Zero Dark Thirty [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  Roger Ebert (3 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

Zero Dark Thirty (directed by Kathryn Bigelow, screenplay by Mark Boal) is the long anticipated film by the Oscar winning director of The Hurt Locker [2008] about the 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden and the woman CIA operative, in the film named Maya (played by Jessica Chastain), who had the stamina/tenaciousness to, over nearly 10 years, methodically put the pieces together and find where Bin Laden was hiding.  It is a great story, a great American story, and that a woman CIA operative had a central role, and indeed several other women CIA operatives had significant roles, so much the better!  Arguably, this story could become the female equivalent of that of the Tuskegee Airmen a decorated all-African American unit of the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II whose heroism/accomplishments helped bring down the wall of racial Segregation in the United States over the decades that followed.

To be sure, the story is not a pretty one.  Much of the ground-work intel was collected using the most notorious of post-9/11 U.S. interrogation methods -- torture (sleep deprivation, leaving people chained in stress positions for hours on end, beating, mock burial and, of course, water-boarding) often in "secret prisons" including one located apparently on a ship docked in the harbor of Gdansk, Poland.  Yet, through the sifting of necessarily questionable intel from all kinds of prisoners beaten/tortured in this way, they did find that 20 or so of the prisoners mentioned the name of a personal courier to Bin Laden, though none of them knew where he would be.  It took nearly 10 years to find him, in Pakistan, even as the CIA agents themselves found their covers repeatedly compromised and lives threatened (and lost ...) on account of working in a country (Pakistan) ... that was never completely on their side. 

The film is 157 minutes (over 2 1/2 hours) in length.  So it's a commitment to watch.  Yet, if one is interested in history / spy-thrillers, then I would suspect that one would not mind the time.  It's a heck of a story to recall.

There is, of course, the question about the U.S. government's (GW Bush/Cheney Administration's) decision in the post-9/11 years to resort to torture (or torture by any other name) to extract information from those suspected of being involved with Al Queda.  Certainly, the legacy of this approach will expose captured Americans to torture in the future as well.  YET, if one is honest about it, American prisoners have been tortured and even lynched in pretty much every American war since perhaps the First World War.  Think of the Bataan Death March during World War II, the psychological torture/brain washing of American POWs during the Korean War, the torture of captured American airmen during Vietnam and the BEHEADINGS of captured Americans (often non-combatants) by Islamic Radicals during the post-9/11 years.

For its part, the Catholic Church in the modern era, despite the legacy of the Inquisition in the Medieval era, has opposed torture declaring it to violate the human dignity interestingly of both the person/people being tortured and the person/people doing the torturing.  One generally has no problem understanding the first part of that statement, but only when one thinks about it can one understand also the second part. (When you beat or torture someone, you cede your own humanity as well). 

Yet one can also understand both the anger at the mass killers of innocents and the urgency of preventing other 9/11 style massacres.  We live, after all, in a world that remains in good part ... Fallen.  (Don't believe me?  Just turn on the TV and watch the day's evening news some day ...).

Oh yes, it goes practically without saying that the film, screenplay, director Kathryn Bigelow and actress Jessica Chastain and possibly actor Kyle Chandler (as best supporting actor playing the role of Joseph Bradley, Maya's first colleague/mentor) will probably receive Oscar nominations this year and many will probably win.


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The Paperboy [2012]

MPAA (R)  Roger Ebert (3 Stars)  The Onion/AV Club (D)  Fr. Dennis (3 3/4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review
The Onion/AV Club's review

The Paperboy (directed and screenplay cowritten by Lee Daniels along with Peter Dexter [IMDb] on whose novel the film is based) is another "indie/art house" film that only passed briefly in Chicago (in November) to mixed reviews (see above) but was nevertheless reprised by the Gene Siskel Film Center at the end of the year (2012) no doubt to underline some of the film's IMHO remarkable performances.  All three of the films reprised this week at the Center -- the other two being A Late Quartet [2012] and Searching for Sugar Man [2012] -- IMHO certainly deserved the attention/second look as the film industry enters into "awards season"). 

The Paperboy is a hard-boiled / pot-boiling story set largely around a family operating a small newspaper in rural Florida in 1969 (before the widespread availability of air conditioning...) and is being recalled to a reporter in the present day by Anita Chester (played by Macy Gray) who served as the family's African-American maid in those days.

The family was headed by the newspaper's owner, lifelong rural Florida resident, W.W. Jansen (played by Scott Glenn) and his "New York transplant" second wife Ellen Guthrie (played by Nealla Gordon) who he met in some convention somewhere.  W.W. had two largely grown sons from his first marriage.  The older son named Ward (played by Matthew McConaughey) has followed in his family's footsteps (even if he left town to do so) becoming a fairly successful investigative reporter for a fairly major newspaper in Miami (the "Miami Times").   On the other hand at the beginning of the story, the younger more listless son named Jack (played by Zac Efron), still harboring a resentment against his parents over the breakup of their marriage, had just returned to his father's home after being thrown out of Florida State University for some unspecified offense, having blown, among other things, his chance to become a top-ranked competitive swimmer.  Upon returning home, Jack's father gave him a menial job at his newspaper of simply helping to deliver/distribute his papers each day (if in a truck) as a glorified "paperboy," giving the film its name.

So much for the set-up of the lead family's dynamics.  Things begin to get interesting when Ward comes up from Miami with his oddly English-accented black colleague named Yardley (played by David Oyelowo) on a job to investigate the circumstances of a notorious murder of a local (and by all accounts corrupt) sheriff Thurmond Call.  A white-trashy swamper named Hillary Van Wetter (played by John Cusack) was sitting on death row for the crime.  There was always some question, however, whether he actually committed it as the evidence was somewhat circumstantial (The sheriff's innards were gutted in the same way as a swamper would gut an alligator ...).   Ward and Yardley were up in Ward's hometown to see if they could shed some new light on the case before Hillary "got the chair ..."

The two's investigation leads them to Charlotte Bless (played by Nicole Kidman) a big haired, perpetually tight clothes wearing woman who's both certainly "been around" and is now probably too old for the big hair and tight clothes.  She had been corresponding with a fair number of prisoners in her day, but has decided to give her heart to Hillary.  She's "in love ..." and even though their relationship has been only through correspondance and he's, well ON DEATH ROW, they're "engaged to be married."  Yippee!  Charlotte shows up at Ward and Yardley's "office" (in Jack and Ward's father's home's garage ...) with a fair number of rather large boxes containing a truly exhaustive compilation of everything that's been written about Hillary's case as well as "all the intimate correspondance" that she's shared with Hillary since the two struck-up their prison romance ...

The result is ... the younger, listless son Jack, living back home in his father's house (who he hates) without a plan or a clue ... falls in love with ... you guessed it ... Charlotte ;-).  Much ensues ...

To get into more detail would honestly diminish the story.  However, it is perhaps telling/poignant that Jack, who could have become an Olympic class swimmer ("if only he had applied himself...") finds himself near the end of the story swimming for his life in an alligator infested swamp somewhere in the outback of Florida.  And it does seem to me that he does come to understand at that moment how he got there ...

So arguably, "the Paperboy" ... "grows up."  But wow, what a trip...

Parents, needless to say, keep the minors at home regarding this one.  The film is definitely justifiably R-rated.  However, for adult kids who despite being in their 20s or 30s don't seem to be growing up, this may not be a bad film to see.  And I do understand why the Gene Siskel Film Center wanted to reprise this film as "award season begins."  Even if the film is intended for adults, the performances are great and it tells one heck of a story.


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The Central Park Five [2012]

MPAA (NR)  Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

In a year of some truly exceptional documentaries including Ai Weiwei Never Sorry, Band of Sisters, Craigslist Joe, Searching for Sugar Man and The Other Dream Team, The Central Park Five (written and directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon) nevertheless has to stand-out in the United States as the most significant (if the most painful) among them.

Why?  Because it is about five teenagers who caught-up in the hysteria following a truly sensational/awful crime -- the 1989 brutal rape of a white female jogger in New York's Central Park (the Central Park Jogger Case) -- ended-up serving years, in one case over a decade of time, for the crime even though the only evidence against them were their videotaped confessions extracted from them (mind you most were 14-15 year olds, the oldest was 16) without the presence of a lawyer.   No DNA from any of them was found on the victim or even at the crime scene and even their own "confessions" were contradictory.  The Prosecutors knew all this and yet ran with the case against these five youths (all Blacks and Hispanics, some who didn't even know each other) anyway.

Was there pressure to quickly solve the case?  Yes.  Were the 5 youths squeaky clean?  No.  They were part of a veritable if impromtu mob of youths that could have numbered as much as several hundred, that did pass through Central Park on that hot summer night, a mob that the five later accused of the rape freely admit to this day did do some pretty awful things.  (One of the five later accused of the rape did say that he saw _someone else_ hit a homeless man over the head with a beer-bottle, etc... But he noted also "we were 14, our jaws were dropped, we were stunned.  You normally don't see those sorts of things ...")

In any case, the whole case was an awful tragedy.  And it can serve as a reminder to young people of two very important lessons: (1) STAY OUT OF TROUBLE.  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don't go near it because ONCE YOU ARE "THERE" you could end-up being sucked into and "taking the rap" for things that you honestly did not do.  (2) As in the case of another stunning film based on another true story, Compliance [2012], PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.  Especially AS A KID, tell the authorities "As a minor, I can't tell or do ANYTHING for you without my parents (all five of the youths involved in this case had parents/families THAT LOVED THEM) or a lawyer present.  I simply can't."

Finally, Prosecutors could save _everybody_ needless heartache by insisting on their own that "Confessions" made without the presence of a Defense Attorney simply be retaken in the presence of one.  If the person really felt remorse/wanted to Confess, he/she would do so AGAIN anyway.  To view at the Justice System as a game would seem to bring-us to this point where we have of one awful tragedy resulting in a second one.  Everybody involved in this case and, indeed, all of society deserved better than this.


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A Late Quartet [2012]

MPAA (R)  Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

A Late Quartet (directed and cowritten by Yaron Zilberman along with Seth Grossman) is a film that I missed the first time it passed through (all too quickly) Chicago and I nearly talked myself out of seeing it this time around (It's playing at Chicago's Gene Siskel Film Center the week of Christmas-New Years 2012).  But having convinced myself to shell out the $11 to see it (the Gene Siskel Film Center is not cheap...), I'm glad that I did as I'd certainly pick it now as one of the best, most thoughtful movies of the year.  And depending on how Zero Dark Forty turns out to be (that movie isn't playing in Chicago until after the New Year) I may well pick A Late Quartet as the best film of the year.

So what is this film about?  It's a fictional story about a renowned New York based classical string quartet that's been playing together for 25 years.  When the group gets together however to begin practicing for the upcoming season, the group's founder, eldest member (the lead violinist was once his student ...) and still its heart-and-soul, cellist Peter Mitchell (played by Christopher Walken) finds a certain "weakness" in his hands and asks that the group reschedule their practice for later in the week so that he could get this strange problem/sensation checked out by his doctor.  So he goes to the doctor and after only a brief examination (with a subsequent MRI scheduled to confirm it...) he's is told that he's almost certainly experiencing the first stages of Parkinson's Disease.  Though perhaps shocked to hear the doctor's words, Parkinson's, he doesn't contest.  Perhaps he's already suspected ...

The next time the Quartet gets together for their practice, Peter breaks the news to them.  He tells them that he does not expect to be able to play through the next season and even if the drugs he's been prescribed help slowdown/control the onset of the disease, he'd like the next concert (the first of their season) to be his last.

The three others -- first/lead violin Daniel Lerner (played by Mark Ivanhir), and husband and wife, second violin Robert Gelbart (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and viola Juiliette Gelbart (played by Catherine Keener) are shocked.  What will become of their group?  Peter tells them that he thinks that one of his current students Nina Lee could replace him, that she's already worked with the group in the past (Peter had lost his wife about year previous and apparently had taken at least some kind of a break from playing at the time).  But the group still protests.  A new person in the quartet will inevitably change it.

Who doesn't protest all that loudly and, indeed, kinda likes the "possibility of change" taking place is (somewhat inevitably) the second violinist Robert.  He suggests that this could be "the perfect time" for him to begin playing first violin occasionally (with first violinist Daniel playing second at those times...) and perhaps begin the process of having Robert and Daniel sharing each other's roles in the Quartet.  Daniel both a true virtuoso and a perfectionist finds Robert's idea utterly inconceivable ... and terribly ill-timed.  But when would be a good time...?  And so the ball starts rolling ...

Robert's wife Juiliette (as the others) has spent 25 years playing in this Quartet, pretty much her entire adult life and when one thinks about it, actually longer than she's been married to Robert who she met only as a result of their being part of the group.  As a result, Juiliette's instinctive loyalty is actually more for the well-being of the Quartet rather than her husband (who she met only as a result of it).

Both Daniel and Juiliette try to explain to Robert that he's valuable, indeed indispensable to the group as the second violin.  Since they've played so long together, Daniel indeed finds it nearly inconceivable imagining anyone playing "second fiddle" to him other than Robert.  But that's exactly it.  Robert has explained to one-too-many people -- a young flamenco dancer named Pilar (played by Liraz Charhi) who he runs into occasionally while jogging -- his role as "second violin" and would just like to play FIRST violin on occasion ;-).

Add to the mix a 20-something daughter of Robert / Juiliette named Alexandra (played by Imogen Poots) who is more-or-less inevitably also "musically gifted" as her parents but also more-or-less inevitably resentful of them because she's played "second fiddle" to their careers all her life.  All this, of course, this makes for one heck of a set-up for a story!

I found this movie a fascinating study of human dynamics and even actually worthy of reflection in the context of RELIGIOUS (Community) LIFE.   Male Catholic religious communities in particular are often rather small -- 4-5 brothers, priests, friars living and often working together.  For such an arrangement to work well, everyone has to feel valued and in as much as possible everyone is expected to contribute.  Egos have to be supressed at times for the sake of the whole.  But whose egos?  When?  :-)  It's not easy ;-).

So I found this movie to be a remarkable film that is, yes, "about a String Quartet."  But it's really about much more than that.  It's about Life ... Excellent job folks!  Just excellent!


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Parental Guidance [2012]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review

Parental Guidance (directed by Andy Fickman, screenplay by Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse) is a generally very funny, well-written and well-acted family-oriented comedy.  Stars Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, who play the grandparents Arty and Diane Decker to their daughter Alice Simmons's (played by Marisa Tomei) children Harper (played by Bailey Madison), Turner (played by Joshua Rush) and Barker (played by Kyle Harrison Breitkopf), were excellent as was the cast in general. 

I will lodge my oft-repeated complaint that the film was probably overly/needlessly "white."  There was only one black character in the entire film (a police officer who had maybe 2-3 lines) and no Hispanic at all.  Present was a genial though somewhat stereotyped "china-man," Mr Cheng (played by Gette Watanabe) the owner of a somewhat "updated" (Glutin/MSG-free...) Chinese restaurant, who had rather significant if somewhat "minstrel showy" role.  And one of the chief villains in this film still came from the "Cold War shelf" in the form of "Chernobyl red" haired violin instructor "Dr. Schveer" (played by Rhoda Griffis) featuring a Slavic accent that would make Boris Badenov [IMDb] and Natasha of the 1950s-60s era Bullwinkle cartoon proud ... All the "real" characters were, of course ... white.

In their defense, they were funny.  Again, Billy Crystal and Bette Midler have been _among the best_ actors/comedians in our country of a generation.  Aging (as do we all...) they continue to "step-up" and nail their performances.  But entire demographics (half the kids under 17 in the United States are no longer white) were not represented in the film.  And the problem with this did actually play itself out in the theater (in an African American neighborhood in Chicago) where I saw the film.  The film was funny, the audience (almost entirely African American) did laugh and repeatedly throughout the film.  But the theater was 2/3-3/4 empty even though I saw the film at 7:30 PM on a Friday night.  Django next door was packed to the rafters ... One wonders how hard it would have been to write-in a Hispanic, African American or even Filipino family "living next door" ...

All that having been said ... the film was nice and touched gently if also pointedly on family issues that many/most contemporary American families could relate to: Arty and Diane Decker (played by Billy Crystal and Bette Midler respectively) are grandparents living in Fresno, California, who rarely see their grandchildren because of a hurtful / unresolved issue that they've had with their only daughter Alice (played by Marisa Tomei): During Alice's childhood the family had been dominated Arty's "chasing his dream" of becoming a big league baseball radio announcer, "the voice" of the (San Francisco) Giants.

Indeed, the film begins with Arty, now in his 60s, being "let-go" as radio by the minor-league Fresno Grizzlies because, well, he was now ... "too old and out of touch with contemporary realities" in the broadcasting business, having among other things no idea of what Twitter or Facebook were. "I can tweet or even howl if you want to ..." he begs his boss who tells him that he's done.  So much for a dream never realized, one that had required a lot of moving and traveling through various smaller towns and cities all across America, moves that impacted not only him, but also his wife (who didn't mind much) and daughter (who apparently did).

Moving on to the daughter:  When Alice had grown-up, she married and set down roots with her husband Phil (played by Tom Everett Scott) in Atlanta, Georgia (clear across the country ...) and Arty / Diane rarely got to see them.  When in the set-up for the rest of the movie, Alice and Phil are forced to ask Arty and Diane to come over from Fresno to look after their kids for a week while the two take advantage of an opportunity offered by Phil's work to "finally get away, just the two of them" (and Phil's parents were unable to help this time), upon coming to Alice and Phil's home, Diane immediately notices that on the shelf over their fireplace were countless pictures of Alice and Phil and the kids AND PHIL'S PARENTS doing all sorts of stuff and only ONE picture hidden in the back of Arty, Diane and Alice.

Seeing this display and horrified by it, Diane says to Arty: "Arty, you know what we are?  We're 'the other grandparents.'  Our own grandkids have the grandparents that they know, like and do things with (Phil's parents).  And we are 'the other grandparents,' that they put-up with because they don't know us and thus can't like us ... THIS IS OUR CHANCE TO NOT HAVE TO BE "the other grandparents."  And thus the rest of the movie plays out ... and much, often very funny, ensues.

Now remember this is, thankfully, a Hollywood movie ;-).  So while the underlying problem/conflict is identified, the film proceeds gently/kindly to produce a reconciliation (a Happy Ending ;-).  Alice could have been portrayed as being far more bitter and angry than she was portrayed in the film.  And Arty, could have been portrayed as being far more clueless and selfish-to-the-end than he was portrayed.   But if the film-makers chose to do that, this film would not have been nearly as happy / nice as it turned out to be.

So the result is a very, very nice movie (far kinder/gentler than it could have been ...) but also one that invites both parents and adult children (with their own families now) "with eyes to see and ears to hear..." to take the opportunity to reflect on the way things were at home "before" and to seek then an honest (and merciful...) reconciliation.  Over all then, honestly a very good job.  I just wish for the film's own sake that it would not have remained "so white" ...


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Django Unchained [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  Michael Phillips (2 Stars)  Richard Roeper (A)  TheOnion/AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars - yes it's violent but it definitely has a purpose/Prophetic voice)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Michael Phillips' review
Richard Roeper's review
The Onion/AVClub's review

It's probably safe to say that American racists will probably not much like Django Unchained (written and directed by Quentin Tarantino).  With characteristically blunt, often blood-splattering / bone-crushing humor (the film, like his previous Inglorious Basterds [2009] is definitely not for everybody) he and his cast and especially Inglorious Basterds' academy award winner Christoph Waltz go after the actual savagery of America's Original Sin -- racism/slavery.  Yes, this is not a pretty film.  Both African-American director Spike Lee and the CNS/USCCB's media office have definite issues with its violence.  But whereas Quentin Tarantino has produced films with utterly over-the-top blood-splattering violence with no discernible point at all (Kill Bill [2004] comes to mind ...), IMHO at least (and I know there will be people who will disagree with me) he has learned to "tame" / focus that violence in the service of the story/point that he has been trying to make in Inglorious Basterds [2009] and now Django Unchained [2012]: You don't much like the violence of these films?  Well what about the violence of the Holocaust or of Slavery where the "Fuhrers" / Slave Masters could truly do whatever they want?  I get the point.  I'm sure that the vast majority of the viewers of QT's last two films get it as well.  And I'm positive that both Quentin Tarantino and Christoph Waltz understood (and indeed were making) this point too. 

Indeed, Christoph Waltz plays a somewhat "atoning role" as Dr. Schultz a German immigrant dentist who after coming to the United States in the 1840s-50s decided to go into the "bounty hunting" business instead.  Looking for the African-American slave Django (played by Jamie Foxx) who could identify three white brothers wanted for crimes "back east," he "buys" him promising him freedom as soon as the two are able to bring the three brothers to justice "dead or alive" (and it's actually far easier in the bounty hunting business to bring fugitive criminals to justice "dead" than "alive," assuming that they were identified correctly ...).   It's a deal that Django "can't really refuse," but it's better than remaining in chains forever...

But upon hearing of Django's sad story -- that he once had an wife (also an African American slave) named Broomhilda (played by Kerry Washington) who was taken away from him (both were sold off to different owners) at the whim of their slave owner -- and no doubt touched by Django's wife's somewhat surprising and evocative German name (she was named Broomhilda because her original slave owners were German, and Broomhilda is derived from the German mythological maiden named Brunhilde who had been saved by Siegfried from the clutches of the, in this case, vengeful Nordic God Wotan), Dr. Schultz decides to help Django.  He tells Django, "As a German, I'm obligated to help a Siegfried recover his Brunhilde."

In doing so, Christoph Waltz plays in this film not merely a "good German," but honestly a "good white person," who sees the crimes against our common humanity perpetrated by members of his (my) own race and seeks to rectify them.  Many depictions of blood splattering violence/vengeance ensue...

What to make of it?  As I've already written above, let's remember the actual blood splattering violence that raced based slavery and a further century of subsequent Jim Crow segregation entailed: An excellent and thoroughly sober, methodical presentation of the horrors of Jim Crow era lynching is presented in the documentary Shadows of the Lynching Tree [2011].  And that violence was real.


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Les Miserables [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III) Michael Philips (1 1/2 Stars)  Richard Roeper (A)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review 
Michael Phillips' review
Richard Roeper's review

Les Miserables (2012) [IMDb] (screenplay and direction by Tom Hopper, adapted from the beloved musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg (music) and Alain Boubil / Jean-Marc Natel (orig. French lyrics), English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer itself based on the novel [IMDb] by Victor Hugo [IMDb] itself adapted to film countless times) is certainly one of the most anticipated English films of the year and of the still young decade.  No pressure ...

How did it do?  I confess that I've never been a Les Mis (musical) fanatic.  I did see the musical a total of one time (though I did like it when I saw it).  I just always found "grand productions" like stage versions of "Les Mis" to be too expensive for my taste.  Add to it, of course, the irony that the story is about desperate people (the title of the original book wasn't "The Miserable" ... for nothing ;-) culminating with an aborted minor idealistic uprising taking place somewhere in the midst of the course of France's tumultuous/revolutionary 19th century.  So the musical always felt rather "petty bourgeoisie" to me: "Those poor people. But weren't actors' voices and costuming/makeup _just remarkable_ ..."

I did however read the novel (_in French_ I might add with some pride. It took me a year, but I did so as I was trying to learn some French while serving in a Caribbean community in Central Florida with a Haitian population).  And I did see a number of the screen adaptations of the film during the course of my lifetime.  My favorite remains a 1995 French version that sets the story in the 20th century during the Nazi era. 

All this is to say that I approach the film-adaptation of the musical knowing that I'm not going to be a typical Les Mis (musical) fan, and so ultimately I'm not going to care if "the version in London/Sydney/New York in 1995" was "so much better than Hopper's movie."  My concern here is "Does Hopper's film do a decent job in adapting the musical to film?"

And here I would have to say that Hopper's "Les Mis" does an ... "okay" if not spectacular job.  On the scale of the _best_ screen adaptations of popular musicals where I'd put Evita [1996] / Hair [1979] and perhaps even Fiddler on the Roof [1971] / Jesus Christ Superstar [1973] at the top (in each case, the film directors were able to effectively transport the audience "there" to wherever the story was taking place) and the film adaptation of Godspell [1973] at the absolute bottom (where the film set largely in a trackless dump/slum _utterly failed to do that_ ...) IMHO this film scores somewhere in the middle: The setting feels "kinda like 19th century France" but not particularly convincingly.  Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette [2006], Martin Scorcese's Hugo [2011] and even the countless other film versions of Les Miserables (the novel), including the most recent American one [1998] which starred Liam Neeson, did a better job with transporting the audience to "19th century France" than Hopper's film did.

Then to his credit Hopper did try to "experiment" with the filming / recording of the musical.  First, he decided to use the conventions of standard film-making in filming this story (which meant filming close-ups of the characters, even as they are singing) rather than pretend the film was still being performed on stage.  Actually though this irritated at least one reviewer of this film, this same technique was used in virtually every other film adaptation of a musical that I can think of.  Part of what transported viewers into 1940s-50s era Argentina in the film version of Evita [1996], for instance, was the camera following Antonio Banderas and Madonna around as they sang their parts.  The same thing could be said of the filming of the characters in Fiddler on the Roof [1971].  Hopper does similarly in this film.

However perhaps the truly novel thing that Hopper did in this film was to choose to record the actors actually singing their parts on the set (accompanied only with a piano playing into ear pieces that they wore) with the rest of the music added only in post production.  The result was to make the singing of the lyrics have the "immediacy" of dialogue.  Yet truthfully from a technical point of view, this technical experiment would have worked better if Hopper would have the hired musical actors from the various stage productions to play the roles in the film rather than Hollywood actors.   This is because the musical actors from the stage productions were certainly hired for those productions, above all, for their voices rather than for their (non-singing) acting ability. In contrast, Hollywood actors don't generally sing for a living...  As such, while one could certainly compensate for the actors' weaknesses through the taking of multiple takes "on set," some of the singing in this film sounded, honestly, somewhat "flat" to me.

So is it a disappointment that Hopper's film adaptation of Les Mis wasn't perfect?  I know that many aficionados will be unhappy with the relative details of the production, though Anne Hatheway will almost certainly be nominated for best supporting actress for her role as the suffering Fantine (and she certainly did nail her signature song in the film).

However, my question would be:  Would Jean Valjean or Cosette or Fantine or even the good Bishop in the story really care if _the musical_ about their _suffering lives_ turned out ... "eh ... somewhat above average?"



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