“The Artist” has become notable for winning more awards (likely including future Oscars) than any silent film in the last three generations. Admittedly the story is not entirely “silent,” vibrating the fourth wall just enough to remind the audience the power of sound—along with explaining why some silent film actors were/are doomed from becoming real, talking, American film stars. I suppose a real, completely, silent movie in this age would be gimmicky, audacious and probably Russian. However, a secondary gimmick elevates “The Artist” from being one ninety-minute long joke, ala Mel Brook’s “Silent Movie,” and that is having an earnest story.
Set in the period of Hollywood already traveled by the joyful “Singin’ in the Rain” and lesser works, “The Artist” chronicles the fall of silent films and the catastrophic rise of talkies. The movie itself appreciates sounds enough to not be some ode to a simpler time. Quite thankfully, the audience is allowed to appreciate niceties of modern film making (sound, color, realism, 3D, smell-o-vision, etc.) without being judged or subjected to tragically misplaced nostalgia.
Our hero, George Valentin, initially mistakes the inevitable drums of progress for yet another fad. It’s a common enough sentiment in real life and readily picked up by most films that take place more than ten years ago. How easy it is to look back and understand that leg warmers would do so little for the betterment of mankind and that airplanes could become more than quaint toys.
Opposite of Valentin is Peppy Miller, a young upstart who isn’t so much a villain as she is just on the correct side of history—more thanks to the timing of being born 15 years later than possessing any particular insight, skill or intelligence. Peppy Miller is one part Debbie Reynolds, one part Anne Baxter. Cute and ambitious: insult or compliment is the choice of the audience. While I’d fault nobody for either quality, I also found Miller’s affection for Valentin a bit obsessive and creepy. A 25-year-old girl hounding and collecting the life of a 40-year-old man is every bit as unnerving as if their relationship was gender-reversed. No? Welcome to a post-feminist world.
While the movie has pluck and spunk, it stumbles with third act redundancies and I never quite got over how George Valentin could be so unendingly depressed when he had Wishbone as a constant companion. Thrillingly, the Jack Russell terrier does everything possible to secure an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Perhaps his canine character needed to embody some terminal, or at least inconvenient, disease to bait the voters. I’d go with narcolepsy; it doesn’t seem to come up in movies that often—except for the audiences in an Oliver Stone film.
Perhaps “The Artist” was doomed by the high hopes handed down to me. Perhaps it was the hope that a non-traditional film would walk off with the grand prize on Oscar Night. Could this be the first, again mostly, silent film to be nominated for Best Picture in the last 80 years? The foreign-language “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was a note-worthy nomination. As was “Beauty and Beast.” Perhaps now we’ve reached a time to nominate a truly extraordinary film this year. A film unique not just in genre but in content and context, scope and intimacy. I want to argue the best film of 2011 was not the remake of “Footloose” (close one, I know) but was actually the documentary “Life in a Day.”
“Life in a Day” demonstrated what I had only hypothesized years ago, that the most realistic film would have to be a two-hour long montage of all humanity. While on a visceral level I might enjoy many, many others, I’d be fine with this one film being presented to our future alien overlords when they ask to understand mankind in under two hours.
Yes, there is some structure to it. And yes, some people included clearly present themselves in a controlled way. But that is us all the same. Putting on makeup or pretending is just another form of authenticity. Are people gross, sure. And yes, we kill animals, steal and occasionally trample one another for no discernable purpose. But coming to grips with reality is our own responsibility; it’s no filmmakers’ responsibility to shield us from ourselves.
Beautifully shot in every variation of beauty that can be described, I could not have felt bored for two minutes in the entirety of the piece. “Life in a Day” does not challenge in the audience in any confrontational tone that seems to coat the dreariest of indie films. Instead, the audience can just watch and be awed by the culmination of humanity’s own understanding. Granted, the film does not contain the grandeur of the Great Pyramids nor does it contain the everlasting mysteries of other, physical, art. However, I think this simple documentary, reaching to the farthest ends we, as all civilization can reach, means more to more people (viewers or not) than any other traditional piece of art or entertainment.
“Life in a Day” does not require viewers to better understand their own lives during and after; but if new questions and appreciation are not stirred from within, then I fear all hope is lost. Admittedly, this quasi-religious association with humanity—and by some extension, the film about humanity—is entirely my own and should not act as a deterrent to the scientists, misanthropes and devilishly good-looking people who read my reviews. “Life in a Day” is simply a cinematic Rorschach test. See what you will, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
As is, “Life in a Day” is a tough sell and the inaudible “The Artist” has a safe, generational gimmick for middlebrow moviegoers. There is a chance for the Academy, and America, to acknowledge and applaud a unique, entertaining and vivid film in the dark days of February, but I can’t help but think we’ll all be looking in the wrong direction.
"You like us, right? Even though this movie is essentially
a 90-minute set-up for one xenophobic joke?"
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