A glorious masterpiece...

Rating: 9/10 (1 March 2017)

Advancing age and retreating inhibitions have made me liable to cry at the movies and honestly, sometimes a tad more than I would like. But The Artist is one of those 'once in a blue moon' movies that leave you with tears of joy streaming down your cheek. An exquisitely judged, gloriously funny and achingly tender film by the French director Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist is a flawless pearl. The debonair comedy and pastiche are worn with airy lightness; the romance is gentle and yet unexpectedly passionate.
There have been 'accusations' that The Artist is an homage, splendid still, to the silent era. But I feel that it is so much more; no, to paraphrase, I believe it is much, much less and calling it an homage is an over-complication and an insult to its simplistic charm. The Artist ,despite all the appearances, is at its heart an utterly beguiling love story and a miracle of entertainment. And this (glorified, if I may say so) paradigm shift that ushered in the talkies serves as a mere subplot, whose only major relevance strikes up from the ramifications on the initially playful romance that is shared by George Valentin and Peppy Miller. However, The Artist, in its own insouciant way, also touches on the debate whether the magic of the celluloid was purer in silence.
The leads, both Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are pitch perfect(if such a term may be associated with silent cinema) in their roles as the embodiments of the two 'clashing' ages in the history of cinema.Valentin, and by extension Dujardin, is every inch the silent-movie icon: his hair slick, his eyebrows meticulous, his moustache finely traced and his jawline a perfect trapezium. Bérénice Bejo also deserves some accolades because she succeeded in looking so "old" from our POV yet so fresh and modern in the film, with the appealing feel-good and optimistic attitude she constantly brings on screen. With her doll-face and youngish smile, she's like a cute little girl enjoying what she does. In a way, Peppy Miller embodies the film's most inspirational element: a positive message about passion and enjoyment. And this indirectly highlights George's source of troubles: being deprived of what he enjoyed the most and suffering from his progressive fading into oblivion.
The cinematography of this movie is an art on its own. It is a treat to the eyes. The Artist is itself a silent movie and like its age- old predecessors, it expresses more than a million words could say. Rather than being a celebration of color and sound, it is, in small ways, a eulogy for monochrome and silence.
It will, in our age of mindless action, 3D blockbusters and multi- million-dollar budgets, remind film-makers and audiences of the many wonderful qualities cinema has largely lost: elegance, beauty and heartfelt emotion.
Drained of colour and sounds, The Artist might just be moving pictures, but they seldom make pictures as moving as this one.
The only flaw is that the entire movie felt a bit abrupt, perhaps a characteristic of the silent era itself, I felt that somehow the movie rushed through to the end.
Truly a masterpiece.