'The Artist' and Art

Has anyone seen 'The Artist'? I'd really like to. It's the first widely-released silent film since Charlie Chaplin pointedly released one in the late 1930s...
So everybody's screeching about Academy Awards. However, as expected with everything that is old but new again (or just old or new and not completely shitty), there's a backlash: the film is lovely and nostalgic, yet it's not living up to expectations of an older generation. It's provoking wide-spread discussion, but there's also a popular movie out right now with a dog in it. And there's another one with a horse in it.*

'The Artist' is also French.

That anyone has to have these discussions is why I don't look forward to watching those bloody awards ceremonies anymore. (As a matter of fact, the singular reason to watch the next telecast is Billy Crystal.) First of all, without having seen it, I can tell you it'll be wonderful. It's black and white, it's stacked with legitimate talent... and it's a silent film! Nobody's done one of those in about seventy years. It's not going to live up to the expectations of an older generation because this isn't 1927. However, while silent filmmaking is considered an old and outdated technique, it was the filmmaking technique on which Hollywood's original studio system was founded. It's an era worth a period piece, given that it has made 26 versions of 'Pride and Prejudice' possible.

In the article that I read that inspired this entry, Steve Ross, a history professor at the University of Southern California and author of Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics and whose 1998 book, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America, says that in harder times, tastes run to lighter fare.

“People right now, in hard economic times, need a little romance, a little joy," he says. During the Great Depression, MGM came out ahead of the other studios because of their fluffier offerings, and Ross claims we're headed in that direction again.

“We have a return to conservatism. We have people looking at the past as the golden age. In times of crisis, we look to the past for inspiration and I’d say the same is true for filmmakers as it is for politicians.”

I would say some filmmakers look to the past for inspiration. Other filmmakers just take chunks of the past and add Megan Fox. Then they do it two more times. I also think most people have tired of remakes, and remakes are not the what happens when you're inspired. Remakes happen when you see something someone did and you think you can do a better job. Very few people do a better job, and most of the films that get remade were mediocre to begin with.

More on mediocrity...

My oldest daughter loves 'The Notebook'. Many women love it. I'm not a fan of the genre so I'm all 'eh'  (which drives her - she'll be M. here - crazy). But I get it. I get why people like the film. I think there are lots of things wrong with romantic films to begin with (they're overwrought; the women are hysterical and unreasonable; the men have to, for example, build huge houses on no budget to prove their devotion, etc.) But 'The Notebook' is one of the best romantic movies released in the past ten years.

But the problem is that for every 'Notebook', there are 24 'My Best Friend's Girl's (and Kate Hudson's in every goddamn one). When one 'hits it', the entire industry pisses itself while making the mistaken assumption that 'it's something in the air'. It's the influence of the President's wife. The entire female populace is ovulating en masse due to the newest flu vaccine.

'The Notebook' was a good story with a pretty solid script. The characters were likable and the actors were very talented. That's why it worked. Women weren't looking for a 'chick flick' at that particular moment. Women are always looking for films to watch, and many, many women watched this one because women happen to like a good story about a relationship that lasts through the ages. (Men aren't completely heartless arseholes and many of them appreciate that story too.) M. now watches mostly romantic movies and I think she compares most of them to 'The Notebook', mainly because it was the first one that she ever watched that spoke to things she holds dear - love, the sweetness of romance, the longevity of a relationship, and old people (she's very close to her grandparents). And Ryan Gosling.

So while I don't think it's a good idea to get so wrapped up in the semantics of an on-screen relationship (mostly because too much 'artistic license' has to be taken to make it interesting, as real relationships are mundane and not worth writing about in the day-to-day), I do think that the nature of any on-screen relationship matter very little if the story is good, the script is tight, and the filmmaker can make the viewers like the characters.

This is old news that no one seems to be internalizing. The most successful films stand up years later. They are subtle and beautiful, rich and complex. The characters are ordinary people who could be anybody you know, yet their circumstances cause them to react in ways that burn a tableau into your mind forever. Maybe 'The Artist' harkens to a time long ago, for some people, when films did that. Maybe it'll do it for younger people now. Maybe it's just cute and touching and charming to watch. I'm sure it will be as long as Kate Hudson isn't in it.








*And Viggo Mortensen isn't even in that one.