- Listen to the entire program<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n
![\"Rethink](\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\")
<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong><\/p>\nJonathan 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. <\/em><\/p>\n
Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n
The Artist<\/strong><\/p>\n
That was a clip from \u2018The Artist\u2019, a film that has become a critics\u2019 darling and has been winning awards at film festivals around the world, including a nomination for the Palme d\u2019Or at this year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival and the Best Actor award for the film\u2019s star, Jean Dujardin. The reason why I didn\u2019t choose a clip with dialogue is because, well, there aren\u2019t any. That\u2019s because \u2018The Artist\u2019 is not only filmed in black and white in the classic 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio, but it\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n
Maybe because \u2018The Artist\u2019, 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\u2019s 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 B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Bejo), a young woman who goes from Valentin fan to extra to the brightest star in Hollywood\u2019s newly verbal firmament. <\/p>\n
In many ways, \u2018The Artist\u2019 is like a darker take on \u2018Singin\u2019 In the Rain\u2019, perhaps Hollywood\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s only hope to restart his career.<\/p>\n
Despite some of its darker aspects, \u2018The Artist\u2019 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\u2019s golden era. <\/p>\n
Still, is \u2018The Artist\u2019 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. <\/p>\n
But while the critics\u2019 celebration of \u2018The Artist\u2019 partially reflects the film\u2019s 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 \u201cfilmmaking\u201d anymore since most movies are now shot, edited, mixed, and often created from nothing on computers. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
While the adulation and Oscar talk for \u2018The Artist\u2019 is overblown, it\u2019s understandable. Because \u2018The Artist\u2019 is a reminder that what we really respond to in movies isn\u2019t technology or the illusion of depth, but stories, emotions, relationships, and, above all else, faces, and all they can tell us, even without words. <\/p>\n
\u2018The Artist\u2019 is rated PG-13 and is in limited release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}