The Artist

I finally got around to watching "The Artist" tonight, and I have to admit, it's been a surprise.  Undeniably a good looking film, well designed and performed ... it turns out to be the story of a vain, wealthy, privileged, and deeply self-entitled cad who is meant to represent a figure of tragedy because he doesn't actually get to keep his privilege and entitlement in the face of being pretty much of an un self-aware nit.

I don't know, it's difficult for me to feel extraordinary pity for a character who so arrogantly presumes his right to extreme wealth and adulation.  It's surprising, too, that a film presenting this guy as sympathetic - with the Great Depression as a mere backdrop to his personal "loss", no less - claimed quite so much acclaim.  Maybe its arrival before that Quarter Billionaire tried to claim his own "right" to run our country was a time we could be more attuned to the bitter pains of those who must endure on ordinary persons' terms, having fallen from the heights of popularity and prosperity.  Maybe we just really are that uncritical - or ... as I fear ... just that interested in wealth-porn to watch something like this as if it actually is emotionally fulfilling.  A man goes from riches not even to rags, but to ordinary suit-wearing and failing to pay his faithful SERVANT, and we're supposed to pity the guy because he had a nice smile in that gregarious first scene.

Erm.

This guy fires James Cromwell, people.  Not a character who'll gain my sympathies, ever.  Cromwell, who can wring more pathos out of one heel kicked in the dust than the entire rest of this film.  Cromwell, whom I wanted to see slap this guy and say, "That'll do, pig."  Cromwell, who because of what *his* character is - not what the Valentin one is - carries all the heart and integrity in this thing.

The main character, George Valentin, is dubbed "The Artist" because he stubbornly and egotistically pitches a conniption when talkies come along, and he doesn't want to do them.  An actor who's never bothered with "art" before, suddenly decides to become a director and producer, not because these are things deep in his bones, but because he wants to thumb his nose at innovations he fears and resents.

This isn't the wellspring of art - all debate about the relative merits of advancing technologies aside.  This is the shrill hubris of a guy too well accustomed to his own power and position to understand that they are not not a gift, but a blessing, and that we must cultivate our blessings.  A cheeky grin at his own bigger-than-life-sized portrait in the mornings and the occasional pat for a dog which has apparently lived its entire life in service to this guy's career too (he never shows any affection for his wife, presented as a villainess because she fails to be charmed by him and is "old" and "ugly" - which is a whole analytical movie review in itself, as far as insulting and reductive themes go) do not, for me at least, simulate a worthwhile character, never mind one I empathize with or find appealing.

The film does look great, and apart from a very minor hemline-height issue or two, is impeccably designed and produced.  Some of the shots are exactly as good as the director clearly got excited about their being.  It's hard not to feel the filmmakers in the room, though.  Strangely, I find this film's comparatively minor (if you don't consider silent film to be a conceit, which I don't) conceits actually more intrusive than I did the gimmick setup for this year's Anna Karenina, centrally because I couldn't invest as much in this film in the first place, George Valentin being the character he is.  ... and that says a great deal, because it's not like I have much self-identification for insufferable lady of privilege Anna, either.

Also - seriously - was there NO other image he could delusionally prod himself with in a drunken slump than a whole hallucinated tribe of (miniature, of course) African jungle warriors, trying to rouse him to be a success again?  It's one thing for a film MADE in the silent era to go in for this sort of quite-literal diminutization, stereotyping, and subjection of minority characters to a white man, but ...  This one wasn't made NINETY years ago.  That wasn't a cute moment.

The charm on this character struck me as false as the charm of Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise always has, and the astounding selfishness accompanying his "downfall" (seriously - again - I'm supposed to cry because he has to sell a vase and heedlessly destroys his own work (in which act, not for nothing, he ruined other people's property and put lives at risk)?) is hardly endearing.  He remains self-centered and self-indulgent to the last reel, which, inexplicably, is supposed to leave us laughing and overjoyed.

Strangely, this appears to have worked - on *most* viewers.  I've never heard a bad word spoken about this film.  I can't find a solitary protest against its wildly outdated themes, nor a breath about the irony of casting a white man of such wealth as the figure of tragic(omedy) in this economy.  It depresses me that critical thoughtfulness about the economic and racial issues seems to have passed this film blissfully by.  My brain is really twisted, now that I have seen this thing - not least because, in the entire film:  not one single artist is characterized.  A bewildering blockbuster, and very frustrating.