"The Artist" Spoke to Me

I resisted, and mightily, going to see "The Artist".  While I have always had an intellectual appreciation for silent films that inaugarated the movie industry and have seen most of them, from "The Kiss", to the "Musketeers of Pig Alley", "The Great Train Robbery", you name it, I just prefer it when folks talk in my entertainment.


But I have now seen Jean Dujardin receive at least two awards and found him personally intriguing, as well as to see that his movie is in the running for Best Picture at the Oscars, so I figured, what's the worst that could happen? I went, I saw, I liked a lot.




First, Dujardin really makes you believe he is a silent film star. He has a face which at one angle is Fairbanks and another Gene Kelly. Both stars had wide smiles and Dujardin,well he fits the mold. And expressive eyes.


Silent star, making beaucoup bucks and idolized by his many fans is suddenly made irrelevant by the "talkies". Just because it's an old story, it isn't a boring one. It has a soupcon of a Star is Born, in so far as the character of George Valentin crosses paths with an up and comer, but they aren't "together" through most of the movie and each seems to have a separate trajectory of his down and her up. But she watches him from afar, admiring, and then feeling sadness and a touch of love that manifests clearly only at the end.


Like Norman Main, our hero becomes desperate but he is saved, maybe because he is ultimately more amenable to help than Main, and a lot less nasty; in fact, what George is, is always likeable, even when he nearly burns down his downsized living quarters by putting a match to his old films--except one, one in which he danced with the not yet discovered Peppy.


Lately, everything speaks to me about rising and falling "in the world". And being discarded by the "new" set of shakers and movers. This actor made lots of money for the studio and then he is as the John Goodman character reminds Peppy--a "nobody".  The problem is he begins to believe it too. But that belief is mixed with a fallen pride that prevents him from seeking a solution to his changed state in life.  Most of us don't have a Peppy (and I'd hope that our earth bound saviors would have a different name!) to come in and revive us. And many of us, even if we have someone, don't listen to them anyway about how to pick ourselves up and move on to some new place where we might be wanted.


Well, here in "The Artist" there is a happy ending. There is the likelihood of love (though it is not a complete denouement of romance) and a new angle in George's career where his French accent won't be heard in Hollywood. He dances too! He can become a Fred Astaire type, one supposes, and dance with his Ginger, er Peppy.


As someone reinventing my life--and some days are more optimistic than others, today not so much--I was buoyed by George and Peppy just enough to keep my head above the water. Bravo George. And your little dog too!