Indeed, the Silent Age was golden

Rating: Null/10 (17 April 2013)

The Artist, a silent film in the wake of bombastic, noisy blockbusters, makes a strong statement in a very quiet way: by being beautifully silent for two untrammeled hours. It is directed by Michael Hazanavicius and stars Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo and Jean's dog, Uggie. Everybody is brought together by fine on screen chemistry, and Hazanavicius (being a foreigner) has effectively rekindled the fires of older silent films that once glorified our Hollywood today.
Hazanavicius described The Artist as his love letter to old cinema, which has become something of a palimpsest thanks to 3D and other innovative media. Who's ever heard of watching a silent black and whitey on their iPhone? That's precisely my point. The Artist breathes and feels just like a film from that silent epoch, where Chaplinesque mannerisms and Moliere style performances devoured the stage and tickled our fancies. The lead star, Jean Dujardin, ought to have an Oscar placed at his feet for his dog Uggie to fetch. Resembling a suave Gene Kelly and Sean Connery, Dujardin embodies the archetypal movie star with obsequious pride and sardonic arrogance. We never hear him speak (owed to the fact that this is a silent film), but even then, Dujardin never breaks character. He's playing the role of a silent movie star, translating that character's grief just with body language, however gratuitous. There's a particularly fine scene where his character George Valentin suffers a nightmare of insurmountable sound—only he's lost his voice. We know that this isn't really the case (that Valentin is capable of human sound on a regular basis) but in the context of the movie, it exemplifies the future of sound in cinema. Silent stars like Valentin become extinct.
The opposite spectrum of the screen is shared by Berenice Bejo as flapper-turned-movie star Peppy Miller. This woman is a Goddess and steals the scene by smiling alone. Was it not the job requirements of olden movie actresses to flutter their eyelashes, seductively wink into the camera, shake their undulant hips and flaunt their pearly whites? Berenice Bejo is an obvious beauty and suitable for this role, but she brings an engaging performance that, like Dujardin, compels us without having said one word. Peppy Miller becomes a rising "talkie" star in the picture, but it's not her voice producers advertise. It's her fresh face.
The movie is pervaded by upbeat music and comic perfections. There's humor in seeing Malcolm McDowell or James Cromwell saunter on and off the screen. John Goodman is particularly effective; his husky voice is irrelevant here. To see him merely grimace is a joy in itself—a fine example of what we have taken for granted. The musical score is ubiquitous to the film and accentuates the romance, drama and comedy. Admittedly, I think Hazanavicius became too enamored for cinema; the usage of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score was a tad distracting. I guess I'll just call it a crime of passion.
The Artist is a delightful film in every sense of the word. It is evocative of our purest and most passionate feelings, and the subtleties it provides make us appreciate older films and consider all that we have taken for granted.