Best Picture #3: THE ARTIST (2011)

Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist is now in the running to be the first silent film to win Best Picture since, well, since the silent era.  This is both promising and a bit disheartening.  Promising, because it reopens the silent film as a marketable form.  It recognizes the silent film not as a dated artistic restriction, but as a viable artistic choice.  Silence calls our attention to the screen in a different way.  It also requires a different kind of acting, depending more on the director than the actor, on facial expression and montage where there would otherwise be dialogue.  Actors like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, neither of whom really made the leap into sound films, would be proud to see the silent film still alive.

Disheartening because The Artist, clever and authentic, brightly entertaining that it is, isn't about much other than itself.  If its style is not dated, its story is.  Its story of a silent film star (Jean Dujardin) who has trouble breaking into talkies has been done before: it's Singin' in the Rain, without the music.  True, it's skillfully made in a daring way that few films are brave enough to tackle, but it might be better to see the Best Picture award go to something more meaningful and less fanciful.  A week after seeing it, people may still be talking about the cultural significance of The Help, or George Clooney's deeply felt performance in The Descendants.  But mainly what they'll remember about The Artist isn't the characters or the story, but the gimmick.

Still, what a film it is.  It's an old-fashioned entertainment in a retro style, and as such it's marvelous.  George Valentin (Dujardin) is an action superstar, in the vein of Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn.  His films all have to do with swashbuckling and romance, and he's usually wearing a black mask.  He's a celebrity with a fairly gargantuan ego, as we see in his early appearance at a premiere, much to the frustration of his leading lady (Missi Pyle, radiant as usual).

Then the talkies hit.  Valentin rebels against the system, attempting to keep the silent film alive, but he fails.  Riding the wave of sound is a plucky new star, Peppy Miller (Berenice Bujo), who's the talk of the new Hollywood.  But she's still a fan of the old Valentin, and savors a moment of flirtation that the two of them had while she was an extra in one of his films.  As he struggles with the end of his career, she grows more and more popular, but retains her fascination with him.

Dujardin and Bujo are perfect for their roles.  Dujardin makes for a dashing, ruggedly handsome alpha male, whose obstinacy at his downfall is tragically believable.  James Cromwell fits perfectly into type as Valentin's loyal-to-a-fault limo driver, as does John Goodman as the studio head.

Writer-director Hazanavicius has crafted a film that might, historical references aside, very well have been made as a legitimate silent film of the era.  It's also heartwarming and funny, with starmaking performances from Dujardin and Bujo.  My hope is that it will inspire a new wave of silent films to come, and soon we will have a new silent film in contemporary setting, which doesn't have to be about being a silent film.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Best Picture #2: The Tree of Life
Best Picture #1: The Help