(This is a serious review, so if you’re looking for silly stuff, please select another post.)
I just saw the movie The Artist last night, and while I think it’s a very well-made and good movie, I was very disappointed. This has to do with two factors: one, it’s advertised as a happy-go-lucky romp with smiles aplenty, and it’s not that at all; and two, it’s way too depressing for our current economic climate. So it’s a finely crafted film, but it’s hardly the feel-good experience it’s advertised as; and that’s just false advertising. And I resent misleading advertising.
Had this movie been made during boom times, perhaps I’d like it a lot more. But then again, maybe not. I really don’t like depressing movies, and this one is desperately, distressingly depressing. The plot plays out like a cross between Singin’ in the Rain and A Star Is Born, showing as it does the meteoric rise to fame of a young actress simultaneously with the meteorite-ic plummeting to obscurity of a silent screen leading man actor. (Oh, um: “spoiler alert”.) So this actor slips and sinks lower and lower, until he’s a miserable alcoholic has-been who decides suicide is far preferable to the life he finds himself in, and he has a couple of failed attempts. Oh, but he’s saved at the last second by the rich young beautiful star actress, who has loved him all along, and with whom he lives happily ever after! Just like real life!
Actually, the problem with this movie is that his decline is way too long and painful, and it simply serves to remind me of all the jobless, homeless, hopeless people here in America because of the economy, and his suicide attempts just bring to mind all the news stories of people at the end of their ropes who kill themselves and their whole families because of the stress and distress of their failed lives and careers. And then this guy’s situation doesn’t look as bad by comparison. But it’s still miserable and depressing, and it was advertised as a happy, fun movie. Well, it’s good, but it’s not fun after the first 20 minutes. And if you show up to the movie expecting a fun, happy, feel-good movie experience, you’re bound to be bitterly disappointed. But then again, if they advertised it as a miserable story of failure and bitterness made into a silent movie in black & white, but with a completely not believable happy end tacked on because it’s a movie, maybe nobody would go see it. And that would be a shame, as it’s very well acted, shot, produced, directed, etc.
During miserable economic times, movies really ought to be escapist and upbeat and encouraging: that’s what made them so popular during the Depression. And this movie totally had the potential to be all of those things, plus magical, whimsical, nostalgic, etc.; but mostly it just served to be depressing and distressing, and I don’t need more of that right now: thanks anyway.
And why it’s called The Artist is beyond me. I know it says he’s “an artist” in a news headline at one point, but that’s hardly enough to justify calling the movie The Artist in my opinion, because the movie is completely about something else entirely: failure and misery. It really ought to be called Crossed Stars, to indicate that the pair are star-crossed lovers, but also that they are two very different movie stars on two wildly different career trajectories, passing each other in the sky: one on the way up, one on the way down. At least then it wouldn’t be a misleading title, and it also wouldn’t be such a blandly generic title, either. Also, Quiet, Please! might have been a good title, as that’s what assistant directors shout just before they begin shooting scenes when they make a movie, plus, since it’s a silent movie, it would have had a double meaning, and because the main character is being harmed by sound films, causing him to yearn for the silent days, it would have had a triple meaning. (I prefer Crossed Stars, though.)
So, you probably think I hate The Artist. That’s not true: I liked it a lot, but I was led to expect a very different movie from the manner in which it was advertised, and by using a bait-and-switch tactic to get me to see it, that really kind of ruined it for me. And that’s a shame, because it’s really well made. But it’s not much fun to watch in the current economic climate, and he only survives because some young, rich, beautiful actress comes to save him: not something that’s likely to happen to any of us, and as such, it just serves to remind us all how much more hopeless everything is for the rest of us. At least he still had a house (until he set it on fire!).
But this movie showed a great deal of potential! I’d love to see the movie I thought I’d be seeing: a romp through the boom times of the silent cinema, with a grand, lush, fun love story between these two magnificent leads, and showing how they used to do all the movie magic from that period! It sure looked like upbeat fun in the ads, but all the fun, upbeat scenes are in the ads! Maybe it would have been too expensive to make that movie, but that’s what I wanted to see. And that’s what they led me to believe I’d be seeing! But then again, in this economic climate, maybe people will enjoy seeing how the mighty are fallen in a movie (just to have them unbelievably rescued in the end). But for me, after the ads promised something else entirely, I mostly just felt cheated, distressed, and disappointed. And that’s a shame, because it really is a good movie: probably the best movie I’ve seen all year.
