"The Artist" Review

The world is abuzz with Michel Hazanavicius’s movie “The Artist.” It has won a wide array of accolade from critics and regular movie-goers everywhere. Specifically, it was prized with a surprising five Oscars and is the first silent film to capture the Best Picture award since “Wings” in the fist Academy Awards presentation in 1929. All of this praise is more than deserved.

Sometimes, despite its rave reviews “The Artist” is derided for its innocent nature. This scorn is thoroughly pretentious. Hazanavicius’s movie is innocent but that is just what makes it great. There is always a place for dark and intense movies like Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” but there is just as much a place for light and funny ones. It dials in on the better angels of our nature and lets them loose. It makes you smile both with its humor but also with the reality that there is good in the world, untainted by the evil that surrounds.

But all of this would be thrown to waste were the movie not deftly executed. And this is why it earned its other Oscars. Jean Dujardin, whom I had previously seen in “OSS 117 Nest of Spies,” takes his art to a new level in his portrayal of George Valantin while Ludovic Bource’s score is sublime as it accompanies the mastery on screen. So, if you had not yet gathered from what I have said so far, this movie is worth seeing for your whole family, I guarantee it.