The Disorder

So, in what will become a regular segment here at The Disorder, I now present the inaugural installment of our Minimally-Competent Reviews™.  These will be reviews of movies, tv shows, etc.  Why minimally-competent?  Because trying any less on these would translate to simply not doing them.  Thus, I will do no research and shall entrust the accuracy of the reviews to my increasingly failing memory.

Without further adieu, here’s my attempt to review The Artist:

We’ve all been hearing about this film (“movies” involve the likes of Tom Cruise and–now apparently–Liam Neeson) for some time.  It won several Golden Globes and will likely do extremely well at the upcoming Academy Awards.  Movies like this make me laugh because I get the sense that most people see them only because of the buzz generated.  I saw The Artist last night in a packed house, but you’d imagine that most of the people there had seen neither a silent film nor the two main actors before.  But hey, you become cooler once you’ve seen it. 

Interestingly, the same kind of popular sentiment that is currently driving the masses to see The Artist is masterfully satirized by the film itself.  The Artist takes place between 1927 and 1932.  The beginning finds our hero, silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), at the height of his powers.  Of course, in 1927, silent films were commercially viable.  By the early 1930s, however, the silent film star was a relic of the past age.  The mob wanted “talkies” and Hollywood dutifully obeyed.

I have no interest in summarizing the plot.  I will say that Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo (as the rising young actress Peppy Miller) were both electrifying.  Their characters’ great friendship did not come across as any more forced than the typical real-world relationship often is.  Casting relative unknowns in these main roles immerses the viewer totally in the world that director Michel Hazanavicius creates.  Without the human voice to rely on, the actors are forced to utilize mere gesture and expression.  But the result is just as stirringly communicative as the finest Shakespearean verse.

The Artist will be parsed for decades to come by film experts far more intelligent than I.  My own contribution to that corpus is only that, from beginning to end, I was moved, entertained, and awestruck by this masterpiece.  For once, the public buzz found and did something right.

~E

Disorder Review:

5 Microphones out of 5.