David Denby, alarmed at the Les Mis movie audience (and, frankly, at Les Mis), proposes a cure:
“'Les Mis,' as everyone knows, is sung all the way through, like an opera. It’s an opera, however, with music not worth listening to. But if you enjoy the convention of an entirely sung play, I suggest listening to another successful piece of musical theatre based on a work by Victor Hugo—Verdi’s 'Rigoletto,' which has been running continuously more or less everywhere since 1851."
What a cracking article! I've just finished watching a BBC documentary about the making of the film. The cure sounds apt and appealing.
ReplyDeleteHey there, Eyes :-)
DeleteNot that I don't think Denby's right, but he does seem to be getting a little hot under the collar at something that's been around for thirty years.
Still, I'm all for the proposed cure.
There"s something about this piece of theatre which does not translate to the screen plus I hated the voices they chose.
DeleteYeah, that seems to be the general consensus.
DeleteAlthough some criticism I'm reading is probably better directed at Victor Hugo. Yes, these two characters keep bumping into each other. Yes, it's unlikely. No, I'm not sure they could have rewritten that bit to make it more plausible. (Though that might have curtailed complaints about the running time.)
DeleteAlso there's a surprising amount of talking about this thing as if it's an "American" musical, in a way that suggests this particular theatrical form has never existed anywhere else on the planet.
I've got this new capture programme for iPlayer and tried to grab the documentary of the making of the film for the nonBrits, but it doesn't work with the commercial channel. Ah well. Hope the cold is better!
DeleteThanks for the effort. It'll turn up somewhere eventually. And last I checked, our Cambridge colleague's solution was still working :-)
DeleteThat was Eyes's iPod btw.
ReplyDeleteAre you using Safari on the iPod?
DeleteYes. I tried Chrome for iOS but didn't like it. No fix yet then?
DeleteIt's proving hard to pin down exactly where the problem is, and whether or not it's even specific to iOS. Test results so far have been surprisingly variable -- more than I would have thought possible using the same phone with the same browser multiple times in the space of ten minutes -- and theories are several. But I'm trying to arrange a little tech summit in the next week or so, so we'll see what that yields.
DeleteCouldn't sleep?
DeleteNah, I've had this tenacious cold for the last week.
DeleteI've never had the impulse to listen to Les Mis - I guess I haven't missed much.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't terrible as musicals go, but it may not translate out of an 80's Big Loud Musical sensibility. I'm kind of tempted to go to the flick just to see who the audience is.
DeleteOn the other hand, it may make an interesting addition to the ongoing Translation & Access discussion.