Where I'm struggling with 'The Artist'
I liked The Artist! A lot! Really! Lori and I saw it at the end of the long weekend we began by seeing a real, old-time silent film. The new-time near-silent film was surely one of the best movies of '12. No question.
But I struggled with the idea of it being Best Picture — winning at the Golden Globes, currently nominated as such for the Oscars. Compared to the other Oscar two nominees I'd seen, the movie was better than Midnight in Paris (terrific and lovable at many points, uneven at others) and incomparable to Tree of Life (with which I was one of the few folks in my theater to walk out happy). Of the nominees I hadn't seen, all of them, just on a review basis, appeared to fall shorter, except for Hugo and The Descendants. I was (and am) still hoping to see them soonish. Anyway, back to the point, I liked The Artist a lot but couldn't crown it.
Why? I couldn't quite explain. I thought, in any movie, Hollywood being in love with Hollywood had its limits. But even if the movie relied on old tricks, I did have to admit the old tricks had new twists or found strong use. The story was well done and the acting quality. I missed people's voices, but that was no reason to dock a movie serious points, was it?
Then I got to this line in a capsule review:
The ideal viewer of Michel Hazanavicius's film would be one who turned up knowing nothing of what was to come; or, at least, who thought that the opening minutes, in silent black-and-white, would soon be set aside, and that a noisy, colorful movie would ensue.
I wondered if I knew too much walking into the movie. I knew no great plot spoilers, and critics' reviews had never knocked a top movie down any pegs for me. But this time around I wondered about expectations, not just for this film but for movies broadly. If a film had no talking, did I miss having a conversation with it? Or, walking in, knowing I would?




