THE ARTIST

If you like movies because they are a pleasant distraction then I'm not sure you'll like this movie.  If you loves movies because you love movies then you will love this movie.  That sounds familiar.  But it's true!  Make no mistake, this is a silent movie made in black and white by French people, so it's not exactly palatable to the average theater goer.  Well, fuck that guy.  He gets enough movies all year long.  This one is special.  Even with it's runaway success we're unlikely to see a renaissance of silent cinema so you better enjoy this one while you can, which will be damn easy because this film is a wonderfully charming melodramatic tribute to, well, artists I would say.

Jean Dujardin plays silent film star George Valentin, a swashbuckling ladies man who steals the spotlight from his co-stars (except his faithful dog) and must contend with industry-rocking development of (synchronized) sound film, or talkies.  Berenice Bejo is up and coming talent Peppy Miller who dives head first into the new world of talking pictures, becoming a big star just as George Valentin is on his way down for failing to adjust to the new business of sound in film.  Can she cope with success, he with failure, and they with each other?

Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo are devilishly engrossing.  I mean they must have literally sold their souls to the devil to be this damn charming.  Their faces are impossibly expressive, and they can both smile bigger than most cartoon characters.  It doesn't take long before you're imagining their voices in your head like a kid playing with toys.  Jean Dujardin especially begins the scene with a film where his character can't resist hamming it up in front of an adoring crowd, and the scene works magically on the viewers in real audience too, as they observe a fake audience being utterly charmed by Dujardin at the same time they themselves are being charmed.  Headspinning!

This film is a paradise for character actors.  John Goodman is the gigantic, cigar-chomping studio magnate that you always picture in your head when someone mentions a silent film era or Golden Age studio boss.  James Cromwell is very tall, which is for some reason a trait of very old chauffeurs, like the one he plays here, or Lurch.  Penelope Ann Miller is in this movie, but she doesn't play the character Peppy Miller.  Joel Murray, a much less well known Murray brother until his role as Freddy Rumsen on Mad Men, and Bill Fagerbakke, he of Coach, M-O-O-N, and Patrick the Starfish fame, have separate cameos as policeman.  Ken Davitian, whose obituary will unfortunately read 'Fat Guy from Borat dead' shows up as a pawn shop owner, counting out greasy bills from an enormous roll in his pocket. 

Malcolm McDowell has one scene as either a butler or a man trying out for a role as a butler in a film.  Ed Lauter, the great bald menacing character actor from such classics as Death Wish 3, plays another butler.  Beth Grant, of sparkle magic and 'my word, a well-dressed messican' fame, plays a maid.  Missi Pyle, who has been on TV for so long that you can't not recognize her, plays one of George Valentin's leading ladies who quarrels with him over his relentless scene-stealing and spotlight hogging.  But the real scene stealing second banana here is Uggie, a little Jack Russell terrier who plays Dujardin's faithful best friend, in their film career and in their personal lives.

Pure visual storytelling is underrated.  I can remember being young enough that I barely understood any words yet but could still watch the movie Ghostbusters and enjoy it.  You can watch snippets of foreign comedies without subtitles and find yourself getting involved.  Plus, silent film isn't really silent.  No movie really ever is.  They have music.  Maybe not sound effects or dialogue or whatever else kids expect from movies nowadays, but film was always meant to be accompanied by music.  And the music here is just about perfect, from the catchy main theme to the various emotional cues.  Do yourself a favor and check this film out before it wins tons of awards, and feels like an obligation instead of a joy.

~ Something is always killing film!  In Hugo it was WWI killing people's spirits.  In this film, sound arrives and destroys silent cinema.  Just wait until color arrives, or widescreen, or 3D, or home video, or 3D again, or the internet, or 3D again.

~ There are two brief instances of 'sound' in this picture, which is to say synchronized sound as we recognize it; I'm not really sure if they were necessary.  I admired the film for sticking to it's anachronistic guns.

~ Director Michel Hazanavicius previously directed a pair of swinging 60's spy parody movies that also star Jean Dujardin and are also trying to recreate a bygone era both in front of and behind the camera.

~ Silent film and scripted radio used to dominate, but then talkies came along, and they sorta got combined and wiped out.

~ This is the first film I've been to in a long time where the entire audience burst into applause when the credits rolled.