“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
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