Gimmicky, boring, self-indulgent, and shallow

Rating: 3/10 (24 January 2012)

It is generally understood that a movie maker should not employ a gimmick unless it is important to the plot. In this film, the movie maker(s) employ the gimmick of having the entire movie done like a silent movie (with very rare exception) simply because it tells the tale of a silent movie star. This gimmick violates the foregoing rule because it is NOT intrinsic to the plot.
In the last five seconds (or so it seems) you get one sound bite of sound to let you know the lead actor has a severe accent, which FINALLY explains why he was so resistant to doing "talkies" throughout the film. This would have been useful information to understanding his character and the actions taking place in the movie had it been disclosed earlier. As it was, it was a throw-away piece of information, with almost no attention drawn to it, too late to do any good. Instead, you are pretty much left with the realization you have been misled the entire movie -- by its silence -- into thinking this silent movie actor had some philosophical or artistic objection to talkies (even the name, the "artist," misleadingly suggests this is the case).
To maintain this secret, the movie maker(s) also had to contrive the dialogue, because in all the conversations the lead actor (the "artist") has with people about not doing talkies, in reality his accent would be the main talking point. "Hey, don't worry about your accent." or "You can get a speech coach to work on that accent." No, the conversations are conveniently contrived to keep the movie-goer in the dark on this one.
Phony, contrived dialogue is not the end of the problems. As the movie itself confesses in dialogue, silent movie actors employ the prop of overly exaggerated facial expressions and "mugging" for the camera to get their point across. Well, this movie employs THAT too, in addition to being silent. So you get the actors mugging throughout the entire thing. It's quite annoying after 10 minutes. I go to see good actors act well, not intentionally overact and "mug" for the same of some stupid contrivance that some idiot thought would be "oh so clever." However, none of the above are actually the biggest problems with this movie. The biggest problem of all is the lack of depth or realism in the script. The movie maker(s) were so caught up trying to make a modern "silent" movie that they ignored the critical element of having characters with any depth.
We get the lead actor who is the definition of two-dimensional. He carries around his dog-sidekick wherever he goes and does the same tricks with the dog that he does in his films ALL THE TIME. We know his marriage is in trouble, but we don't see a single meaningful conversation between him and his wife. His interactions with his other love interest are completely phony, unrealistic and shallow.
I was ready to walk out of this movie after 30 minutes, but for the hope it would transform, grow, deepen or somehow make some meaningful point. It NEVER DOES. It goes on at the same speed, the same shallowness, the same one-dimensional tone THE WHOLE TIME.
I have a theory on people who rate this movie as so amazing. (1) They are old silent movie fans and this film brings back that nostalgia for them in a way they find pleasing. So, basically, the gimmick does it for them. (2) They see way too many movies, so they are bored and get overly excited about anything unique so, again, the gimmick satisfies them and they do not look for anything deeper. (3) They are the kind of artsy phoneys who do not really understand the art of storytelling, and so wait to see which way the critical winds blow and leap on that train so they can seem like they actually know what they are talking about.
To draw a comparison, which I think is apt, this movie is very much like Dogville, wherein the actors struggled to act without the benefit of props or sets. You had to IMAGINE all this stuff, as did the actors. And it got rave reviews. However, apart from this plot gimmick, it was a very bad movie. First, if you take the rose-tinted glasses off, you will readily see all the actors struggled with the lack of props and this really impaired their performances. Second, you will see this lack of props had no plot-related purpose and so was, again, a bad idea and in violation of a fundamental rule of good movie-making. Third, the story itself was weak inasmuch as the characters were not realistic, but instead were as shallow as comic book villains, which is fine if you want an immature horror-type plot, but not if you want to learn something deep about the human experience. It was a bad movie that should have been soundly condemned by any critic who actually knew what he/she was talking about, but instead people got fixated on the gimmick and gave it rave reviews.
How about a film where all the actors sit in wheelchairs? You can just use an old Karate Kid script, because no one will care because it has a new gimmick so it'll get rave reviews.