The Artist's Disappointing Missed Opportunity (Film Review)

The Artist is a love letter to silent films in addition to the Golden Age of Hollywood.  It is filmed entirely in black and white, primarily silent—using classic techniques such as title cards to tell its story—and pays homage to many films of the classic era (from early silent films all the way to the 1940s with films like Citizen Kane).  I love watching silent films—even the poorest quality ones have something to offer in terms of telling the birth and evolution of cinema.  But when I come across a great one, a silent film with passion made by people showing zeal and ambition to this newborn craft, it is an absolute treat.  Heck, my very own blog is named after one of the greatest, most innovative silent films ever created (as well as one of my favorite films): Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr.

That's why despite being a good film, The Artist can be such a disappointment to watch.  A love letter to classic cinema can only get a contemporary film so far.  While reviving an obsolete filming style is certainly refreshing, The Artist lacks the key components that make great silent films so remarkable: ambition and innovation.  Yet the film almost did have such qualities, being right within its makers’s grasp, only for them to let it slip.

One scene.  There's one particular scene in The Artist that emphasizes how much higher it could have rocketed in quality.  The film’s protagonist George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is standing on top as a famous, successful silent film star.  Yet at the turn of the decade, George is introduced to the next big craze: talkie pictures.  George believes sound films to be just a fad and stubbornly refuses to partake in them.  It’s here, a little over thirty minutes in, that George has a unique nightmare.  George begins hearing sound where there was none—a metal comb dinging as it drops, a dog barking, a phone ringing, showgirls giggling outside, etc.—yet he himself cannot speak, no matter how hard he shouts.  Yet when he wakes up, the film returns to being a completely silent film right up until the very last scene.

But what if it didn't?  What if The Artist’s filming style actually transitioned alongside its story’s world?  As talkies are further embraced by the public, the world itself begins to actually blossom into sound.  People who embrace the future begin speaking within the film—the objects they interact with also making noise.  On the flip side, people who reject progression and change such as George remain silent—still utilizing the older film style’s techniques to communicate and interact.  Never before have such contrasting styles interacted alongside each other throughout a film.  It would open the doors for fresh, new storytelling.

The more exaggerated, mugging features of the silent-era characters interacting with the more subdued, talkie-era ones.  The talkies being able to quickly communicate their thoughts while the silent ones are stuck using the slower and more limiting title cards.  Maybe the latter’s more sluggish form of communication gets ignored as they can’t keep up with the talkies’s conversations and are disregarded.  There's one scene where George’s wife asks why he refuses to talk, which in this version would work beautifully as a double meaning towards his refusal to work in talkies and literally not speaking.  Another scene has George arguing with his shadow—wouldn’t it be cool if the shadow talked back at him with the actor’s actual voice, calling out his pride and stubbornness?

The combination of these styles meshed within one world would be innovatively fascinating.  The approach is similar to Pleasantville, which dealt with the meshing of eras in both a story-driven and cinematic style.  And just like Pleasantville, such a vastly creative approach for The Artist could easily turn into a butchered mess if in less-than-capable hands.  Perhaps that’s why the film settles on merely being of solid, yet conventional quality as a straight-forward tribute with minimal experimental attempt (though its use of title cards to misdirect in the finale is deviously clever).  Whatever the reason, the missed opportunity is still a dang shame.  When I first saw The Artist in theaters and the dream sequence occurred, I escalated in excitement over what it appeared to be attempting—only to be disappointed that it never attempts it again.  What could have been great settles instead for being good.  And good is good, but when good could have been great and was close to achieving such, it ends up also being disappointing.