How To Fake Being An Expert On The 9 Movies That Matter At This Year’s Oscars

Les Misérables

–By the Numbers:

• 8: Nominations
• 70, 63: Rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic
• 145, 233: Millions of dollars earned at the domestic, and foreign box office
• 71: Percent of Supporting Actress nominations Anne Hathaway has won

–Major Contender for: Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway), numerous technical awards

–Success on the Awards Circuit: Golden Globe for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy), BAFTA for Best Makeup and Hair, Best Sound, and Best Production Design. More than 25 Best Supporting Actress awards for Hathaway, including a Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Screen Actors Guild Award.

–Synopsis: An adaptation of the long-running 80’s musical, that itself was based on the 1862 Victor Hugo novel of the same name, Les Misérables stars Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, a paroled convict who is hounded through post-revolutionary France by his former guard, Javert (Russell Crowe). Cosette, daughter of the deceased prostitute Fantine (Hathaway), is adopted by Valjean, who spends the decade-long buildup to the Paris Uprising of ’32 making a respectable citizen of himself, despite Javert’s attempts to send him back to prison. Almost everybody dies by the end, but Cosette finds true love, and everybody’s singing all the time, so it’s a romantic kind of bloodbath.

–Oscar-appropriate Themes: Musical based on history, love, and unapologetic sincerity

–Juiciest Piece of Oscar Bait: Hathaway plays a single mother shunned by society into becoming a hooker with a heart of gold, who sings the show’s big number, and dies tragically. She also shaved her head, which means she’s bringing a gun to the Best Supporting Actress knife fight.

–Buzz Going into the Oscars: 4/10. Death, taxes, and an Anne Hathaway win are the only things certain in life, and that’s about it. Costume musicals have a good track record with aesthetic awards like Best Costume, and Best Makeup and Hair, winning by virtue of having the most of each. Les Mis has plenty of stylish period flourishes (well, maybe not so many involving hair, in Hathaway’s case), but Anna Karenina has even more, and half The Hobbit‘s budget can be seen in the makeup. For the majors, Les Mis has got the slimmest of chances at a Best Picture upset, and the praise heaped on Jackman would make him the front-runner, were it not for Daniel Day-Lewis. Jackman’s the alternate should the voters try to delay an inevitable Day-Lewis hat-trick.

–Trivia Tidbit: The film live recorded all the music, meaning you actually hear the actors singing the songs. The score was orchestrated in post-production to work around the rhythms and performances of the actors.

–Talking Points if Your Crowd Loves it: A likely scenario, as Les Mis is catnip to most viewers, regardless of whether they’re into the original material, or musicals in general. Focus on the fundamentals: Hathaway, and the soundtrack are divine, but don’t forget to mention the sets and costumes. This is a hugely emotion-based movie, so don’t be surprised if people start bandying around the number of times they cried watching it like it’s a competition. For the record, appropriate times to say you were “moved” include Fantine singing “I Dreamed a Dream,” Valjean singing “Suddenly,” the death of Éponine, the death of Gavroche, or the death of Valjean. Throw a dart at the cast list, and somebody cried when that actor’s character sang and/or died.

–Talking Points if Your Crowd Hates it: Another unlikely scenario, so let someone else fire the first shot at the film. Once you know you’re in safe company, start unloading from the arsenal of scathing bon mots many in the critical community have been supplying for weeks. Hathaway’s performance is the film’s sacred cow, but she’s out of the movie by the forty-minute mark, leaving you a good two hours of material to trash. Tom Hooper’s been catching a lot of flak for his static, close-up camerawork, so the film’s direction will be a soft target for attack, as will Russell Crowe’s singing voice (though please resist the urge to parlay his last name into a pun about his vocal talent).

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