{"id":6775,"date":"2012-02-17T20:44:55","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T10:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6775"},"modified":"2014-05-03T17:36:04","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T07:36:04","slug":"the-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6775","title":{"rendered":"The Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"theartist\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Hazanavicius’ film The Artist<\/em> is the hotly tipped favourite to blitz the Oscars this year.\u00a0 It’s certainly had a lucrative lead up in the festival circuit and during awards season, winning about 40,000,000 Best Picture prizes in the last couple of months.<\/p>\n

That the film can be taken on face value as the prototypical poncy art-house fare that the Academy loves and almost no one else watches suggests that The Artist<\/em> is poised to get the sort of backlash that Brokeback Mountain<\/em>, The Reader<\/em> and Babel<\/em> all received after their nominations for being too obtuse, too niche and too dry in content.<\/p>\n

I believe that won’t be the case with The Artist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Although the prospect of releasing a silent, black and white film in 2012 sounds like a repellant to mainstream audiences, I believe the precious few who do end up buying a ticket and watching this film will end up loving it. You don’t need to be a diehard film buff or have any awareness of the Hollywood silent screen era to appreciate what The Artist<\/em> has to offer.\u00a0 In fact, by the very nature of being a silent film, whats on screen should be universally appealling and easy to understand.\u00a0 Everyone can enjoy a little showbiz dog that does tricks.\u00a0 We are all familiar with the story of a meet-cute romance between a bigtime Hollywood star and a commoner who instantly have a chemistry together.\u00a0 And we know the character of a cigar-chomping movie mogul the second we see one.\u00a0 These are all concepts and tropes that need no words to understand or appreciate.<\/p>\n

The Artist<\/em> tells the story of George Valentin, a hotshot silent film star who is the toast of Hollywood.\u00a0 He lives in a loveless marriage but does not seem to mind all that much.\u00a0 He has the company of his loyal Jack Russell Uggie and he has the adoration of the public.<\/p>\n

Almost overnight, he is cast aside by the industry for the emergence of films with sound.\u00a0 He is dismissive of these films as a fad and is left for dead by a new generation of actors eager to show off their vocal range.<\/p>\n

The fall of Valentin’s career co-incides with the rise of Peppy Miller, a girl who quite literal stumbles upon her chance at fame.\u00a0 She and Valentin share a chemistry but their chance at love is hampered by Valentin’s marriage and his ailing career.\u00a0 The film briefly flirts with a post-modern self awareness of being a silent film but it doesn’t get too cute about it.<\/p>\n

That’s about all you need to know really.\u00a0 From this setup, The Artist<\/em> tells a sweet, simple love story that has romance, hubris, despair and redemption.\u00a0 Like Martin Scorcese’s Hugo<\/em>, I believe there will be certain scenes and characters in the film that will be evocative of 1920s cinema which audiences will feel familiar with, almost inspite of themselves.\u00a0 Thematically, it strikes a similar chord to The Illusionist<\/em>, Sylvain Chomet’s beautiful silent animated feature about an out of work magician coming to terms with the fading relevancy and appreciation of his craft.\u00a0 The two films make a nice companion piece.<\/p>\n

The Artist<\/em> feels enchanting and absorbing thanks to the stellar performances from both Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, not to mention the excellent supporting cast.\u00a0 Dujardin has a fantastically expressive face that is perfect for silent film and Bejo is attractive and classically beautiful.\u00a0 To see more familar faces such as John Goodman and James Cromwell is to appreciate how an actor must exaggerate and change their body language for silent film and gives the audience an appreciation for the craftsmanship that goes into performing for a silent film.<\/p>\n

The Artist<\/em> is more or less perfect in what it sets out to accomplish.\u00a0 Here is a modern day silent film that is nostalgic and authentic whilst simultaneously feeling fresh and accessible.<\/p>\n

Time is precious and there are plenty of forms of media that vie for my attention.\u00a0 But few forms of entertainment, be they books, films, tv shows or games, made me want to go back to the start and enjoy the experience all over again the way The Artist<\/em> made me feel.\u00a0 A truly great film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaves you speechless<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1189],"class_list":["post-6775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-the-artist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6775"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14291,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6775\/revisions\/14291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}