“The Artist”: Compellingly Retro

A quasi-biopic, Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist swept the Oscars with tsunamic magnificence, and deservingly so. You can’t help love the film; yet, all along, you feel the lack of something. I would not even attempt to define this ‘something’, for honestly, I have not been able to figure that out. Perhaps, I could not really identify with George Valentin’s (modelled on Douglas Fairbanks who continued to make pantomime movies heedless of the triumph of the talkies) sentiments: an adamantine yesteryear hero unremittingly resisting change. In this, Valentin seems to belong to a world far removed from ours. The feeling is intensified by the retro look-and-feel of the film. The contemporary viewers’ alienation, I believe, is intentionally orchestrated; or else, The Artist could not have been a full-fledged retro.

The Artist has captured a very important moment in the history of cinema: the talkies replacing silent films, whereby several acting careers were ruined while several were made. The Artist symbolically refers to this rise and fall in a single shot involving the staircase of the Kinograph Studios, with a stream of people climbing up and down. It is in this scene that a broken George Valentin meets a peppy Peppy Miller, newly recruited by the company, as he comes down the stairs. Apart from this scene, there is not much on the transition a part of the industry had to suffer through. However, the havoc wrought by the arrival of the talkies is metaphorically represented in the heroic battle Valentin puts up against this inevitable change. Interestingly enough, Valentin’s struggle to prove the world wrong is no less heroically melodramatic than the struggles he had so far braved on screen. And, his final predicament and recovery are rather predictable; but this does not really go against the film. This is because Hazanavicius adheres to the generic tradition of the 1920s French romantic comedy drama with orthodoxy and this deliberate stance attributes to The Artist the status of a complete retro. A postmodern metanarrative par excellence, The Artist effortlessly blurs the border between hardcore commercial and art-house cinema.


Thematically, The Artist doesn’t appeal much. But, the very experience of watching the film is rather compelling. (I’m surprised that the film did not bag a few more Oscars in the technical categories, apart from Best Costume Design and Best Original Score) Anyone who has watched the film can never forget that scary dream sequence from which Valentin wakes up with a jolt, perspiring vigorously. Again, the last scene of Tears of Love (which leaves Valentin bankrupt) where Valentin sinks into the quicksand and is buried is invariably reminiscent of Ray’s Nayak: the hero sinking into a heap of currency notes. As I have said earlier, The Artist represents a world with a different set of values, where an unpaid butler refuses to resign even after a year. And of course, Uggie, the dog! The second lead actor of the film (if Dujardin is the first), Uggie, steals the show with his humane act.


Jean Dujardin has brilliantly enacted not only a real life character, but recreated an age through his performance. The Oscar could not have been anyone else’s this year. However, what I could not understand is why Bérénice Bejo was nominated for Best Actor Female in a Supporting Role. Wasn’t she very much the lead actor?

Image courtesy: The Weinstein Company
eonline.com

‘The Descendants’: Paradise Lost and Regained

In The Descendants, Alexander Payne treads the beaten track and doesn’t once pretend to be different. Yet, The Descendants strikes you as oddly different, even if you can very well predict the end. As in case of any popular film, you stay on to witness ‘how’ the already known ‘end’ happens.

Set in the Hawaiian archipelago, the film goes beyond the 'showcase' beauty of the land to tell the story of a troubled paradise. This paradise is not just geographical, but also domestic. An extended family glued together by a covetous interest in the land it owns in Hawaii, a few acres that would fetch a fortune in the face of the burgeoning tourist interest in the place. Matthew King is back to settle a deal, while he is faced with an unforeseen misfortune. His wife has a terrible accident and goes into coma. The doctors see no hope of her coming back to life. King soon realizes that he has a bigger deal to settle: two growing daughters who he barely knows and the harsher reality of an adulterous wife, whose days, incidentally, are numbered. In short, the personal paradise of a happy family is lost to King. The rest of the film is an emotional odyssey to restore the lost paradise.

Family as an ‘affective unit’ has gained tremendous importance with the rise of capitalist economy. In fact, the family has constantly acted as a buffer countering the profound brutality of capitalism. As a source of love, affection and emotional security, the family has moved from strength to strength cushioning out, as it were, the insecurity capitalist economy has bred. In the era of late capitalism, the family continues to play a similar role, given that mobility across the globe has increased extraordinarily in the past three decades. Where there is no possibility of taking refuge in the family as such, communities of like-minded people (defined in terms of race, religion, sexual orientation, or even a homeland left behind) are being formed. Family narratives, therefore, naturally dominate popular culture everywhere. In fact, since 1994, the International Year of the Family, films and novels dealing with and actually rejoicing the ‘familial’ have been produced in considerable numbers across the globe. The Descendants belongs to this very genre rooted in the tousled matrix of personal relationships and ownership of private property. The final mission is to save the family, for that matter the monogamous heteronormative family.

The film is a tad too long; but the very lackadaisical pace goes very well with the holiday mood of the place. Mostly shot indoors, the film barely tries to cash-in on the picturesque beauty of the archipelago, sufficiently commoditized by now. And that’s a surprise. On the other hand, by almost glorifying monogamy the film also manages to deconstruct the myths of libidinous excess associated with Hawaii in the popular imagination. However, sexual debauchery seems acceptable only when it is simply physical and not romantic. King would come to terms with his wife’s sexual escapade only if he is ensured that there was no love involved in it. There is indeed sufficient moralising which, however, does not grate on your nerves, for it is not done the preachy way. All of it seems real and identifiable. The Descendants is not an iconoclastic film at all; at times it does seem regressive. But, it’s difficult to walk out midway.

If not for anything else, watch the film for George Clooney’s father-act. He enacts his vulnerabilities with so much grace that they seem natural to him. Shailene Woodley as the angry daughter, exhibiting prominent Electra-complex, does impress despite Clooney’s magnetic presence. Amara Miller provides much of the humour and how!
In fact, the casting, overall, is brilliant.

The Descendants may not create a stir at the Oscars, although it has bagged quite a few nominations. But yes, for a one-time watch, it’s highly recommended. Given that Bollywood is only churning out trash currently, The Descendants might end up conquering the Indian box-office.