A Powerful Visual and Auditory Romantic Drama

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2019)

8 April 2012. As the intellectually and visually gritty drama of Another Earth (2011), The Artist is as emotionally and musically riveting resonating on the more universal and familiar themes of human existence. Whereas Another Earth tells of a traumatic and unusual intense unfolding of the intimate human drama of tragedy, The Artist displays more of a silent and artistic version of the popular bigger than life love romance and adventure of The Titanic (1997). Whether or not The Artist will hold up in time is another matter because there is the "different wow" factor in play here. Being an unusual contemporary silent, black and white film with a huge reliance of music melodies, The Artist brings forth a substantial different movie experience based on rhythmic tones and gorgeously timed tempos of musical auditory emotions (like radio) allowing for less of the mental machinations than the emotive inner vibrations of sight and sound. The Artistic is able to take advantage the rarely used medium of music and silent dialogue which forces the audience to tap into a much more reflective and emotionally visceral level. Nevertheless, some of the film's creative and emotionally compelling drama and renewal comes from that sudden burst of the audience having to use rarely used sense over the duration of the whole movie. However, The Artist may have the fortune of retaining its brilliance and flair for the unique in its genre, much like Brazil (1985) has been able to retain is imaginative power and classic claim or Lost In Translation (2003) for its minimalist plot and immersive authenticity.
However, The Artist doesn't have the exclusive patent on the effective use of music or silent dialogue or emphasis on pure behavioral performances to make its resonating connection to the audience come across. Evita (2005) was produced with only singing throughout the movie. The Monkey's had their surrealistic LSD tripping movie, Head (1968) more than 40 years ago. Wall*e (2008) the animated non-dialogue version had that even more difficult time of creating emotive impact without the fine details of a live human actor's presentation. There's even Wait Until Dark (1967) with one of the best thrilling literally black climatic scenes in movie history with minimal dialogue or the horror film 1408 (2007) finds John Cusack alone by himself trapped in a hotel room for most of the movie. Solaris (1972) is also notable for its long passages without dialogue. Even Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (1999) in its fourth season in "Hush" had no audible dialogue for most of the episode or Apocalypto (2006) with Mel Gibson had little use for dialogue has his character fought for survival or Jarhead (2005) that relied more on the ambiance and setting for its emotional impact than dialogue, or Touching the Void (2004) where most of the vivid power of the movie comes from the solo survival drama on a mountain slope. As for music, The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and even The Cooler (2003) with Mark Isham's score have already accomplished a great synthesis of music to film. Of course 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) likely can claim the musical backdrop and minimalist use of dialogue in capturing its audience in a vision beyond this earth and human understanding.
Both Another Earth and The Artist use share the strong element of the use of irony, where characters in the movie do not know of the whole events taking place, where the character George Valentin is in the dark much of times as to what Peppy Miller is doing whereas in Another Earth, John Burroughs is unaware of the identity of the Rhoda Williams in connection to his tragedy. Another Earth operates on a different level, focusing on the mental level and the internal emotions of thought and feelings while The Artist takes its power using the behaviorist, externalize primal visual and auditory feelings that propel this movie with its intense resonating emotions.