Flaws-and there are a great many that would have never made the cut were this a perfectible studio recording-are conveniently swept under the rug of candid expression, a necessary consequence of the film’s more virtuous approach to be regarded less as mistakes than as proof of its sincerity.

It seems obvious within minutes that the effect was difficult to achieve, and it’s the film’s hope that our awareness of that difficulty will be enough to impress like a metal guitarist tearing into a conspicuously elaborate solo, the point isn’t so much that it sounds pleasing, but that the act of pulling it off looks impressive.

The opportunistic Les Misérables proceeds from the assumption that virtuosity is paramount and authenticity is self-evident, which is why it so confidently emphasizes the novelty of live singing. The idea is that, should the mood strike, a performer may add a beat mid-bar as though choked-up with emotion, their dramatic license with the material thus extended liberally and their performance, we are told, made immeasurably better and more real. This assumes that the use of live music has an advantage over the more common alternative, lending immediacy to every lilt, pause, and impromptu gesture, liberating actors from the strictures of a fixed soundtrack and granting them an uncommon freedom to modulate their performance on the fly. Brazenly foregoing the prerecorded vocal tracks on which its contemporaries rely, Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables was performed and recorded live on set-a gimmick claimed to be a revolution in the production of movie musicals despite having been standard operating procedure through the 1930s and having even been revived, nearly 40 years ago, by Peter Bogdanovich’s under-seen Mark Sandrich homage At Long Last Love.

2012 les miserables full movie