Personally, besides Anne Hathaway who did an amazing job playing Fantine and also singing the most iconic song from the musical, the other actors gave great ACTING performances but singing, not so great. Let's start with Hugh Jackman. Playing the main character, he has the most screen time and the most parts to sing (most solos too). My issue with him is, while he can sing, his voice falters when it gets to the higher notes. Note that I said "higher". Higher as in, higher than usual. His voice lacks the power I would like to hear in some parts but then in other parts his voice does quite well actually (these are few though).
Next up, Russell Crowe. He suits his part unbelievably well, even his voice sounds the part. His voice is deep and throaty and then comes his solo on the roof. He does remarkably well in the first 20 seconds but as the song goes on, I can't help but feel that his voice should have a tad bit of dynamic. He manages to sing in the same way for every single song. I did not feel any ups or downs and it was a bit of a flat roller coaster ride. In addition, I felt that the backing music overwhelms his voice at times. In his solo on top of the roof, the song is supposed to be grand (I think) but as he reaches the final note, which I pretty much expected to go considerably higher to end the song with a bang, it doesn't. It pretty much leaves me hanging and wondering whether the producers should have gotten a proper singer to do the job.
Anne Hathaway, was very much in a league of her own in this movie. She manages to portray Fantine with the right emotions and when it comes to her solo of "I Dreamed a Dream", she just shines. Through the song, she channels the pain and suffering like no other rendition of the song that I have heard. Pure perfection. No other words need to be said.
Enough of the singing, let's talk about the movie itself. The most heartbreaking moment in the movie was, in fact, not Fantine's death but actually Gavroche's. When he was shot down, I was so angry at the soldiers. In my head, I was going, "How could you??????" Hate and love that scene so much. Hate because Gavroche dies and love because that scene could evoke such emotion in me.
There's one issue that I have with the camera in this movie. When the actors have a solo singing part, I realised that the camera is always giving the audience a close up of the actor's face. This probably happens like 90% of the time. Isn't there any other way to film it?
Despite the film's shortcomings (all my opinions, don't shoot me), it is still a decent movie although I wouldn't recommend watching it unless you're interested in this sort of thing. My brother came home complaining about how boring it is while I didn't think that it was boring at all.
Anyway, a new semester in college will start tomorrow and the rush to finish the A2 syllabus will start again. Hope that it will be a new beginning of sorts this year because honestly, the year hasn't started for me yet. Till we meet again.
Signing off,
YiJiun
