Bang !

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2013)

A respectful and ambitious homage to a bygone era while simultaneously looking at how the advent of talking movies might have affected various people in the business.
We join the story when our silent movie star George Valentin is at the peak of his success. A chance accident throws a young unknown girl, Peppy Miller(a play on Penelope Ann Miller perhaps?), into the mix and before we know it she's in the movie business too.
The rest of the film charts how the new talking movies("talkies") thrust her into the limelight while simultaneously burying George.
Up until half an hour in I was thinking "OK very clever, but really what's the point of this silent movie approach?". Then it started to dawn on me why they may have gone this route, and it all becomes clear by the end. Sot the silent movie style not only pays tribute to the genre in question, but also provides a clever device/metaphor for describing George's trauma in the face of sudden marginalisation by the "talkies".
Jean Dujardin was excellent in the title role. He exuded star quality and charm throughout, while bearing a stunning resemblance to Gene Kelly. Bérénice Bejo was decent enough as his co star but somehow, and this is probably harsh, had a naive/showy aspect that didn't sit right with her character. I didn't care for John Goodman too much - he certainly looks the part but he seemed to lack the subtle range of mannerisms required to pull this off. Penelope Ann Miller and James Cromwell were good as the wife and driver respectively. I was sad Beth Grant didn't get a bigger part but only so many parts to go round here.
You have to admire the research, design, wardrobe, logistics that must've been required to make this. Hard to appreciate when it's all laid out in front of you for milliseconds at a time but I'd bet a hell of a lot of work went into this.
There's nothing too clever or original in terms of story - I suspect it was kept deliberately simple to provide a smooth, no-brainer build up to the denouement.
I avoided seeing this film for a long time because the silent movie angle really put me off - it looked like hard work. However it turned out to be a refreshing, clever story that was more charming and uplifting than hard work.
p.s. IMDb would not let me capitalise the title, displaying the warning "Please DO NOT SHOUT in your summary" - how petty and unnecessary?!