The Artist (2011)

"The Artist" is certainly a charming film, but I'm going to say what I can't find anyone else out there saying, and that is the fact that its charm - coupled with the novelty of it being a black-and-white, silent film in 2011 - is tricking almost everyone into believing that it one of the greatest movies of the year and the frontrunner for Best Picture at the Oscars.

But here's the truth. While "The Artist" is certainly a pleasure to watch for anyone who truly loves movies, it is almost painfully derivative and, more disappointingly, entirely predictable from start to finish. In fact, the film clearly rips off both "Singin' in the Rain" and Chaplin's "Modern Times." And yet audiences are sitting there, awed by the fact that a director made a silent film now. Is that such an unbelievable accomplishment? The real accomplishment is that people are going to see it.

Now don't think I'm telling you that "The Artist" is a bad film. It's not. It has two wonderful performances in Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo and the black and white photography is gorgeous. And director Michel Hazanavicius metculously recreates the era of the late 1920s-early 1930s, down to  shooting the film in an authentic (and now seemingly antiquated) 1:33:1 aspect ratio. But I think a film should be judged against what it set out to accomplish. And this is no reinvention of the silent film genre. It's a copycat.

"The Artist" begins in 1927 with silent film star George Valentin basking in the applause from an audience after screening his latest picture. Dujardin plays Valentin, and though the name (and some of the scenes of Valentin making movies) directly references Rudolph Valentino, Dujardin bears a striking resemblence to Gene Kelly, another reference point to be milked repeatedly in the film. Valentin gamely soaks up applause at the expense of his disgruntled blonde co-star, the first direct reference to Don Lockwood and Lena Lamotte from "Singin' in the Rain."

Outside the theatre, Valentin is talking to reporters when the crowd accidentally shoves a beautiful young girl into him. There is an instant connection. There was one for me, too, as this is the exact same moment as when Janet Jackson bumps into Cab Calloway in her "Alright" video from 1990.

On the set for another film, the ego-driven Valentin notices a pair of legs behind a set piece and anonymously engages the woman connected to them in a playful dance. When the board separating them is finally moved (just like the one Donald O'Connor rides on in "Singin' in the Rain,") we are not suprised to learn that these are the legs of that same girl. And it turns out that this girl, Peppy Miller (Bejo) has just been cast as an extra in Lockwood...er, Valentin's latest picture.

A studio executive (John Goodman, lending one of a few known faces to the film) pulls Valentin aside to show him some footage from a "talkie." Valentin waves it off as ridiculous, in much the same manner that Charlie Chaplin did until he could no longer avoid it. Chaplin dipped his toes in the talkie waters, as we now know, with "Modern Times" in 1936. Hazanavicius steals the film's few moments of sound that break from the silent film format directly from "Modern Times." In fact, the "sound scene" is thematically identical. But I digress.

Predictability ensues. Peppy Miller is on her way up as one of the studio's first talkie stars, and the stubborn Valentin is on his way down for resisting them. He tries to make a silent film masterpiece on his own and it bombs; everyone is down the street at the latest Peppy Miller film. Meanwhile, Valentin's personal life has deteriorated along with his career, save for his faithful Jack Russell terrier. All the while, the attraction between Valentin and Miller is undeniable but Valentin overhears Miller giving an interview that does not reflect kindly on his craft and he keeps her at arms length.

The film's most melodramatic moments involve Valentin at the height of his despair, and just when I thought Hazanavicius couldn't steal from anything else, I was shocked to hear - sandwiched in an otherwise gorgous score by Ludovic Bource - a familar melody in the film's most dramatically climactic moment. I couldn't put my finger on where the music was from, but it seemed Bernard Hermann-y. And damned if it wasn't. Later on, while reading my Chicago Tribune, I learned that the tune was lifted from Hitchcock's "Vertigo," a film made more than 20 years after this one is set. Oops!

It's sad that the only idea someone today can come up with for a silent film is to go back and explore that precarious point in time when film was transitioning to talking picutres and some of the old guard put up naive resistance to it. Had this topic not been so wonderfully explored already both on screen (in "Singin' in the Rain") and off (with "Modern Times"), it might have been more interesting. But for all of the novelty of delivering a silent film in 2011, something essentially unheard of, it's a bit shocking that "The Artist" seems so familiar. It shouldn't, but it does.

Dujardin and Bejo (the director's partner in real life) have amazing faces for a silent film and give wonderfully nostalgic and expressive performances. Expect both to be nominated for awards, and both deserve them. They are the best part of the movie.

But when Hazanavicius throws in a few moments of sound in "The Artist," however well-placed and clever they may be, I wonder if he just couldn't fully trust that the film could carry with today's audiences without the presence of this inside joke. And in doing so, he steals from Chaplin and what he went through with "Modern Times."

Audiences will probably say that they can't believe how entertained they were by a silent film. But did they not see "Wall-E," who's first half hour was almost entirely silent and filled with pathos and poetry? Did they not see the opening, half-hour scene of "There Will Be Blood," which was almost dialogue-free? Smart audiences have demonstrated that they can handle silence in films more recently than the 1930s.

In the end, I suspect that "The Artist" will continue to charm the pants off of audiences. I'll admit that I was charmed too. But I was so disappointed that I was able to predict every major plot twist down to the final scene before it happened. Maybe I've seen too many silent films... In any case, you can call "The Artist" a pleasure to watch. But don't call it imaginative or inventive, because it's neither.

2.5 out of 4