With 'Les Miserables,' a new kind of speech for Hooper

Hooper made his first 16mm film by the age of 13 and before he was 20, he had sold a professionally financed short to British television. After studying at Oxford University, he went into TV work with the BBC.

As a fan of films by Francis Ford Coppola and Ingmar Bergman, Hooper seems surprised that he's turned out to be such a plucker of heart strings. Audiences responded passionately to the personal triumph tale of "The King's Speech," a global $414.2 million hit cheered by those with speech impediments and many others.

"I did want to stay in an emotional place in my filmmaking," he says. "What attracted me about 'Les Miserables' was to possibly work in an even more emotional way."

"I do think it's the greatest gift that cinema can bestow is when it can actually take something about the pain of being human and make you feel a little bit better about it."

Part of the strong effect of "Les Miserables" might be attributed to its timeliness. Hugo's story of populist uprising in 1832 Paris resounds in an era of the Arab Spring, the Occupy protests and general frustration over economic inequality.

"We're at a point where we regularly have images of revolution on our front page, on TV," says Hooper. "'Les Miserables' is the great anthem of dispossessed. The people's song is to 'hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men.' It's the great expression of collective anger against an unjust system."