Les Misérables

Director: Tom Hooper
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway
Time Out rating:

Do you hate musicals? Do you think West End shows are naff – only fit for tourists and visiting aunties? Well, you might find yourself converted by Tom Hooper’s rabble-rousing film of London’s longest running musical. On the director’s side is a dream cast of Hollywood’s finest performing live on camera – including Anne Hathaway singing her heart out. I went in cockily arrogant that I’d be immune to the power of the show tune. I came out using my cardy sleeve as a tissue.

Not everyone will be sold. You might feel battered by Les Mis. Everything about this film is epic: its marathon two-and-a-half-hour running time (not bad considering Victor Hugo’s novel is 1,400 pages); the actors’ faces filling the screen in close-ups; the emotional thwack of Claude-Michel Schönberg’s earworm-ish numbers. What gives it a beating heart is that the actors are singing live, rather than lip-synching to a pre-recorded song. Here, when Hugh Jackman, sings ‘How can I face myself again?’ as he contemplates letting another man go to prison (a case of mistaken identity, long story), his voice is hardly a whisper.

Jackman gives a big, strong performance as Jean Valjean – scarily emaciated at the start, when the Frenchman is released from a chain-gang in 1815 after serving 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. A bitter and broken man, his life is changed by an act of kindness. Russell Crowe is Javert, the obsessive soldier who stalks him like a bad conscience (the less said about his singing the better).

But the heart of the film belongs to Anne Hathaway, on screen for just 15 minutes as Fantine, the factory girl forced by poverty into prostitution (another long story). When Susan Boyle sang ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, she belted it out like Elaine Paige. Here Hathaway reinvents the song as a cry from the heart – filmed in a single take, her face full of shame at what she has been driven to, eyes burning with rage.

The film sags a bit in the middle – like the musical and the book (yes, yes, it’s a masterpiece) – but there’s plenty to keep us entertained. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are very funny as the foul-mouthed, black-hearted Thénardiers (she gets the best line: ‘He ain't worth my spit’ – she’s talking about her husband). Hooper gets a bit carried away with swoopy shots, and the close-ups are unrelenting, but crucially he lets the filth and the squalor in. And there’s a thread running from his last film, The King’s Speech. Like Bertie, Valjean is striving to become the best man that he can be. And after a few delicate sniffles on my part, his final words did for me – as he sings about his adopted daughter Cosette: ‘She’s the best of my life.’

Les Misérables opens nationwide on December 21