Stage and Screen Recommendations

The Artist…

Here’s what’s predictable about The Artist:

The plot
The characters
The romance
The Jack Russell and
(spoiler alert)
The revolver

Sorry about that, but you’d have guessed on your own—you would have—the whole delightful movie is entirely predictable. And yet. It’s also surprising. Profound. Not just entertaining—though, no doubt, it aims to entertain. But The Artist—a film about the end of silent films (all day long I’ve been trying to come up with an equivalent—I can’t believe it’s not butter! I can’t believe they’re not talking!—and coming up short)—has bigger points to make about genre, form, voice, and art.

So how does it work? It’s simple, really. The actors—James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, John Goodman, Bérénice Bejo, Jean Dujardin (and his little dog, too)—play the story for truth; carry on, in short, as if they can hear each other (never mind us) and therefore deliver performances that are wonderfully authentic. And the upshot? We can only conclude that form—which evidently liberates even as it constrains— serves art, and not the other way around. Plot and effects and genre be hanged—aim to tell the truth as you understand it, with conviction, and your story will hit its mark.

As if that weren’t enough to think about, and admire, the viewer leaves the theatre with still more to consider: What’s the difference between a cliché and an archetype? Can an artist pay homage, and deliver something that feels wholly original in the bargain? How to touch the universal nerve? The answer in each case has to do with full-on commitment and attention to detail. The Artist is a story about making art—a silent movie about one man’s struggle to find his voice! Isn’t that a gorgeous irony?—and will somebody please help me come up with a clever equivalent? Something better than I can’t believe it’s not butter, sugar, magic…

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Tags: Bérénice Bejo, James Cromwell, Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, Penelope Ann Miller, The Artist