maybe you will be wedged between two aging old men who will constantly gripe about not being able to see and how loud the movie is and how the popcorn is too damn salty (even though they continue to eat it).

Maybe you should just wait until the movie gets pirated, spliced and diced and put up on You Tube.