My two cents on: The Artist

And then he puts a glass down with a thud.

There are many reasons why The Artist may be a contender this year, one of them called Harvey Weinstein, and the fact that people like him will not accept to be called crazy.

But it is not so much the courage to go for it that impressed me. Neither was the acting, or the plot.

It was the mustache.

I'm kidding.

There's a certain revenge-of-the-nerds pride in seeing a silent black and white movie woe the masses. There is definitely appreciation for Jean Dujardin's independent eyebrows. And most of all there is obsequious reverence towards the reconstruction of the talkies' advent. Carbon copy Singing in the Rain.

I don't read reviews before I see a movie. I don't even like to see trailers most of the times so I usually try to enter the theater a virgin, unless the gods forbid me of course. I knew for example that Bella Swan falls in love with a vampire, and a warewolf, and can't act. Some things are just common knowledge. But in this case I foresaw nothing, so when it became apparent to my oblivious mind that I was about to be witness to a tale of good looking people in Hollywoodland in the late twenties I peed in my pants. I live in a 1944 building built for screenwriters at Paramount, so you can appreciate my being drenched into the specific subject matter.

But, as I am a film graduate and cinema technician first and foremost, the key to me here is  the use of the craft's main tools that had been long lost beneath piles of crane shots, photoshop brushes and the void in Kristen Stewart's eyes.

First of all the 4:3 frame format. I didn't notice it right away, I was kind of raptured by the Metropolis-esque opening. But something was indeed missing, or quite differently concentrating the action to the core of my sight span. It's a little touch, but very thoughtful towards the roundness of the watching a silent movie experience.

Secondly, a few minutes into the movie Mr. Mustache, our hero, has breakfast, and dinner and lunch with his wife, sometimes intent in reading a paper. The camera angle, the focal length, everything screams Citizen Kane, as it should I guess when you're paying homage to cinema. For a minute I was kind of hoping a superimposed room would start spinning over their faces, but the filmmakers didn't go there, and all in all upon second consideration I'm kind of glad they didn't as it made the homage more graceful, and there's only so much you can do when you want to approach Orson Welles.

Some time later Mr. Mustache meets a girl while shooting a scene of a movie and she gets under his skin, without saying a word. So humorous I am. The moment is sapiently told through the same means of the moment itself. Hold on, it's a mind-fuck. He is a star, she is an extra and they have to interact all through scene #20. A dolly across a room full of people dancing. We get to observe all the numerous takes, along with board in between them, directly from (meta)camera point of view as we sweep around the ballroom, and giggle at how time after time he doesn't seem to be able to get his mind off of her and onto acting. Delicious. I almost cried.

And then there was the time I had to gasp for air. Executive producer John Goodman tells Mr. Mustache that talkies are the future of movie making but he refuses to compromise his integrity as a silent movie artist for what he believes to be just a fad. So he stomps back to his dressing room. And then he puts a glass down with a thud.

Sound and camera movement are at the heart of the modern cinematic craft, if you consider sound not merely as speech but as a way to get the audience to emote. At the utmost peak of the art behind The Artist is the capability of forgetting about the heaps of crap loaded over  filmmaking during the years and restore that simple way of expressing ideas through the moving image and silence, or sound. That very sound of silence, as opposed to background music, is molded as punctuation that enhances the image, which in itself already needs to be more expressive than ever because it has to tell a story without the help of any spoken word. And very few cards either. To be honest I was really impressed at how little these actors really were aided by words, both spoken or written.
But no one should hear the details from me. One should tap dance their way to the theater.

Not saying everyone out there should consider making silent films now, there has been a hundred years of evolution for a reason, but I feel like thanking Michel Hazanavicius for surprising me with a truth I had somehow lost.