The Artist

Harvey and Bob Weinstein must have a crystal ball, otherwise how do you explain why they took a punt on a French made film detailing the emergence of ‘talkies’ during the 1920’s, filmed in black and white with no mainstream Hollywood stars, oh, and it’s silent as well.  It is hardly a sure fire hit but a hit it has no less become so are the Weinstein’s very lucky, or very savvy.  I’d like to think that they knew exactly what they had on their hands because a film of The Artist’s calibre is too good to be a fluke.  The reason for this?  The Artist shows a beautiful understanding of those core emotions of love and loss.  Such a sad film has never seemed so beautiful and tragic and ultimately not very sad at all.  That really is the masterstroke here, a film that shows a man reduced to absolutely nothing will have you walking from the auditorium with a smile on your face.  Now that really is “wow” cinema.

It is 1927 and George Valentin is a huge star of silent cinema, the darling of the Kinograph Studios.  With his marriage in tatters, George finds himself taken with a young extra, Peppy Miller.  He gives her some advice and a shot in one of his films. Almost as soon as he does the ‘talkie’ film emerges George Valentine cannot make the transition, he is forgotten, a relic of the silent era.  Peppy shoots to stardom and now George must live with being a nobody.

The Artist really is unique, in the sense that it has been released in an era of CGI and special effects overload and instead of being ignored or laughed at it is being heralded with award nominations and rave reviews.  The Artist is not a revelation of a film; it will not change your life or even present you with a scenario or characters that you have not seen before.  But it is a truly exciting film, as, for the vast majority of people who will pay to see this film, it will present them with a type of film they have never before seen.  I for one was genuinely excited sitting, waiting for the lights to go down and any film that can generate excitement really needs to be celebrated and appreciated.  What sets it apart from films that we have grown accustomed to is the courage and the love it took for the filmmakers to make a really simple but elegant film that hasn’t any interest in titillation or box office receipts.  This film plays as a homage to an almost forgotten and cruelly neglected era, an era of Griffith and Gance and Sennett, an era of true excitement and unrest within the film industry.  The Artist embraces this, using the history of film and the cruel fact that many silent film icons found themselves on the scrap heap once the talkie became the dominant player in Hollywood as inspiration. 

While giving great credit to the filmmakers, the stars need to be spoken of just as highly.  Jean Dujardin, as Valentin, and Berenice Bejo as Peppy are just phenomenal with some of the best screen chemistry that I have ever seen.  Dujardin brings a warm strength to Valentin put the power of his talent is that he is able to strip all that away as the film wears on, revealing a very proud but terribly fragile human being.  It is this humanity that makes the audience love him, the arching of an eyebrow or that killer smile.  Bejo, a most beautiful actress, uses her charm and beauty to inveigle her way into Hollywood and once she has achieved fame we see this wonderful heart of gold.  Mention must also be made of James Cromwell.  I have always been a Cromwell fan, loving nearly every performance I have seen him in, mainly because of his wonderful voice.  In this film we never hear him utter a single word and this film stands out for me as being one of his best screen performances.  His devotion to Valentin is so subtly told that it cannot help but melt your heart, especially when Valentin has to let him go. 

Director Michel Hazanavicius shows a great understanding of his craft but also of how films were made 80 odd years ago.  He frames scenes beautifully, utilising the 4:3 framing rate and using mirrors and props so well, look for the scene of George spilling his whiskey or Peppy dancing with George’s coat, both are really beautiful moments.  He also delves into the darker aspects of early cinema, as shown in George’s nightmare about the coming of sound and when George explores Peppy’s home, the use of angles and colours showing a certain influence of the masters of Expressionism.  Yet, it must be said that no matter how much attention to detail has been paid, The Artist still looks like a film that was made in the 21^st Century.  It seems too bright or too clear, the cinema of the 1930’s and 40’s characterised b the contrasts, the dominant darkness in colours and hues.  Unfortunately this is not addressed in The Artist but it is also a feature that will not bother the vast majority of those who will be sitting in a dark auditorium.

The beauty of this film is its treatment of simple and universal themes such as love, regret, loss and redemption.  You have to see this film to truly appreciate it, to see the magic as the performers really do make the film come alive.  Once the first few minutes are over the viewer slides into the silent mode of film and you really don’t miss sound or dialogue.  The music must be mentioned here, the wonderful score falls and rises beautifully with the film, it flows in perfect symmetry with the images.  With no incidental sound or dialogue to distract the viewer, it only highlights the score and allows you to appreciate it so much more, you have no distractions to take you out of the story.

I know that this film will not spark a revival in silent cinema and, though I am a fan of silent cinema, I am quite thankful for that as we can look on The Artist as a fragment of something wonderful and beautiful.  This will allow the viewer to appreciate the film as unique, unique in this era.

9/10

Bane's Pain

I see there’s been a lot of talk of audio tweaking on The Dark Knight Rises because audiences are finding it hard to hear what Bane is saying.  I also see that Christopher Nolan is apparently taking a hard line stance that he will not do an audio dub on Bane as he wants the audience to work on enjoying this film, he doesn’t want to spoon feed them plot points etc.  I have to agree with Christopher Nolan on this, it is a far more pleasurable cinematic experience when you have to work out for yourself what is going on, Nolan’s own Insomnia being a prime example of this, or David Fincher’s Zodiac.  

On seeing the trailer and other bits on the net I have to agree that Tom Hardy’s raspy vocal is quite hard to decipher and I am beginning to side with the majority vote on this.  I know I said in the above paragraph that I am on Nolan’s side but that was in terms of making the audience work a bit to enjoy his movies.  I think you have to draw a line when it gets to the point where the audience cannot understand what an actor is saying.  If you can’t make out what the lead baddie is saying then you really are shooting yourself in the foot hoping that he will take the audience on a mad ride in this film world you have created.  For instance, audiences in America were given a booklet to help translate the Dublin slang that was used in The Commitments.  Basically, sometimes you have to help audiences out, not help them along, but help them out.  I don’t want Hardy’s Bane speaking in pure and unbroken Queens English.  I want that heavy, gruff voice that so suits the character, but maybe make him a bit louder, or maybe make the action around him that little bit quieter.  It is plain to see that he is speaking through a mask so as an audience member you can’t expect to hear everything he says in perfect tones but the harder it is to hear and understand him then the more distracting it will become and the less inclined viewers will be at making an effort and straining to make out what he is saying.

If Bane is left as is, Nolan might be doing more damage to the film than he thinks.  Diehard fans will stick with it throughout no matter what but not everyone is a fan, not everyone will want to see this film but will probably be made go with a partner or a friend or someone.  It’s those people, the uninitiated, that need to love this film for I think Batman fans, especially Nolan’s Batman fans, are already going to love this film and have loved it since it was announced.   I know that I have!

Indiana Jones and the Cash Cow

Anybody get a chance to watch the Indiana Jones movies over Christmas?  All four were on and I purposefully missed the first three so I could sit down and watch part four again.  From the minute I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I hated it, in fact it made me angry.  I went to see it twice in cinema, as I couldn't believe that a series of films beloved across the globe, and my personal favourite franchise, could have been so poorly concluded with the nonsense that was Crystal Skull.  On second viewing it didn’t get any better!  But, and I know there are more out there that did this, when it came out on DVD I bought it.  I have even toyed with getting it on Bluray even though none of the others are yet available.  I put in on my shelf next to my trilogy box set (one of my friends believes this to be the ultimate act of betrayal - didn’t apostles deny Jesus three times, why cant we Indiana Jones devotees deny Crystal Skull???)  Well, I'll tell you why, because it isn’t all that bad.  This viewpoint is based entirely on getting a chance to watch it again with a group of housemates on TV last night, BBC 1 to be exact.  One of the lads thought it to be the best of the four.  One of the girls thought it was great fun.  My own girlfriend didn’t see what all the fuss was about, it was Indiana Jones doing exactly what Indy does best, jump off things, fight with people and make funny faces.  It was this that made me think again, as she had a very valid point.  The first three films, Raider, Temple of Doom and Last Crusade are some of the best adventure movies ever made, full of fun and quite a lot of moments where you have to laugh out loud.  I looked at Crystal Skull again.  Okay, the bike/car chase through the college, the discovery of Orellana's grave, the Marion Ravenwood/Mary Williams revelation and the Mayan temple are all classic Indiana Jones moments, compare them to the barroom fight in Raiders, the rope bridge moment in Temple of Doom and the shared love interest of Indy and Henry snr in Last Crusade and these Crystal Skull moments really do deserve to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best of Indy's adventures.  But something is still wrong!

Now, can we blame the "Inter-dimensional beings" completely for the failings and fan boy ire?  I don’t think so.  Certainly, the greatest problem with Crystal Skull lies in the alien presence.  You see, Indy always chased things that were believable, things that were rooted in fact.  The Arc of the Covenant and the Holy Grail are both things mentioned in the Bible.  The Sankara stones are also true religious items and the fact that these three mcguffins were all real grounded the Indiana Jones adventures just enough to make them believable and exciting as viewers had a frame of reference or an identifier.  As for the Crystal Skull, George Lucas bought into something that has no real cultural significance at all, UFO's.  The Crystal Skull of the film is the most unexciting thing Indy has ever chased after so why did he use it?  This is where I think George was trying to be very clever.  It really could have worked out but unfortunately it also proves that George really is in it only for the money.  You see, with Harrison Ford now being in his late 60's, Crystal Skull couldn't be set in the 1930's or the 1940's.  To adequately explain his age, the new Indy film had to be set in the 1950's and the late 1950's at that.  Using the same theory that made the first three such storming successes, George decided to use the dominant film type of the 1950's as the inspiration for the tone, style and story of the film, namely the B-movie.  Raiders, Temple of Doom and Last Crusade were all set in the 1930's and so George Lucas used the template of the serial action adventure film for all three and golly did he really get it right.  Unfortunately the same logic he used on Crystal Skull failed miserably as he took Indiana right out of the world that he had created for him and put him into this new, sci-fi universe that made Indiana look even older and more out of date than he was.

It was painful to watch Harrison Ford do Indy exactly like he used to, just this time surrounded by CGI nonsense.  Plus, there are about three characters too many in the film.  Ray Winstone's Mac is not necessary and Jim Broadbent is completely redundant also.  Mutt is also a character that should have been jettisoned in an early draft.  Marion Ravenwood proved to be a brilliant sidekick in Raiders and if they wanted her in Crystal Skull it should have been as a sidekick and not as a sideshow.  So what makes Indy 4 fun?  Nostalgia, pure nostalgia.  People, fans, wanted Indiana Jones back on the big screen and we flocked to see it, making it one of the biggest box office hits of the year and the biggest box office success Harrison Ford has had in nearly 15 years.  It seems that money drove this film, George Lucas must have seen the return of Rambo and Rocky and John McClane as a indicator that maybe, if Indiana Jones burst back on the scene that he would turn a healthy profit.  Of course this he did but at what cost?  Has the legacy of Indiana Jones been destroyed and tarnished?  No, it hasn’t, one bad film cannot ruin the memories of three excellent ones but it certainly re-ignited the great debate of when is enough, enough.  Did we need Die Hard 4 or Lethal Weapon 4 or Terminator 3?  No, of course not, but they were made and they all made money and that ultimately governs whether a film is good or not. 
There is not one single film fan who can say, on first seeing the silhouette of Indy against the military vehicle in the opening scenes, that they did not feel more than a little excited about a new Indiana Jones film.  Unfortunately that feeling did not remain at the end and that truly says whether the film was good or not.  In fact, this film has possibly introduced a new generation to the character of Indiana Jones, children the same age that I was when I first discovered Indiana in the mid 1980’s.  I really hope it has, that kids will go out and find the first three films as, for a swan song, Crystal Skull hits a bum note.  It wasn’t a shambles of a film, it was a missed opportunity, it was a needless film but it did bring a smile to my face.  Indy was back.  I just wish it had been for the right reasons!