Fantine in ballpoint

Well, the good news is it’s SLIGHTLY better than the Cosette drawing (although I’m sure to hate it in the morning). It still doesn’t look like the person I was trying to draw. Seriously, I used to be able to do this…. sort of. What happened????

The bad news, it doesn’t do our Miss Hathaway justice (seriously, she deserves a full color grid-by-grid drawing….maybe one day).

Going into this movie I had an expectation for most of the actors. And I’m happy to say they all met my expectations or were a touch better. But there were two performances that absolutely shocked me, where the actor knocked all my pre-conceived notions out of the park and put new life into this show I thought I knew so well. Anne Hathaway’s was on such performance (the other was Eddie Redmayne’s, but that’s another floodgate…..let’s just deal with this one for now).

I’d probably heard I Dreamed a Dream somewhere around 37,000 times before seeing the movie, by several dozen singers/performers. There are many greats. Ruthie Henshall. The immaculate Lea Salonga. And many others. Still, despite knowing this song backwards and front, Anne found a way to make it new, so devastatingly painful. Two lyrics in particular were given new voice, at least for me. “He took my childhood,” which to me was always sung with sentimental endearment. In the film it became vicious slander. “He stole something from me. My dignity, my virtue.” Anne made what I thought was a sweat line into something vitriolic. The second was “But there are dreams that cannot be.” If I ever meet this woman, I’m going to ask her if she deliberately blinked in that moment KNOWING those two tears would poor from her eyes. Accident or intent, it was incredible (to say the least, truth be told there is no word for it).

What else can I say? She transformed Les Miserables. She transformed a work that was, to me, darn near perfect, and made it even more masterful. It takes a real talent to do that.

For that, I’m sorry that the drawing couldn’t be better. Of course I only put an hour into it. As I said, a better drawing will surely come some day.

Done in ballpoint and good ol’ colored pencil. I chose blue because Fantine is tragic. Duh.