There is no shortage of mediocre to bad Oscar winners in the ninety-two years of the institution –in fact each decade seems to have at least one inexplicable offering that won Best Picture, whether it be Out of Africa, Driving Miss Daisy, Shakespeare in Love, Crash, or Green Book -and a handful of others that no one is too crazy about either. This past decades’ banal Oscar heavyweights included The King’s Speech and Argo, but one film I regularly see getting lumped in with them is 2012’s Academy frontrunner The Artist. More than that, I see it often labeled a bad movie and one of the worst Oscar winners in recent years.
I really liked The Artist when it initially came out, and I wasn’t alone. From what I could tell its’ critics’ ratings were very good, the reviews I read overwhelmingly positive, even a cynical youtube channel like “How It Should Have Ended” couldn’t help praising it. But the further away from its win we’ve gotten and the more it’s receded in public consciousness (as is the case with many of even the most beloved Oscar winners), somewhere along the way it’s gone from “both a surefire crowdpleaser and a magnificent piece of filmmanking (Geoffrey McNab, 2011), to “one hundred minutes of empty throwback charm” (David Ehrlich, 2017). But why has critical and popular opinion soured on the film? Why is it being consigned to the bottom rungs of a legacy of movies with far lesser inductees? Do the naysayers have a point? Is The Artist really so bad?
I adored the movie when I first saw it back in 2011, but re-watching it I realize timing accounted a lot for that. It was right in the middle of an early phase of my cinephilia as I was really into Golden Age Hollywood, and this film with its black and white photography, melodramatic romantic plot, dedication to the silent form, and aesthetic love letter to that period played right into my tastes. The Artist truly belongs to another era, which might be why it’s somewhat unwelcome in the one it was made in. As I see it, there are four major focuses to the backlash. The first and perhaps most significant is that The Artist is through-and-through a Hollywood tribute movie. As much as it does critique some aspects of the star system and the silent to sound turnover, director Michel Hazanavicius romanticizes that environment quite a bit. It’s very much a Star is Born kind of story, in the vein of the original more than any of its remakes, up to and including the fact that most aspects of the male leads’ downfall are self-inflicted rather than the fault of the system he works in. In its simplicity and lack of much complex or critical commentary on a world we know wasn’t as pleasant and charming as depicted, it’s very easy to be cynical and decry the film as being dishonest -in spite of The Artists’ deliberate idealized portrait as such being just another part of its homage.
The second area of backlash is in the fact it is a silent movie, which modern audiences already aren’t used to seeing, let alone dealing with the kind of baggage that comes with the style of the old Hollywood silents: the overacting, the swift storytelling and broad character types, the emphasis on physicality, the transition devices, and even the way intertitles are used. The Artist commits to all of these so wholeheartedly that only the pristine cinematography alludes to it not being an actual film from the 1920s (as a note, the film is directly inspired by the 1928 film Show People). There’s nothing certain commentators like more than to dismiss a technique as a gimmick, and the silent presentation of The Artist offers a perfect target for such bad faith criticism.
But another perhaps less acknowledged aspect of the backlash is that The Artist is French -from a French production company, directed by a popular French comedy director, and headlined by a pair of French actors Hollywood had never heard of. Years before Parasite, The Artist dared to be an awards sensation made by a foreign culture. And more than that, for it to be so strongly about Hollywood (even though France had its own extraordinary silent industry worth celebrating), it could feel a bit like America for a change being made the victim of cultural appropriation. And let’s not deny the anti-international film bias that does exist in the movie fan community.
Lastly and an issue of far more recent years, there’s the matter of that big ‘W’ that opens the film. Harvey Weinstein didn’t have anything to do with The Artist himself, but as the Weinstein Company was it’s American distributor, he was its greatest campaigning champion come Oscar season, and the film unfortunately joins the ranks of so many others to be linked to that monster. But like any movie produced by him or Miramax or the Weinstein Company, his involvement shouldn’t speak against the films’ legitimate merits. I mean, his name is on The Lord of the Rings trilogy after all, which disgusts me, but it doesn’t stop those movies from being masterpieces.
In a way all of these factors are tied into a much larger one: the fact that The Artist won Best Picture, since when it’s been nigh impossible to separate the film from that status. Apart from those who do love it and in the English-speaking world, The Artist is remembered almost exclusively for its’ Oscar wins (five including Best Picture, Director, and Actor). I’ve noted how the animosity towards the film is almost purely retrospective, how critics and audiences generally seemed to love it upon release, and only since the Oscar wins has is accrued such poor reception. So let’s try separating it from the initial acclaim and look at The Artist as just a movie.
And as a movie, The Artist is really good! Its’ dedication is admirable and the fruits of that dedication impeccable. Despite what some may think, it’s not easy to make a silent movie –the rules are very different as to how you convey a story without dialogue. The acting must be different, the writing must be also, as does the staging. It’s not merely a matter of filming in black and white with dissolve transitions and mime-acting, as anyone who’s watched a lot of silent film can tell you. Hazanavicius understands these conventions and how they can be more an opportunity than an obstacle. Script is secondary, words are secondary. The emotional power and dramatic weight rests firmly in the hands of Ludovic Bource’s score, and the capabilities of the actors. And both Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo master the physical and expressionistic requirements of the form, conveying visually as much if not more than dialogue would allow. Dujardin especially, who I still believe deserved every Best Actor award he won for this role, is exemplary at every stage of this titanic movie stars’ downfall. And the pair have excellent chemistry.
But Hazanavicius also uses the form to interesting effect, commenting on anxieties about aging, irrelevance, and self-consciousness through the brave new world of the silent to sound transition. Many stars like Dujardins’ George Valentin did not survive that massive industry shift, and while the film doesn’t address that reality with transparency, it is still a present apprehension that manifests through vivid dreams and hallucinations. The movie is not wholly silent remember, and its’ tactful use of sound in Valentins’ nightmare where he’s unable to speak in a world of noises is both a clever choice and a stupendous metaphor for an anxiety attack. Similarly you have a non-effect in the conspicuous absence of intertitles during one conversation that we gradually learn is another haunting illustration of those fears of a world moving on into a new era without you. And of course there’s the permanent switchover to sound in the finale when the key to the whole picture is revealed. It’s a sharp and potent way of using the nuances of an art form to service an intimate character study.
I agree though that the plot is pretty thin. It’s Singin’ in the Rain by way of A Star is Born and maybe a bit of All About Eve; that same story chronicling the rise of one (usually female) star at the same time as the fall of an older (usually male) star. This is no original movie set during the olden Hollywood era by a long shot. And yet, it doesn’t feel particularly derivative, perhaps because of how humble and earnest it is, not drawing especial attention to such narrative sources. Above all, The Artist is such an infectiously charming movie; a love-letter but such a genuine, well-intentioned one. And the fact that it is a French film rather than an American one, not directly tied to the Hollywood system keeps it from being pretentious, conceited or self-congratulatory. But where did that narrative to the contrary come from?
All of this has been drowned out by that looming Oscar phantom in any discussion of it. People can’t think back to this film on its own terms. The Artist is merely that French silent film that won a bunch of big Oscars in 2012 that few of its critics have seen since if at all. Its’ genuine merits don’t matter next to that successful Oscar campaign, the insubstantial lasting effect it has had in Hollywood (the blame for the expectation of which lies squarely in the films’ hype machine during that awards season), and the fact it is Hollywood yet again awarding a movie about the movie business (though in reality The Artist was the first and thus far only major Oscar winner to be unambiguously a Hollywood love letter). But as with most unpopular Oscar winners, the disdain is as much about what the film was up against as the film itself. So lets’ go back to the films of 2011 briefly and review The Artists’ Best Picture competitors.
I think whether you like The Artist or not, we can all agree that the roster of Best Picture nominees for 2011 was relatively weak. In a year of movies that included such critically acclaimed darlings as Drive, A Separation, Melancholia, The Skin I Live In, Shame, and David Finchers’ Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, that none of them were represented by the Oscars’ top category is a notable oversight. Hell, some even thought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 had a chance (it didn’t), given the longevity of the franchise and how much of a generational phenomenon it had been. Instead, the films the Academy chose to honour were:
The Descendants –a very middle of the road Alexander Payne drama with moments of greatness and compelling emotional resonance, starring George Clooney in honestly one of his better movie performances, and then newcomer Shailene Woodley. It’s modestly interesting and thoughtful; and being shot and set in Hawaii obviously makes it a very nice movie to look at.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close –Easily the worst of this batch of movies, a highly manipulative, massively disingenuous, and unbearably twee film about a precocious child attempting to reconcile his fathers’ death on 9/11. The bones of a profound story about a childs’ hopeless search for meaning are there, but It’s handled with such poor reliance on quirkiness and naked ambition for Oscar Gold that it can’t help but be terribly off-putting.
The Help –Yeah, this movie doesn’t hold up, to the point even Viola Davis regrets making it. It’s not just the white saviour thing and that the film goes out of its way to showcase the goodness of a lot of its white characters; the story is pretty tepid and in classic Hollywood fashion overlooks the darker realities of racism in the 1960s Deep South. At least it’s got a few good performances though.
Hugo –Martin Scorsese’s first and only foray into family movie territory, the charming story of an orphan boy in a Paris train station meeting and solving the mystery of Georges Melies is just as much a love letter to the movies as The Artist, though in the opposite fashion (an American idolizing early French cinema). The films’ extreme fascination with 3D might be dated, its’ sentimentality however is not.
Midnight in Paris –I continue to struggle reconciling my affection for this movie with the awful creep who made it, but I really can’t ignore how sweet this ode to the artistic legacy of Paris is, and how much I relate to Owen Wilsons’ protagonist and his journey to come to terms with the present over an alluring nostalgia for the past. Gorgeously romantic in the right ways, I can’t help but be swept up by its world and virtues.
Moneyball –A dreary baseball movie told from the management side of things that is only saved by a decent Brad Pitt performance and a modicum of smart dialogue by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. Neither good nor bad, I honestly don’t know how this ended up nominated, but it does make me appreciate Ford v. Ferrari a little more in retrospect.
The Tree of Life –Regarded by many critics as Terence Malick’s masterpiece, this mercurial and poetic if likewise tiresome and tedious meditation on the meaning of life represented through both grand and intimate lenses is unlike any other movie (certainly to be nominated for Best Picture), with curious themes and extraordinary visuals that are mesmerizing in a wholly unique way.
War Horse –One of the best modern Spielberg films, equal parts endearing and intense, and absolutely beautiful. I’ve written on it before so I won’t expound too much, but it’s both a very good war film and a very good animal picture, cast with a wonderful ensemble and conveying a tone that’s just the right amount of earnest.
So in consideration of these films, I can’t help but maintain my opinion that The Artist was the best of them. Though in fairness, while there are a few very good ones in there, I certainly don’t see a movie that had enough support from audiences and critics for The Artist to be an upset. I know there was a lot of enthusiasm from the critic community for The Tree of Life, but it never really had a chance of winning, being far too dense and unconventional for the tastes of a lot of Academy voters and audience members. The Artist was not a completely unworthy winner, it was certainly not a blight on the Academys’ record; but it’s win is demonstrative of how an Oscar campaign and win can hurt a film.
In looking back, I found that a consistent complaint related to the film seemed to be regarding its Oscar campaign and how it inundated the media to a degree that was tiresome. The first seeds of discontent began to sprout with its heavy awards campaign in late 2011 after an astounding festival debut. As Ehrlich observed: “By the time it swept to the stage of the Kodak Theatre the following year, this peppy riff on Singin’ in the Rain had become regarded as the kind of milquetoast, masturbatory nonsense that can turn an awards season into an endless slog.” Not every critic shared that viewpoint, but the excessive awards campaign dampened its reputation, and has only continued to do so in the nine years since its cast and crew (including of course, Uggie) gathered happily on that stage for the last time. And as usual the finger of blame can be pointed directly at one person.
Once again, it comes back to Harvey Weinstein, who may be more than anyone else responsible for the shift in public opinion towards The Artist, because he’s the one who almost single-handedly made it ubiquitous with its Oscar campaign. And because of how overwhelming that campaign was, as well as the other factors I mentioned and the films’ relative feel-good safeness in comparison to more challenging works, it was extraordinarily easy for critics and internet commentators to disavow this heartfelt homage. Weinstein may be locked up now, unable to sully any more films with his awards obsession, but this episode really shows how the Oscars can be used to a movies’ detriment. How even a very good movie like The Artist that can deservedly win Oscars and make history in doing so, can suffer for that success.
In rewatching The Artist for this piece, I’ll admit my opinion on it went down a tad, certainly from where it was when I was still a novice movie fan. It is rather predictable and light on substance, and I can admit the title is a bit pompous. But I do still love it, and feel as far as Best Pictures winners go, of the past decade I’d rank it only behind Parasite, The Shape of Water, and Moonlight. I echo A.O. Scott in his assertion in the New York Times that “it may be something less than a great movie, but it is an irresistible reminder of nearly everything that makes the movies great.” The Artist was done dirty by the Academy, and subsequently the world of film lovers. It deserves another chance, and someday I hope it gets one.
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