Written PostJosh Reviews The Artist

Josh Reviews The Artist

Well, I was already a big, big fan of star Jean Dujardin and director Michael Hazanavicius from their two OSS:117 French-language James Bond parody films, Cairo Nest of Spies (click here for my review) and Lost in Rio (click here for my review).  Now, after seeing the two men’s jump into “serious” movie-making with the beautiful, heartfelt film The Artist, my opinion of those two artists has only grown.

In The Artist, Mr. Dujardin stars as George Valentin, a super-star of the silent film era.  At the premiere of one of his films, a young woman, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), accidentally bumps into him and the two are photographed together.  This is Peppy’s first blush with stardom, and that brief bit of exposure helps land her a bit part as an extra in a film, and from there her career begins to skyrocket.  Mr. Valentin’s career, unfortunately, is on the opposite trajectory, as the advent of movies with sound (“talkies”) dooms a silent-film stars like himself.  The film follows several years in the lives of Mr. Valentin and Ms. Miller, and the way that the two characters keep bouncing back into one another’s orbit.

The Artist isn’t just a film about the silent film era.  It is, itself, a silent film.  The film begins by throwing us right into what is, after a few fun-filled minutes, revealed to be Mr. Valentin’s latest silent film, A Russian Affair. But even after that film-within-a-film ends, The Artist continues to be, with just a few (very, very cleverly-used exceptions), a silent film.  There is no dialogue and there are no sound effects, just a rousing, gorgeous score by Ludovic Bource (who just a few days ago won a Golden Globe for his score for this film).  One might imagine that a full-length silent film, in today’s era, might stretch an audience’s patience.  But I did not find that to be at all the case.  The film is beautiful, emotional, and very, very funny, and I found myself completely swept along in the story.

Enormous credit for that, of course, goes to the lead actors.  Mr. Dujardin is an incredibly skilled performer.  He’s incredibly handsome, and his movie-star good-looks serve him well in this role as an enormous movie-star.  His comic skills were on fine display in the OSS:117 films, and are well-utilized here.  Mr. Dujardin has an infectious smile, and when he unleashes it it’s clear why his character was such a big star in the silent era, and of course it also draws in the modern audience watching from their seats in the theatre.  But I was also quite taken by how well Mr. Dujardin sells the dramatic moments.  For much of the second half of the film, Mr. Valentin is a man haunted by his failures and the successes he once knew, and Mr. Dujardin completely owns those scenes.

His co-star, Bérénice Bejo, is also superb.  She had such great chemistry with Mr. Dujardin in Cairo Nest of Spies, and it’s a delight to see the two reunited here.  Ms. Bejo has a much meatier role this time around, and she skillfully takes Peppy from being likable to being quite unlikable back to being likable.  It’s a great character arc, and Ms. Bejo is able to sell all those aspects of Peppy’s character equally well.  Her smile is even more dazzling than Mr. Dujardin’s.  And both, by the way, are apparently phenomenal dancers.

John Goodman (as the studio boss) and James Cromwell (as Mr. Valentin’s loyal valet, Clifton) both turn in strong supporting performances.  Mr. Cromwell, in particular, is wonderful as the puppydog-like Clifton, whose intense loyalty to his boss helps us believe that Mr. Valentin is a character worth rooting for.

Like Martin Scorsese’s wonderful, transporting film Hugo, The Artist brings to vivid life a long-ago aspect of film history.  But like Hugo, this isn’t a dry history-book text.  Both films positively sing with their love for those forgotten eras of film, and the men and women — the artists — who worked so hard to create those films for people to enjoy.  It’s fascinating to see two films released in the same year that, while being entirely different types of movies, both share that common focus on the early days of the movies.

The Artist is a sweeping romance, a rousing comedy, and a loving look at a bygone era of film.  As a silent film made in 2011, it’s a pretty unique endeavor, and I encourage you to seek it out.