• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

The Artist

That was a clip from ‘The Artist’, a film that has become a critics’ darling and has been winning awards at film festivals around the world, including a nomination for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and the Best Actor award for the film’s star, Jean Dujardin. The reason why I didn’t choose a clip with dialogue is because, well, there aren’t any. That’s because ‘The Artist’ is not only filmed in black and white in the classic 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio, but it’s also silent, with the audio coming solely from an orchestral score and a few brief moments of sync sound. But in an era of 3D, IMAX, surround sound and hi-def, how has a black and white silent film managed to capture so many hearts?

Maybe because ‘The Artist’, in more ways than one, is all about classic Hollywood. The film takes place in Tinseltown in the late 1920s and early 30s during the turbulent transition from silent films to talkies. George Valentin (played by Dujardin) is the reigning king of silent film, and initially dismisses talkies as merely a fad that will inevitably run its course. As history would show, that’s not what happened, and as talkies take audiences and the box office by storm, Valentin is replaced by actors who talk. Riding this wave is Peppy Miller (played by Bérénice Bejo), a young woman who goes from Valentin fan to extra to the brightest star in Hollywood’s newly verbal firmament.

In many ways, ‘The Artist’ is like a darker take on ‘Singin’ In the Rain’, perhaps Hollywood’s greatest musical that also covers the transition from silent films to talkies and stars Gene Kelly, who Dujardin bears a striking resemblance to with his hair, smile, charisma, and physicality. But instead of deftly shifting to verbal acting as Kelly’s Don Lockwood does, Valentin finds himself unable or unwilling to attempt the transition and soon finds himself divorced and penniless, with only his trusted driver (played by James Cromwell) and his faithful dog by his side, with Peppy, ever the fan, as Valentin’s only hope to restart his career.

Despite some of its darker aspects, ‘The Artist’ is charming, light fun that audiences of all ages should take a chance on, despite its lack of dialogue and color. The acting, even without words, is great, as are the costumes, the set design, and all the other period details that impeccably evoke Hollywood’s golden era.

Still, is ‘The Artist’ worth the fawning praise it has received from critics? In a word, no. However, critics love movies about the movie business, and they also love nostalgia for the underappreciated and forgotten films and styles of the past.

But while the critics’ celebration of ‘The Artist’ partially reflects the film’s merits, I think it has more to do with a reaction against the major technological shifts that have transformed filmmaking in the past 20 years, including the fact that it can hardly even be called “filmmaking” anymore since most movies are now shot, edited, mixed, and often created from nothing on computers.

The most questionable of these shifts is 3D. Studios have tried to convince us that 3D is as important a development as the advent of talkies. But in reality, 3D has mostly been used as a way for studios to fleece audiences with inflated ticket prices, wring dollars out of subpar movies by converting them to 3D, and fight the piracy that costs studios millions. And all for something that I find, at this point, to be ultimately damaging to the viewing experience by being distracting, ineffective, and gimmicky while making colors look dull.

While the adulation and Oscar talk for ‘The Artist’ is overblown, it’s understandable. Because ‘The Artist’ is a reminder that what we really respond to in movies isn’t technology or the illusion of depth, but stories, emotions, relationships, and, above all else, faces, and all they can tell us, even without words.

‘The Artist’ is rated PG-13 and is in limited release.