Film Review: "The Artist"

As I've mentioned in other places my cinema going has been limited of late, so I've only seen four of the nine nominated movies this year.  I did manage to catch The Artist, which snagged the Best Picture Oscar this past Sunday.   Just a few scattered thoughts.

Many have asked if a movie made in black and white, 99.9% silent, in narrow screen (or what ever the opposite of the standard "wide screen" format is) and with lead actors unknown in the U.S. deserved the top Academy Award.  Well, I don't think The Artist was the best picture I saw in 2011, (The Tree of Life was, but it was simply too weird to win), and while this is far from a perfect movie, I can't argue with it taking home the little gold statuette.  It's light, whimsical (for the most part) and amazingly irony free.  The Artist is well executed, and is saved from being a gimmicky exercises in nostalgia by the surprisingly humane performances of the leads.  Also welcome is the fact that it's the rare contemporary movie the entire family can watch that isn't geared specifically to children.

The story is basically a mix of Singing in the Rain and A Star is Born.  George Valentin (French actor Jean Dujardin, who also won Best Actor) is a silent movie star in the mold of Douglas Fairbanks.  At a movie premiere he "discovers" a young woman (Argentinean Benenice Bejo, whose husband Michel Hazanavicius directed) who eventually becomes a big star in her own right.  But this is 1927 and the motion picture industry is being rocked by the sound revolution.  The young starlet, Peppy Miller, successfully makes the transition to talkies while her mentor, who stubbornly thinks sound is a passing fad,  does not.  Everything then goes wrong for Valentin; his movies stop making money, he's dropped by the studio, his marriage breaks up (dramatized by a sequence stolen from Citizen Kane), and the one time star loses his fortune and his fame.  Always present in the background is Peppy, helping to keep the proud Valentin from hitting rock bottom while never letting him know of her assistance.

Even though it is key to the plot, Valentin's spiral downward is a drag on the movie.  The Artist is only 96 minutes in length, but our hero's decent into alcohol fueled despair makes it seem much longer (I was sort of expecting more Ziegfeld Follies type musical numbers and less existential angst).  Being at heart a French movie made in the U.S.A. I should have expected the dark shadows that pervade the middle section of the film.  

In spite of the prolonged fall from grace, the movie is saved by the beautiful relationship between the two protagonists; they really do love each other, but not in the gooey romantic language of Hollywood.  The first thing is that, while there is an immediate spark between them, they don't sleep with each other (am I the only one who thinks that's refreshing?).  I'm not sure they even say (or, in this case mouth) "I love you"; Peppy lets her selfless actions speak for themselves.  It is her devotion and gratitude toward the man who gave her her start that ultimately saves the day and redeems our fallen hero.

So, by all means, see The Artist.  Is it worthy of the hype or it's multiple Oscars?  I'll let others fight over that.  But in a era when so much that hits our local movie screens is nihilistic and cynical it's nice to see something life affirming and, yeah, a bit charming.