Film Diary 2012: The Artist (From The Argus)

Film Diary 2012: The Artist

11:52pm Friday 6th January 2012

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Sometimes a film's undoing can be its success, as it were, and, after eavesdropping on a few conversations as the audience departed from Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist, I'm a little concerned that the critical praise and awards nominations being heaped upon it may undo a little of its favour with audiences. However, without this trumpeting, I doubt very much that The Artist would be able to find the audiences it's going to see. So it's kind of a lose/lose situation for a wonderful and deceptively simple film.

The film is both a silent movie and very much not a silent movie, it's a silly and self-aware homage to the silent era, taking great joy in playing with a contemporary audience's expectations on how we consume and understand film, one moment early on cruelly denies us immediate access to an audience's reaction to George Valentin's new film, leaving us waiting until it registers on the actor's faces. This is consistently part of this film's charm, it's like a big fat reminder to writers and directors working in Hollywood today that part of the wonder of cinema is being able to 'show' and not 'tell' the audience how a character is feeling, to move the plot forward in action and event, rather than exposition. Hazanavicius does a magnificent job plunging us into this world, which may feel alien and strange to modern cinemagoers, fortunately he has a very cute dog to help win people over in film's early scenes.

Beyond this he is blessed by Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, both of whom he worked with previously on OSS 117: Cairo, Nest Of Spies, an affectionate spy spoof that owed a great debt to the likes of the Marx Brothers, which should give you some indication of the kind of tone that this film will take. Sure, it's up for a lot of the big awards this year, but it's not some po-faced, pretentious and worthy drama trying to score the big suckerpunch Oscar-bait moments that littered a number of film trailer's that preceded the screening I saw. This, again, may prove to ruffle the feathers of some audience members, the film is light and playful, it does have an emotional heft, but it's not forced down your throat, you're manipulated by the filmmaker's in just the right way, they win you over rather than tell you how to feel, and so you truly care for both George and Peppy (and the dog) even when their pride and arrogance rears its head.

Whilst charming, captivating, winsome and imaginative this isn't quite the glorious five star masterpiece some critics have ear-marked it as, but it is undoubtedly a unique and magnificent picture, to me it shares very similar territory with Sylvain Chomet's animation The Illusionist, both are oddly bittersweet, delightful and occasionally quirky pictures that treat the audience with a great deal of respect and intelligence whilst striving primarily to dazzle and entertain without relying on CG spectacle or over-indulged sentimentality. This film is a timely reminder of what filmmaking is all about, and not in a nostalgic, rose-tinted way, but in a pure storytelling fashion, it's a reminder of the power of cinema and, perhaps, that is what makes it, despite its flaws, a classic?

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