"Hugo" and "War Horse" were among the absolute worst I had seen that year, and "Tree of Life" I will count till the end of my days one of the worst, most painful experiences I've ever subjugated my poor brain to. So of course these were among the nominees for Best Picture. And "The Muppets," the best film I saw that year, was nowhere in sight. The only award it got was for Best Original Song for "Man or Muppet," which was honestly probably the weakest song of the whole movie. Clearly this awards show has passed me by.
That, or the Academy has their heads up their asses. You make the call.
Of course there ended up being two movies that ran away with pretty much every award that night, the first being "Hugo" (screw you) and the other movie, the one that took home Best Picture, being "The Artist," a film I honestly hadn't even heard of. This makes sense since it only got a limited release in the States. The only thing I knew about it was that it was in black and white, and was about the era of silent film. Sounds just pretentious enough to be ready for Oscar.
And after finally seeing it, I now know that being in black and white and about early Hollywood was only the tip of the pretentious iceberg of "The Artist." Had I known that it was also not only in a 4:3 aspect ratio, which makes watching at home in an age where every TV is widescreen completely annoying, but that it is also actually silent with intertitles and everything, I would have just called it right then and there that it would get Best Picture. It doesn't matter if it's good or not. That is pretension of the highest caliber.
The only time he's not wearing this stupid smirk is when he's got a gun to his head.
Let's get one thing out of the way first and foremost: "The Artist" is not a bad movie. It just has it's head so firmly planted up its own colon that it's seeing it's lunch again 4 seconds after swallowing. It's clear that there is a lot of passion going on with the making of this film. The people involved obviously love silent movies, and want to pay tribute to them. And honestly, they do a great job of that. The look of this movie is dead on, and it would be very easy to think of this as a film from the late 1920's if you didn't know any better.
The story is also in the same style as an old fashioned drama, following the fall of fictional silent film star, George Valentin. At the advent of "talkies," George dismisses them as a doomed gimmick, only to find himself ruined and out of work a few years later, after his studio quits making silent films. Eventually he is brought back around from the brink of suicidal despair by an actress, Peppy Miller, who George had an almost-there romance with years earlier, and his career is rekindled. There's a bit more to it, but that's the movie in three sentences. It's not a bad little story, actually.
But did it need to be silent? I would argue that the gimmick of having no sound except for the music is more detrimental to the film than good. In fact, this could have probably been a really interesting period piece had it been made in sound. You know, like every flipping movie of the past 90 years. However, the silence is just plain distracting in how much it draws attention it itself. As quiet as "The Artist" is, it is screaming at us the whole time at the top of its lungs, "LOOK AT ME! I'M ARTSY!"
John Goodman? One of the best actors around? Naw, we don't need to hear him. #wastedtalent
I really hate to say that, because I sound like your average popcorn slamming, lowest common denominator, movie going clod. But the fact remains that it's really difficult to get into a silent movie made in 2011 because it's hard to imagine why they did it. It doesn't add anything to the film. In fact you're taking away an indescribably huge part of the film experience.
I've read that the director, Michel Hazanavicius, was interested in making a silent film for years because of the "image-driven nature of the form." I'm guessing what he means is that by not having dialogue or sound, the picture is more important and somehow more pure. That is cosmically stupid.
I've got news for you, Michel, image is always and will always be important, even if there is sound. This isn't radio. This is a movie. The very essence of a movie is the projection of images being shown at 24 frames every second so as to make the illusion of movement, and by putting these images in a specific sequence, conveying a narrative. Sound does not detract, it does not carry the film, and it does not mean that the images are somehow less important than if there was no sound over the top of them, and to suggest that is honestly pretty snooty.
It would be like suggesting that by drawing a picture of a rainbow in normal black pencil, it is somehow a more pure rainbow. That's the kind of pretentious crap that hipsters and film school graduates ponder over a venti vanilla no-foam soy macchiato.
He would have shown up, but coffee is too mainstream.
What could have made this film far more interesting, in my opinion, is if it had only been silent in the beginning, and going to sound at around the end of the first act. In fact, for a second I thought that was precisely what was going on. There is a scene where George has a nightmare that is actually in sound, although it's not true sound but stock sound effects, however the effect is still very jarring when it happens. Had the rest of the movie continued in that fashion, it would have been a pretty neat effect that would fit with the plot, since at that point George is looking at his own ruin due to the rise of the "talkies." Unfortunately, he wakes up and that's that. It's back to silent for the rest of the movie.
Except for literally the last 15 seconds of the film. That's in sound, and while it was nice to finally hear John Goodman, one of my favorite actors actually speak, it's so jarring and confusing and honestly completely nonsensical that all it does is highlight the fact that it was so much better to hear them speaking in the first place!
So did "The Artist" deserve Best Picture? Good gravy, no. The only reason it won was because it had the silent movie gimmick going on. Had it been in sound, it would have been a passable period drama that was trying really hard to be old fashioned. And nobody would have given it a second glance.
"Mug for the camera...aaaaaaaand GIVE US ALL THE OSCARS!!!"
THE BOTTOM LINE - If you've never seen a silent movie before, this will be ROUGH. It's such an archaic way of making a film that it's really difficult to sit through, unless you're familiar with really old films, or can at least appreciate them. It might be worth seeing as a curiosity, but in the end it's really nothing special. Recommended if the concept of a silent film made in 2011 intrigues you.
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