The ARTIST : Watch it for its boldness & finesse in acting

Rating: 5/10 (10 March 2012)

To start off things, Michel Hazanavicius brings to us a Black & White, silent movie, set in the 1920s. To make a film like this in the year 2011, the team deserves a kudos. The Oscars have continued their legacy of choosing boldness over stardom/story third year in a row (The Hurt Locker over Avatar, The King's Speech over Inception & now with The Artist)
The story is about an artist 'George Valentin'- a silent movie actor who is the audience's pet. His pride brings to us the memories of 'Howard Roark' in the movie/novel FountainHead. Since change is inevitable, there comes a pretty young lady 'Peppy Miller'' who can talk and our actor's job is sacked.
The second half tells us about our artist's downfall. His effort in acting/producing/directing a movie to compete with Peppy only leads himself to be buried further below (reminds us of The Dirty Picture where Vidya tries a similar thing). I did not quite like the idea of it being a silent movie and then dialogues being presented to us as full screen titles than subtitles.
Coming to the star cast, Bejo as Peppy does a fine job and Jean Dujardin as our artist is the soul of this film. He carries the film along with finesse and gets a deserved Oscar for the same. George's dog is also worth mentioning. His relationship with George comes out impactfully.
Keeping into consideration the boredom of a silent, B & W movie, the first hour is hard to go by, but then once you seep in, you realise you actually don't need dialogues to tell a story. Overall, this movie deserves a one - time watch for its boldness and the finesse involved in acting.