Movie Review: "The Artist"

We got out to see the much touted and highly acclaimed movie, "The Artist", this afternoon. As you may know, this is a movie made by a French director, Michael Havanavicius and the lead actors are also French, Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, it is filmed in black & white, and is a silent movie. At first blush, this seems like it could be a bit of Hollywood pretension, but after reading so many stories and reviews about it, I was predisposed to like the movie, and I was hoping not to be disappointed. I was not.

The movie deals with the era of Hollywood history (yes, it is a movie about movies, and there is nothing more that Hollywood likes) when silent movies were giving way to talking pictures. Some great movie stars of that era couldn't make the transition, and that is what "The Artist" is all about. By the way, an argument could be made that "Singing in the Rain" did the same thing sixty years ago, and did it better. Will people be watching "The Artist" years and years and years from now like people still watch "Singing in the Rain" today? It's an interesting question and would make for an interesting debate.

There is no question that "The Artist" is a very interesting piece of movie making, and the performances of Dujardin and Bejo are both really good. I liked the movie and can see it being a strong contender when the Oscars are doled out next month. I am still holding onto my vote for "The Descendants" and George Clooney, but "The Artist" is certainly a very good movie.

And speaking of the Academy Awards, we rented "The Help" this weekend, and we didn't much care for it. In fact, we got about a half hour into it and shut it down. Something about watching the deplorable treatment of "the help" by the belles of the 1960's South that was not something to which we wanted to subject ourselves. I know that ultimately, it is an uplifting story, and we could see that the acting was quite good. Maybe we just weren't in the right frame of mind at the time. Maybe we try it at a later date.