Why is this man smiling?

When I first heard there was a black and white, silent film with a square aspect ratio set to be released, Ill admit my interest was piqued. I thought it should be irresistible to anyone with even a minute passion for film, regardless of whether its design was a gimmick, an homage to the birth of cinema, or better yet, a challenge to modern-day audience tolerances. ut as the days remaining in !"## became fewer, and praise was increasingly heaped on The Artist, all the way up to its $olden $lobe win for est %usical or &omedy, I began to grow equally as suspicious. What was it about this film that was transcending its self-imposed formal restrictions to resonate with both the art house and mainstream crowds? %any people, especially critics, have pronounced The Artist to be the film of the year. 'lways searching for trends in cinema with which to link, as a thread, through the films on their top ten lists, many critics decided that last year was the year of the love letter to (ollywood, drawing from Woody 'llens Midnight In Paris, and %artin )corseses Hugo as similar e*amples of which %ichel (a+anaviciuss The Artist could rest comfortably at the forefront, due to its quite literal fi*ations on, and reiterations of, ancient cinematic techniques. ,hats all well and good, but how does the film play? In other words, when its artifice is stripped away, is there anything left? Is it a compelling story? -oes the films screenplay make it worthy of the est .icture award it is most certainly destined to take home? In words that (ollywood once should have been able to understand, not by any stretch of the imagination. /or those who have not seen the film, it begins conventionally enough in the ordinary world of silent film star $eorge 0alentin, riding high as his film studios current marquee star, turning out hit after hit. 'n impromptu dalliance with .eppy %iller, a random woman on the street, in a scene that desperately wants you to think of &harlie &haplin, has the ultimate effect of landing her on the cover of 0ariety, and pretty soon she finds herself cast in pictures due to public reception. ,he incident also becomes another impediment in the loveless marriage between 0alentin and his wife, who share a mansion together but rarely the same space within it. )oon, the film has you believe, overnight, that silent films were replaced by talkies, and 0alentins studio head tells him they are searching for new faces, and basically that his career is over. ,he rest of the film, and I mean rest of the film, parallels 0alentins descent into depression and self-loathing with .eppy %illers rise to superstardom, until he eventually hits rock bottom and .eppy has to save him from utter ruin. If all this seems quite simple, and concise, its because it is. /or some reason, critics, and subsequently audiences, seem almost determined to mistake this coy simplicity for universality. /or an entire hour The Artist features scene after scene of 0alentins downward spiral into depression, offering no additional information or story development. We see him watching one of his films in an empty movie theatre, we see him walk by a huge line outside a screening of a .eppy %iller film, we see him drinking in a bar, we see a woman who doesnt even recogni+e him approach him to talk about his dog, we see him fire his butler, we see him sell off his estate, we see his wife leave him, and the list goes on, ad infinitum, to the point where more so than any other film in recent memory Ive wanted desperately to fast forward through, not because it was bad per se,

but because I had the overwhelming urge to scream 1I get it already23 ,here is nothing wrong with showing a mans gradual decline into depression, but The Artists errs are three-fold. /irst, 0alentins character is completely undeveloped. 4nless you subscribe to the notion that owning a small dog is all that is required to establish a main character as a hero, there is literally nothing about 0alentin that warrants emotional investment in his plight, and the characters self-loathing comes off as whining, upper class la+iness and miserablism. It doesnt help that (a+anavicius captures multiple times the complete transformation of -u5ardins face, from furrow to smile, and a ridiculously over-the-top smile at that, inviting laughter instead of empathy. )econd, is the lack of subte*t throughout the film. %y desire to scream at the screen, and there has to be others who feel the same way, comes from simple boredom. 'nother character or two, or something else at stake besides the popularity of a fading film star, would have solved this problem. 'nd third, the hour long montage of depression is edited together hapha+ardly random. With scenes of gravity in front of more trifling ones, the simple compression of several years of time, a basic formal element of filmmaking, fails at delivering a cohesive sense of logical progression. 'll of these problems are related, and could have been avoided quite easily. ,he basic arc of the film is substantive, and it has an abundance of charm that despite my feelings, I was not able to resist completely. ut throughout, director %ichel (a+anavicius makes the unwise choice to not complicate anything, most likely from a fear of alienating an audience already grappling with the films stylistic choices. -id (a+anavicius forget that the silent film era produced -.W. $riffiths The Birth Of A Nation and Intolerance, the latter of which was an epic three-and-a-half-hour film with four parallel storylines that spanned several centuries? 6r did he forget about Battleship Potemkin, a film that is still ranked among the greatest films ever made, directed by )ergei 7isenstein, the father of montage, who discovered that the human mind was actually able to e*tricate a distinct meaning from the 5u*taposition of two seemingly random images? /or a film that wants very much to be a paean to the roots of filmmaking it is stubbornly ignorant. The Artist remains little more than a regurgitation of a focus groups idea of what silent films are, boasting a general knowledge as gospel, while ignoring simple facts like how the cumbersome nature of film cameras meant little to no camera movement. The Artist showcases the same willful negligence as most films that depict the process of filmmaking as a point and shoot, in-camera edited affair. ut who needs veracity when you have a smiling man with a dog? Who needs substance when youve got the ultimate vehicle for millions of 'mericans so in love with and envious of the beautiful people they 5ust wont see 0alentin for what he is, a la+y sad sack who sits around waiting for someone else to make it all better for him? In the end, though, it matters not the things that dont make it onto the screen. The Artist contains all the hallmarks of a est .icture winner8 oversimplification that borders on the 5uvenile, clich9 emotions that assume resonance among an audience, and an unwillingness to ask anything of its viewers beyond a mere diversion between bathroom breaks. If the 'cademy truly wanted to reward a film that could be called a love letter to (ollywood, Hugo clearly, and much more adequately fits the bill. )corsese doesnt pander, you either get his references or you dont: and if you dont it doesnt matter, the

screenplay by ;ohn <ogan is so well written the story provides more than enough value for your dollar, the films inherent self-refle*ivity remaining a clever bonus for the true film lover. ,he elephant in the room regarding The Artist, the question that nobody seems to be asking, is what would the 6scar nominations look like if there were nine other silent films made last year? Would they all be nominated for est .icture? What makes The Artist so special that it could be singled out among other films of similar stylistic pretensions? =othing. If the film were in color and had sound it would be unwatchable, laughable. Its artifice is 5ust a gimmick. 4nfortunately the timing of the conception of the 6scars allowed for only one silent film to be declared est .icture, Wings, in #>!?. .rior to that there were many masterpieces worthy of distinction as the birth of cinema, efforts from $riffith, 7isenstein, /.W. %urnau and /rit+ <ang to name 5ust a few. The Artist would stand shamefully among such company, a fact the 'cademy should be required to reflect on before casting their vote for est .icture. ,he film will forever remain a reluctant product of the !#st century, a misguided e*ample of (ollywoods self-aggrandi+ing nature, lacking any ties to the art form that in many aspects changed the course of the twentieth century. ack then the word 1illusion3 was commonly used when describing film. The Artist succeeds only in being an illusion of quality cinema.