How many times have you enjoyed the first teaser for Les Miserables? As I mentioned last week, many of the anticipated award films have been rolling out their previews the last couple of weeks. At this rate we should see something soon then from Anna Karenina. So... how’s our list looking so far? In no particular order:
The Master
Anna Karenina
Gatsby
Django Unchained
Lincoln
Life Of Pi
...maybe Ben Affleck’s Argo and, if he’s ready, Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder, Killing Me Softly if it can build on Cannes buzz, and Harvey hopes the same for Lawless, to say nothing of The Dark Knight Rises whose predecessor was the main reason why the Best Picture category was expanded to a possible of 10 maximum slots to begin with.
They might actually fill all of those this year and could be obliged to leave off others that, at other times, would have made the top 5 for sure. Aren’t you excited???
Maybe I’m a little emotional.
Because I’ve spent my morning watching this trailer. LOVE this trailer. If you’ve been reading my blog awhile, you know my attachment to Les Miserables. It borders on irrational. Like, I can barely stand it when people refer to is as “Les Miz”. You think Victor Hugo walked around in Paris calling it Les Miz? Please.
But ...see?
And I wasn’t sure about Anne Hathaway either. Anne Hathaway has never been more beautiful and more believably vulnerable. Here we go for that Best Supporting Actress nomination. It’s so smart the way they’ve presented to us this first introduction, non? That the story’s most recognisable song is featured so prominently is at once a reassurance that they haven’t f-cked with it and a beacon to those, like me, and you, who love Les Miserables so much. It’s asking us to wait. It’s giving us reason to wait.
I think Russell Crowe as Javert is going to blow our minds.
I am weeping by the time Valjean comes on the screen pulling on that rope.
I am confident that Tom Hooper is truly doing justice to those familiar lyrics that sometimes I don’t know if we even hear anymore:
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Think about how wretched life must be, how abusive and desperate and bleak, that a forgiving God only exists in DREAMS, a place that doesn’t exist beyond imagination, a place that can’t even be made real by faith. If that’s the Les Miserables we’re getting in December, well, now you know why Taylor Swift wasn’t invited.
When Titanic came out, people went to see it over and over and over again. Sometimes 6,7,8 times. I think I might be like this for Les Miserables.
