The Thousands

“Conflict is the essence of drama,” the old screenwriter’s saw goes. Which may be true, but, at least as far as contemporary film goes, it means the characters are unhappy all the goddamn time. Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist has its share of drama, conflict and unhappiness but the striking thing about this film is not that it’s (mostly) silent or that it’s black and white in a historically accurate way. It’s that people smile throughout.

Michel Hazanavicius’s now ten-times-Oscar-nominated film is the story of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent movie star who rejects the incipient era of sound film. We watch his tragic, hubristic fall as we simultaneously witness the rise of talkie starlet Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo). Dujardin looks the Platonic ideal of a dashing 1920s movie star. Equal parts Clark Gable and Gene Kelly (who wasn’t in silent pictures, but the resemblance is too strong not to note).

People are going to talk about The Artist being an homage to a forgotten era; the way the performances skilfully walk the line between the naturalism that is demanded from contemporary film and the exaggeration that characterised silent ones. The score, the costumes, the whatever. What, to me at least, makes The Artist most unique is that it’s an unapologetically joyful film. Which is a rare thing, particularly now. This exuberance seems to demand the technical affect and not the other way around. Plus, the dog is fucking adorable.