Saturday, December 29, 2012

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2006, Mattie was 4 and a half years old. It was a holiday tradition by that point to take a photo of Mattie by our tree and feature it on the front of our family's holiday cards. Mattie's Christmas train also made it into the picture that year. Mattie LOVED that train, and he especially loved it moving around the track, as it played Christmas music and puffs of smoke came out of its stack!

Quote of the day: There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss. ~ Pat Conroy


Our original plans today involved going to the Getty Museum in Malibu. However, given that it was pouring, cold, and grey, we decided not to make the drive. The Getty Museum in Malibu is actually housed in a beautiful villa. The villa is surrounded by incredible vegetation and gardens and the ideal way to see this entire complex is on a sunny day so you can walk and tour around freely.

So we mobilized plan b. My parents wanted to see Les Mis, the movie. This year is the 25th anniversary of this legendary musical. Peter and I saw the 25th revival of the musical at the Kennedy Center recently and I absolutely HATED it! In fact, if this had been the first Les Mis I ever saw, I would have most likely wondered what all the hype was about. The staging of this revival was awful, the singing was just so-so, and basically the musical left me flat without evoking the emotion that is associated with Les Mis.

I have to admit I wasn't interested in seeing the movie. After all, I just saw the musical and how could a movie replace live theatre? In addition to this feeling I also did not want to sit through this three hour long movie based on the content of the movie. Les Mis, as I am sure all my readers know, is VERY emotional. It involves all sorts of LOSSES and deep grief.

Yet despite my hesitation I absolutely LOVED the movie. It is worth seeing and I can see why people are raving about this movie. It was certainly better than the live musical I recently saw. However, I recommend bringing lots of tissues. The live musical evokes all sorts of feelings, but the movie almost compounds these feelings by a factor of ten!

Tom Hooper, the director of this film, is to be given credit for the brilliance of bringing a musical to life on film. This is the first filmed musical of its kind in which the singing did not take place in a sound studio separated from the acting. In the past, all musicals involved recording the singing before hand and then when the actors got in front of the camera, they were actually lip syncing to the pre-recorded music! This is NOT what happened in Les Mis. Instead the songs were sung right before our eyes. What this is able to achieve is real passion, emotion, and creativity. To help explain what I am talking about, I included a four minute video link that describes the technology used in this movie. This video also helped me to understand why EVERY scene that involved singing within the movie had to be shot by a hand held camera at a very close angle to the performer. This enabled the sound to be picked up properly and to also hide the fact that microphones were hanging over the heads of the actors.  

http://screenrant.com/les-miserables-music-songs-featurette/

Peter is a huge Les Mis fan and he is headed to the theatre to see it tomorrow. I am curious to hear his reactions. There are subtle differences between the musical and the movie, and in many ways the film is able to embellish on the story line in ways that are hard to capture on a stage. Nonetheless, this musical always makes me reflect on Mattie's loss. There is just such emotion in the music, that it would be impossible for my mind NOT to drift to Mattie. For example, when Marius sings "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," the lyrics absolutely get me......

There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone 

Though Marius is talking about his friends who died for a cause at the barricades, I do relate to the notion of empty chairs and tables in my own home. This emptiness does provide "a pain that goes on and on!" Schonberg (the composer) seems to comprehend the depths of such a great loss and his music enables me to feel understood.