You know you’re late reviewing a movie when you get home from watching it to find out it just won Golden Globes for Best Picture and Best Actor (Jean Dujardin). So my praise is not only tardy, but redundant. Still, I feel duty bound to add my tiny voice to the celebratory chorus. The Artist deserves every award and accolade it wins, and then some. It’s astounding that a movie so relentlessly retro and boldly non-commercial (shot not only in black-and-white, but in the archaic 1:33 aspect ratio) ever got made, much less distributed, much less so well received. It’s a love letter from Hollywood to itself, certainly, but it is so much more. It’s moving without being maudlin, sentimental without being sappy, nostalgic without being neurotic. Only the French could have pulled off a (mostly) silent movie about early American cinema so authentic and so touching, since they view our influential and beloved pop culture through a much more objective yet reverent lens. Though there are notable supporting performances by the likes of John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller, an adorable dog named Uggie steals the whole show. I don’t know how any human being could not totally fall in love with this movie. I really don’t. You’d have to have a heart, or a head, made out of solid stone.
The story is simplicity itself, and that’s the beauty of it. Dashing Dujardin, whom I know and love as French secret agent OSS 117 in two hilarious spy parodies, wherein he channels both Sean Connery and Peter Sellers, is perfectly cast (especially since the role was created for him) as a Douglas Fairbanks type silent movie matinee idol named George Valentin who cannot - or will not - make the transition to Sound in 1929, which ironically, and for him, tragically, concurred with the historic stock market crash. His natural charm ideally suits the flamboyant character, but his meaty performance is never hammy or corny, deftly communicating complex emotions with deceptive simplicity, largely without the benefit of spoken words, at least that we can hear, since the film, while reportedly filmed in color with sound, is presented mostly silent except for the score (liberally licensed from other classic films, most notably Bernard Herrmann’s recognizable 1958 cues for Vertigo) and strategically embedded sonic effects, with crucial dialogue conveyed via old fashioned title cards. Valentin’s professional and personal saga artfully arcs from rags to riches and that’s all I’ll give away, since the plot is constantly surprising, continually engaging and dramatically sound (as it were) despite it romantic fairy tale façade. He is matched on every level by his costar Bérénice Bejo as rising Soundie starlet Peppy Miller, who at first comes off a bit too modern for the part, but eventually she blends in perfectly with the period décor, her effervescent personality radiating from the silver screen. Their chemistry effortlessly evokes real icons of the era like Nick and Nora Charles and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. These tributes are deliberate but not self-consciously distracting. You feel writer/director Michel Hazanavicius’ love for Cinema in every frame, but you also come away with an infectious zeal for Life itself.
Despite its meticulously recreated aesthetic sensibilities from a long lost time and place, The Artist has ironic contemporary resonance which no doubt adds to its universal appeal, from the economic turmoil of The Great Depression to a monumental change in the film industry that threatens to destroy those who don’t adapt, though instead of the inevitable evolution from silence to sound, we’re now confronted with the current digital revolution rendering 35mm film obsolete. This movie proves that creative dreams can survive all challenges, if you just learn how to dance to a different tune.
The Artist is one of those movies that honors a bygone filmmaking style with pitch perfection by consciously mimicking it, like The Good German (2006), Far From Heaven (2002), Down with Love (2003), and Grindhouse (2007), and it’s my favorite movie about movies since Ed Wood (1993). I would’ve included it in my Top 11 of 2011 list if I’d seen it sooner. Make that a dozen, and put this one at the very top.
The Artist is now playing at the Piedmont in Oakland, the California in Berkeley and other Bay Area theaters.
Will “the Thrill” Viharo is a pulp fiction author and B Movie impresario.
Comments