Return to the silent era in this Oscar-winning triumph.

Rating: Null/10 (7 June 2016)

It takes a lot of guts to make a silent movie in this time in history. Audiences, especially in America, want to be entertained instead of seeing something artistic. "The Artist" returns a few decades back to where movies were silent, no dialogue and hardly any sound besides music. French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius does something truly unique in this film, telling the story of a silent movie star who meets a young dancer, but the arrival of talking pictures sends their careers in opposite directions. Embracing the historical aspects of filmmaking and using it as a metaphor for his aging lifestyle and change in life works beautifully to incorporate both cinematic art techniques and character development. The French George Clooney Jean Dujardin gives a tremendous and equipped performance as actor George Valentin, not saying a word and yet revealing the most important and daring parts of his complicated and stylish character. Every actor does great work in a type of film that hasn't been done for decades. Each actor shows how much time he or she put in to mastering the silent film character. Director Michel Hazanavicius does great work on mastering the black and white filming, while blending all kinds of history into this film and yet developing his themes and characters beautifully. This is a once in a great while film that, despite some plot errors and points of boredom, does some quite extraordinary.