Trite, Tiresome, and Interminable

Rating: 4/10 (12 March 2012)

Don't get me wrong. I love silent movies. I teach film history classes and use silent movies. Everybody should watch at least ten silent films in their lives. Nevertheless, watching Best Picture winner "The Artist" left me feeling genuinely underwhelming. This imaginative homage to silent era cinema when actions spoke louder than words qualifies as trite, tiresome, and interminable. Talented "O.S.S. 117" director Michel Hazanavicius has written and helmed a movie about the changing technology in Hollywood on the eve of the Wall Street collapse and the Great Depression. He has forged a debonair matinée idol hero named George Valentin (Jean Dujardin of "Lucky Luke") who emerges as a synthesis of Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, and Charles Chaplin. George works at the Kinograph Studios where he is the top draw. The hero gives a new girl, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo of "A Knight's Tale"),a break at movie premiere during a incident that the press capture. Eventually, Peppy becomes a big star. She ascends to stardom in talkie pictures. Valentin tries to buck the trend like Charles Chaplin did, but he doesn't fare as successfully at Chaplin. Chaplin made two more silent movies after silent movies saturated the market. Valentin makes "Tears of Love," but this adventure film flops at the box office. He becomes box office poison, while Peppy becomes a stellar attraction. Eventually, the matinée hero slips into a malaise. He has to sell everything, but he doesn't have his heart in living. He fires the only friend that he has ever had, his chauffeur, Clifton, and sends him packing. The co-star of his "Tin Tin" like movies, a spunky Jack Russell terrier, remains faithful to him even when he wraps his lips around the barrel of a revolver. He cannot commit suicide, but at this point, you almost wish that he would. The chief problem with "The Artist" is that the plot is thinner than a strip of celluloid, while the characters are only slightly advanced. The lethargy sets in during the hero's bout with depression. Happily, despite its indebtedness to "A Star Is Born," everything ends favorably at fadeout, but it is really no surprise. Worse, writer & director Hazanavicius stretches things out far too long. Clocking in at 100 minutes, "The Artist" is about 20 minutes too long and the characters lack charisma. The twist of fate that saves Valentin and assures comeback is too contrived to be entirely satisfactory. Nonetheless, I've got to tip my critical hat to the Academy for trying to buck the trend. No, I don't think "The Artist" deserved any of its Oscars, but it isn't an entirely awful movie. Hazanavicius deserves praise for trying something different, but the difference here doesn't make the difference. Bernard Herrmann's love theme from the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Vertigo" adds nothing spectacular, just serves to make thing even more dreary. The production values are solid and the performances are acceptable.