Oscar Watch: "Les Miserables"

Les Miserables is one of the biggest musicals of all time, so naturally, a film version will be held to a high standard. Tom Hooper, director of Oscar darling The King's Speech, chose to go a more emotional route with the film, which after two viewings, I believe really works to its advantage.

The story follows Jean Valjean (Jackman) and his relationship with Javert (Crowe), and along the way, he encounters a suffering woman, Fantaine (Hathaway), her daughter whom he cares for, Cosette (Seyfried), some revolutionaries, and a shady innkeeper and his wife (Cohen and Carter).

The musical technique Hooper employed, having the actors sing live on camera to capture the emotion, worked so well. Valjean's regret at the start, Fantine's dismay at her situation, and even Javert's inability to comprehend Valjean's actions at the end, all were captured so well. Musicals can often have a problem portraying reality in such an unrealistic setting, but this film did it so freaking well. You feel Fantine's pain. And Hathway was stellar, just that one song itself, I Dreamed a Dream, is enough to garner her a nomination. She portrays such a depth of emotion, from longing to depair, it's really incredible.

The acting overall was just so stellar. And set design itself was beautiful, capturing the epic scale of the story. The new song, Suddenly, was also very nice, and a lot of the lyrics were more heartfelt to me, as a newlywed.

Overall, I'm very biased towards Les Miserables, and they did well by the West End musical. They took a stage production and succesfully coverted it to what a film should be. No belting out songs. We see actors up close, see the emotion in their face the way the stage can't portray. It's a beautiful film, and I know I'm biased, but it's thus far my pick for best pic.