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The Artist – Art 4/5 Ent 4/5 Worth 5/5
Hugo and The Artist are a study in contrasts. They both seek commentary on a similar theme, a cinematic self-love of the medium’s roots in the early silent era, and thus cinema itself. But one fails miserably and the other succeeds with shining flare. In Hugo, Scorsese is like that guy at a bar who tells the woman about his stock portfolio, his car, and his big cock. He seems to drone on about the era, the magic, stuff they talk about in The Story of Film: An Odyssey in an even more documentary-esque manner than they did in the documentary. All talk, no follow through. In The Artist, the pet project of Michel Hazanavicius, who previously did spy spoofs with his lead actor Jean Dujardin, he doesn’t need to talk the talk, it’s in fact a formal ode to the silent era, so all he can do is walk the walk. Indeed, as the movie says, out with the old (Scorsese), and in with the new. Not since Cinema Paradiso has there been such a cute and audience-friendly intersection of high and low brow self-reference.
Facing a future of “talkies” taking over, silent movie star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin in a virtuoso performance) slowly swirls downward as his ingenue dancer Peppy Miller (Argentinian actress Berenice Bejo) traverses up into the opportunities and fame he lost out on. The plot is thin, and reliant on visuals to do all the talking – something art films haven’t forgotten to do in the past 80 years, but most mainstream Hollywood films have. Some Jungian play with dreams, clever enough pastiche of silent era melodramas like Chaplin’s City Lights, and a funny dog (appropriately awarded at Cannes) make The Artist a brilliant heartwarming movie, perfect for the Christmas release it fell into here.
The idea for a silent film had germinated as a sort of daydream of the director’s. Obviously he’d never get the funding for such a project. After pumping out the Spy Spoofs and secure funding and the trust of studios, Hazanavicius still had to develop this against the criticism of being a very gimmicky idea, because reduced to its base summary plot, The Artist (originally to be called “George and Peppy”) wouldn’t make for a good movie even on the Lifetime channel. Pride being the biggest problem towards the denouement is not a very interesting thematic device. Sans “gimmick”, The Artist isn’t but sand slipping through your fingers, but the supposed gimmick deserves better than such a cursed designation. Making a silent film that works (as opposed to Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie which embraced being a screwball gimmick) is a very difficult task today, and requires some self-commentary from cinema to cinematic history with the audience listening and understanding. I think the element that meets this standard is that Peppy was at best a B-lister supporting act in the Silent Era, but her superficial craft (mostly constituted by dancing and looking cute) communicated less effectively in silent films than in the pre-code talkies. The talkies as they say are, indeed, for the birds. In the end, she has to find a way to mitigate her strengths with Valentin’s.
Yeah, the movie isn’t searingly brilliant, but it sure is accessibly cute and clever as fuck. A breath of fresh air that might only last so long (I don’t want a single other silent film to be attempted again for another 20 years, but I suspect there are a dozen shit films being planned as we speak), so enjoy it.
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