"The Artist"

Winter is my season for movies. It always has been. I enjoy a good summer blockbuster (What up, Inception? The Dark Knight? Love you guys.) but really, winter is my season for movies. Winter is the season of gems like Blue Valentine, like Tamara Drewe, like Biutiful, like jeux d'enfants, like Let the Right One In, like The Science of Sleep.

(I just realized that only two of those movies are in English and only one of them is American. I promise: I'm not actually a foreign-cinema snob, ok? Those are just the best of the best of the last ten years.)

This winter is shaping up to be no exception. Melancholia? LOVED it. Two separate social commentaries, elegantly spliced together into a single film, dealing with the reality of depression and the need to understand and accept life's impermanence. The message is strong and strongly delivered, the script is fantastic, the cinematography is lush and sparse by turns, and I cannot express to you how nice it is to see Kirsten Dunst actually *acting* again. Not to mention Charlotte Gainsbourg.

But I think the darling of winter 2011/2012 is easily The Artist. The trailer makes it look like a simple love story, and there is a love story buried in it, but it is so much else, and so much first, before it is a love story. The Artist is an allegory, an extended metaphor for Hollywood dealing with the internet. It is an admonition to adapt or die, but to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And it is an artfully drawn portrait of the sort of terror and absolute despair an artist feels when they feel as if they have no voice in a brave new world, or even a tired old one.

The Artist is (with two notable, and powerful, exceptions) a silent movie, shot in black and white. It establishes immediately that whatever hokiness we may see in old silent pictures of the 1930s, it is possible to effectively tell a story and engage emotionally with your audience in the medium. The story is of a star of the silent era that is hesitant to jump on the "talking picture" bandwagon, and who is ultimately nearly forced out of show business entirely. He is "saved" by a young starlet, in love with him, who helps him build a bridge between the world of his silent pictures and the talking pictures that she is such a hit in.

The allegory is clear, at least to me: pre-Internet era production types and distribution models are the silent pictures of our era; the Internet is as a big a change as sound in movies, and requires as big an adjustment to everyone involved in the business. That The Artist is distributed by the Weinstein Company, bastion of current Hollywood that it is, at first struck me as highly ironic. Hollywood understands the need to adapt, and to change, but it is making a movie about coming to terms with the need to adapt and change under the old system.

However, upon reflection, I'm not sure that it's ironic so much as it is self-preservation. The strong undercurrent of the "adapt or die" message is to be careful not to do away with the good things about old models when you do change. It is possible to effectively tell a story silently in black and white; we didn't need sound or color to do that. The young starlet in The Artist consistently recognizes the value and emotional resonance of the aging silent star's work. She cries for him, and his ideas and his vision. She understands that her medium is the future, but she doesn't want to lose the artistry of his medium. The Weinstein Company distributing this film is a broadside against irrelevancy, and it's a good one.

The secondary message of The Artist is the existential angst and terror of an artist, any artist, when they begin to feel as if they have nothing to say. The silent film star refuses to move into "talkies" at least in part because he doesn't think that people want to hear his voice. He's never told a story that way; he's never expressed himself that way. He doesn't think he can. The Artist is also the personal story of one artist facing the need to adapt or die, to find new ways to express what is inside, to be continually searching for new avenues to explore.

We, as individuals, as artists, as creators, must also adapt or die. And that is a scary prospect. We must constantly push forward, push boundaries, find new things to say and new and nuanced ways to say them. And when we, as individuals, as artists, as creators, feel stymied in that quest, the dark depths to which we fall are frightening.

This is a movie I need to own; this is a movie I need to be able to watch once a year or twice a year or maybe just whenever I feel like it. Adapt or die. Change is not the end. There is always a new way to bring your internal reality to the exterior world. Because that's what artists do, isn't it?