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Jean Dujardin & Bérénice Bejo in The Artist
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Film: The Artist
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Rating: ***1/2
With slender flappers, jarring jazz and the twilight of Hollywood’s Golden Age, The Artist captures the spirit of the roaring twenties.
And true to this spirit of cinema before the advent of the talkies, not one word is uttered. All the melodrama and slapstick comedy associated with the silent film genre are thrown in for good measure.
The film sees Jean Dujardin as George Valentin, a star of Buster Keaton-like proportions. With his faithful terrier Jack by his side, the swashbuckling matinee idol is a media darling. Though in an unhappy marriage, the dashing Valentin is one to spontaneously go in to his happy-go-lucky shtick for the cameras.
Kismet brings together adulating fan Peppy Miller (Bejo) and her onscreen idol at a screening and since then she becomes a part of his life. However, she undergoes a meteoric rise to stardom while Valentin spirals into a life of obscurity. The reason behind this is his unwilling to make a transition to the world of talkies.
Flatly turning down studio boss Al Zimmer (Goodman), Valentin spends his last penny in producing an ill-fated silent epic.
In a case of bad things coming in threes, the 1929 stock market crash, Peppy’s first film — a box office smash hit — and his disastrous venture prove fatal to his career. Living with only Jack and faithful manservant Clifton (Cromwell) as living remnants of his former life, can Valentin make a comeback from the path of despair and dejection he is on?
The Artist is a pleasant, not-to-highbrow entertainer. One of the old time charms offered by the film is the mugging for the camera by the actors. Dujardin is dashing, funny and tragic. Bejo shines as the scarlet of the talkies (though we never hear her speak), Goodman was born to play the role of a silent era studio executive. The brilliant Malcolm McDowell and in his a walk on role shines too.
Hazanavicius, famous for his spy spoofs, pays rich homage to a genre that is not often revisited. With dependence on Chaplinesque visual gags, the film, with its familiar and simplistic plot, title cards though terse, are for the most part unnecessary.
Hazanavicius is reverential in his treatment but not so much as to refrain from playing along with the medium and his audience’s expectations. This reviewer won’t spoil anything for you but be assured, though the story might get somber at certain points, there is nothing somber in its telling.
The Artist is the most fun you can have with the boisterous adventures of a washed-out pencil-thin mustached hero and his dog.
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