The Artist (2012)

I was skeptical at first. These were my exact thoughts: I will be bored to death by this silent black and white movie. Boy was I wrong. From the start to the finish, I liked it. This is the first full length silent movie I ever saw and it was worth it.

Film Review: "The Artist" (2011)Considered by many to be the Best Picture of year 2011, starting its success story at Cannes Film Festival on its 64th edition in May 2011 and finishing on February 26th 2012 with the Academy Award for Best Picture of the same year, utilizing the instrument of an high-concept gimmick by shooting the picture entirely in 1920s filmmaking conditions with framing set to full frame aspect ratio to capture light reflections on 35mm black and white filmstock under the direction of former television movie director Michel Hazanavicius, who earns his lucky punch of international filmmaking with his formidable playing leading man Jean Dujardin in a role of a life-time and sweet-looking, earning by the beats actress Bérénice Bejo, building the undeniable classic taste of a star-striving emerging Hollywood era of oblivion.Winning five out of ten Oscar Nominations, dividing the Academy Award Ceremony of 2012 in its 84th Edition with Martin Scorsese's directed high-end major budget granted infusion of a filmmaker's homage on the life of Georges Méliès (1861-1938) "Hugo"; keeping the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in a tight grip of choosing an original stagnation, no-risk classic over cinematic evolution in terms of daring the impossible by bringing the whole filmmaking orchestra out of its "The Big Sleep" (1946) winter sleep to take responsibility of a worldwide shared audiovisual infusions, who shaped a society of future filmmakers that are considered to cannibalize each other by rolling their thump to a beat of emotional deprivation, making this picture being welcome in times of nostalgia and pushed-aside "Melancholia" (2011) directed by Lars von Trier.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

There's no there, there. Dirt simple story you can see coming a mile away, so it's all about how they tell it, and it's told poorly. Pointless scene setting takes forever (that breakfast seems to have taken 1/3rd of the movie), important points skip on by. Acting and most photography is unimpressive. Too many straight on one shots. Too much mugging for the camera, too talkative, when it's a form that requires expression and movement. And too much feels like a gimmick. A silent movie it ain't. The two sound interludes make no sense. I expected it to become a sound picture with the advent of sound in film. That might have been interesting, and a way to show how the world changed overnight.

Advancing age and retreating inhibitions have made me liable to cry at the movies and honestly, sometimes a tad more than I would like. But The Artist is one of those 'once in a blue moon' movies that leave you with tears of joy streaming down your cheek. An exquisitely judged, gloriously funny and achingly tender film by the French director Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist is a flawless pearl. The debonair comedy and pastiche are worn with airy lightness; the romance is gentle and yet unexpectedly passionate. There have been 'accusations' that The Artist is an homage, splendid still, to the silent era. But I feel that it is so much more; no, to paraphrase, I believe it is much, much less and calling it an homage is an over-complication and an insult to its simplistic charm. The Artist ,despite all the appearances, is at its heart an utterly beguiling love story and a miracle of entertainment. And this (glorified, if I may say so) paradigm shift that ushered in the talkies serves as a mere subplot, whose only major relevance strikes up from the ramifications on the initially playful romance that is shared by George Valentin and Peppy Miller. However, The Artist, in its own insouciant way, also touches on the debate whether the magic of the celluloid was purer in silence. The leads, both Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are pitch perfect(if such a term may be associated with silent cinema) in their roles as the embodiments of the two 'clashing' ages in the history of cinema.Valentin, and by extension Dujardin, is every inch the silent-movie icon: his hair slick, his eyebrows meticulous, his moustache finely traced and his jawline a perfect trapezium. Bérénice Bejo also deserves some accolades because she succeeded in looking so "old" from our POV yet so fresh and modern in the film, with the appealing feel-good and optimistic attitude she constantly brings on screen. With her doll-face and youngish smile, she's like a cute little girl enjoying what she does. In a way, Peppy Miller embodies the film's most inspirational element: a positive message about passion and enjoyment. And this indirectly highlights George's source of troubles: being deprived of what he enjoyed the most and suffering from his progressive fading into oblivion. The cinematography of this movie is an art on its own. It is a treat to the eyes. The Artist is itself a silent movie and like its age- old predecessors, it expresses more than a million words could say. Rather than being a celebration of color and sound, it is, in small ways, a eulogy for monochrome and silence.It will, in our age of mindless action, 3D blockbusters and multi- million-dollar budgets, remind film-makers and audiences of the many wonderful qualities cinema has largely lost: elegance, beauty and heartfelt emotion.Drained of colour and sounds, The Artist might just be moving pictures, but they seldom make pictures as moving as this one. The only flaw is that the entire movie felt a bit abrupt, perhaps a characteristic of the silent era itself, I felt that somehow the movie rushed through to the end. Truly a masterpiece.