I like musicals. Right from Sound of Music to more modern ones like High School Musical, I quite enjoy watching them. And hello? Aren't all Hindi films musical after all? I even enjoyed Hum Aapke Hain Kaun - in spite of its fourteen and a half songs - I did not get bored or impatient. So the prospect of watching the musical version of Victor Hugo's tome Les Miserables was a rather inviting one, and I was looking forward to watching a large-scale historical melodrama, with two of my favourite stars - Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. I had already watched the Golden Globes and the Critics' Awards, in which this film had won many accolades, so obviously expectations were high.
Unfortunately, nothing could have prepared me for the next two and a half odd hours of dreariness that I was about to encounter when I settled into my seat in the cinema hall. The movie started well. A slave-master overseeing his slaves pulling a huge ship into the harbour in relentless rain - the song "Look Down", sung by the slaves, relating their abject, hopeless state. And then Hugh Jackman (playing Jean Valjean) broke into song...and did not stop till the end of the film! Well, it was not quite song even. It was meant, I think, to be this grand operatic style, but on Jackman it sounded like a unstoppable nasal wail. I'm not being mean, but it was really not pleasant. The film is a "sung-through" musical, which means that every dialogue, every single thought that it going through a character's mind is laid out in front of the audience. And this is what I found most problematic about the film.
I have not read Victor Hugo's novel, but from what I have heard and read about it I understand that it is a story that even today is relevant and easy to identify with. It speaks of a time when the haves - the ones with all the power and the means - could easily exploit and control the lives of those who don't have the means (financial means, that is) to better their own condition. Doesn't sound all that different from our times, does it? But then if you're poor and then sing opera to tell me about how poor you are, I really can't take you seriously now, can I? One doesn't notice the pain or the angst of slaves or the women forced to sell their body because they are always singing about it. There are no moments of silence or subtlety to give the audience time to take it all in.
Not all the songs are out of place though. There is Anne Hathaway (Fantine) singing "I dreamed a dream" which does bring a tear to your eye. There's Samantha Barks, who plays Ebonine, singing a very Taylor Swifty "On my own" which makes you sympathize with her for being at the wrong end of the love triangle. ANd there's the rousing "Red and Black" - the song of the revolution, which speaks of change in the midst of a very dark situation. Those are the highlights - the rest is all, well, Jackman's not-so-pleasant baritone. By the end of the film, when he gives it one last go, the entire audience - some 200 people - all made an impatient "tsk" sound, so I was not the only one with the low tolerance level. I even left the hall with only fifteen minutes of the film to go, because I just could not take another moment of Jackman's lower jaw vibrating to let out a "a-a-a-a-a-a-a" sound anymore.
Fourteen songs in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun does not seem so tiresome now....
