The Artist (1/5 Stars)

The Artist (1/5 Stars)

The Academy’s annual fuck you to the movie-going public

The ultimate downfall of the artist “The Artist,” is not that its technical attributes are infinitely overrated, it’s that its characters are unlikable and the storyline is infantile, pretentious, and utterly boring.

The plot of “The Artist” couldn’t be simpler. A silent movie star is on top of the world in the middle of the 1920s. He chance meets a young woman who he thinks has got “it.” He fights to get her into a small role in a movie. Then talkies come into play. His career takes a fall as the young woman’s career skyrockets. They switch places. He is driven to unemployment and alcoholism and she saves him because of love, or whatever. That’s the movie. It doesn’t get any more complex than that. In fact, it is just like those old movies from the 1920s in that it isn’t complex at all. This, I would argue, is not only a detriment to this movie but also to the great movies of the 1920s, most of which I have actually seen and do not hold great enthusiasm for. (Good God! What did HE JUST SAY!!!!)

Yes, I said it. The movies of the 1920s, all those black and white silent movies, weren’t the hottest shit ever produced. They were simplistic and amateurish in every technical sense and lacked coherent writing, character development, and what we would call today, realistic acting. This movie is true to those movies in that sense. “The Artist,” is as bad as they were. (I will admit that the quality of stuntwork found in 1920s movies can sometimes parallel or surpass today’s action movies. However, “The Artist,” has no stuntwork. It merely channels the worst excesses of early cinema when nobody knew what the hell they were doing.)

I would posit, first of all, that the very idea of making a silent movie in black and white does not help tell a story. The moviemakers of early cinema made silent movies because they literally couldn’t make them with sound. They would if they could have. It isn’t natural to stop a scene in a movie to read text. It interrupts the flow of a scene and should only be used to break a scene, i.e. to tell a joke. There is such a lack of jokes in this movie that the intercut subtitles become rather tedious. It should also be noted that there is indeed an art to silent movie subtitles, in that the shorter they are, the better. This movie, for all its silent movie glory, does a piss poor job at its subtitles. Some are so long it takes more than a few seconds to read. That is not good. I don’t care if nobody but me has seen a silent movie to know it or not.

The second awful thing about this movie is that it has been done before a million times. The lack of originality is stunning. An established movie star discovers a young talent and their fortunes switch places. Isn’t that the plot of “A Star is Born,” a movie that has already been remade three times (and could be again next year by Clint Eastwood and Beyonce). How about a movie that follows a silent movie star with a ridiculously cheesy smile as he transitions from silent movies to talkies? Have you seen “Singin in the Rain?” Hell, you could draw out a laundry list of shots “The Artist” rips-off as if it were made by a couple of college students making a silent black-and-white version of “Singing in the Rain” as a joke. And gee, where have I seen that cigar-chomping really angry movie producer from before except every other really bad movie ever made involving a movie producer. Even the dog seems entirely cut and pasted from the “Thin Man,” series. Here’s an idea: Go and see those movies instead of this one. Nobody would care about “The Artist,” if it weren’t riding the nostalgic coattails of much better movies. In a few months, this movie will be completely forgotten. Its most memorable quality could be that you can’t say that about most potential Best Picture winners.

But I suppose what really bothered me about, “The Artist,” is its glaring pretentiousness. To the watcher of movies it is without a doubt that the celebrities of the early movie era were egotistically deranged to the extreme. All the Kardashians put together wouldn’t be able to match the delusional importance of some of these creatures (see “Sunset Boulevard”). However, this movie actually treats those early movie stars as if they were indeed so much more important than regular people. Take the instance where the movie star meets the new girl. She simply stands next to him, smiles, and is rewarded by a front-page news story that reads, “WHO’S THAT GIRL?” Really? I mean, who in their right mind (besides movie marketers) would ever care. Or how about the idiotic scene where the movie star imparts some useful advice as to how to become a movie star. “You need something that nobody else has,” he says and then takes a pencil and marks her cheek with a fake mole. Before you know it, she shoots to stardom in a movie titled, “The Beauty Mark.” Oh, all those shots of the audience just laughing it up and adoring her, you would think she shit marble. 

I would argue that if all it takes to become a great movie star is a fake mole on one’s cheek than being a great movie star doesn’t mean jack squat. When the movie actor became suicidal after losing his great movie star status, I can truthfully say I did not care. To me, the attempt was less tragic as it was an unnecessary act motivated solely by vainglory and egotism. That silent movie soundtrack can wail all it wants. I’m not going to be fooled to feel for that shmuck. The woman disgraces feminism in going out of her way to save him. And Hollywood betrays its odious incestual love of itself by declaring the movie as one of the best of the year.

I stop myself now and wonder whether I am taking this movie too seriously. I suppose I cannot ignore the fact that this movie has been nominated for 10 Oscars. If it hadn’t I probably would have given it three stars, remark that it was slightly funny at parts, and easily gone about promptly forgetting it. But 10 Oscars???? Are you fucking kidding me? Did nobody see any other movie that came out this year? “The Artist,” no mater what anybody says, is not a radical choice for a Best Picture nomination. In fact, it couldn’t be safer. The style is extremely old school, the story has been told a thousand times, its characters can be found in a multitude of movies, and it glorifies the movie industry and its “stars” to point where it becomes as boring as propaganda. It could very well be the least original movie of the year. Go ahead make it Best Picture. See if I care. It’s not like you can make me see it twice.