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LES MISERABLES business of making blockbuster movies: Their “Live in HD” series started in 2006, and now broadcasts to theaters all over the United States, including Iowa City's Sycamore 12. Ross's concern is that operas are now being made with the
things that were once allowed to be a little fun are now rated R (for "Realism"). From James Bond to Harry Potter, cinematic treatments of even the most fanciful worlds have been rendered as gritty, dirty places filled with Death and Tough Choices. Les Mis has these ideas at its very core, and is set in the streets and gutters of pre-indoor plumbing Paris. Hooper relentlessly exploits this visually, covering his characters in dirt and mud and yes, human feces. Even "Master of the House," a comedic number meant to provide some relief from the bleakness of it all, is presented here as a revolting portrait of alcoholism, exploitation and petty theft—with almost none of the laughs that the song is supposed to elicit. The influence of dark superhero cinema has extended well beyond the movies, into opera and the musical traditions that the stage version of Les Mis is so heavily based on. In his March review of Götterdämmerung by the Metropolitan Opera, Alex Ross criticized director Robert Lepage's "clumsy, comic-book approach [that] suffers in comparison with many Hollywood superhero movies." At first, this might seem like an elitist dig—are any two things farther apart than the world of opera and the comic book universe?—but in truth the comparison was profoundly apt. The opera is a tale of Norse gods, not unlike those who appear in Joss Whedon's The Avengers. And, the Met is now in the
physical audience as an afterthought: "I wonder whether it is almost unfair to review new Met stagings from the point of view of one sitting in the house, since they now seem designed more for the camera operators." What has resulted with Les Mis is that Hooper has combined and transformed the gritty and grand aspirations of Nolan with the cinematic intentions of the Metropolitan Opera into a musical that is profoundly unmusical. And this is the real tragedy. In his quest for "authentic" performances from his actors, Hooper shows a fundamental lack of respect for music itself. This is not, mind you, simply because the singing itself is bad—though it is unquestionably very bad. It's because Hooper willfully overlooked the fact that music is an art that can convey emotion in and of itself, outside of the tropes of dramatic acting. We don't expect that singers will literally cry in songs about heartbreak, but we do demand that their voices infuse the musical notes with a sense of heartbreak. Here, a song conveys sadness simply because the singer is crying, and a song conveys action because someone is pumping their fist. Nothing to me seems more unreal than robbing songs of their emotional power.
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Now it seems like a lighthearted romp." Thanks in large part to Christopher Nolan's more recent treatment of the character, everything everywhere is being booted and rebooted into what we might call "dark knight mode," where
Craig Eley is a graduate student at The University of Iowa, currently residing in Austin, TX.
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