March 26, 2012

  • The Artist

    I just watched the Artist while on the plane back from Hong Kong.  It was, in a word, superb.   Craft.  There are some things that one can recognize as a wonderful example of craftsmanship and artistry upon contact. 

     The score emotes with a deft touch – lilting movements and playful strands of sound – at times waxing playful, pompous – at others threatening and violent.  The music is from a time long gone – when the sounds of the score needed to tell the other part of what the motion did not.  They worked together to complete the cycle of sight and sound.

     Talk.

    The word is used again and again, and expresses the critical conflict in the film, the revolution in technology that would redefine Hollywood, and the difficulties that the disruptive technology would inflict on the starts and heroes of the silent picture world.

    Out with the old, in with the new. 

    The inexorable march of progress is unrelenting.  As of now, I stand at the forefront of my field – not ahead, no, I wouldn’t dare say that – no, just with the others that work with new technologies, trying to learn how best to treat my patients with ever evolving devices, some revolutionary, some merely improvements.  But already I can imagine the days where my ways are old, and outmoded.

    The female lead is Youth.  She is the female talky film star that represents the wave of change that ends his stardom and his way of life.  And in a way both bittersweet and beautiful, Youth is first aided by the Artist even as she deposes him. 

    At the beginning of the film, at the height of his fame, he helps make her – subtly yet importantly crafting a piece of her that would help define her stardom.  And, at the bottom of his descent, she finds him a new way forward by demanding that they work together for Kinograph films (Kino-move, graph-draw/picture/image).

    And then, the Artist must struggle with his Pride, for that hubris was the poison that barred him from riding the tide of Sound’s arrival.

     At a more general level, the Artist articulates something very profound about the male identity – even at age 24 I perceived something in my own heart – even then, I realized that the day would come when I wasn’t very useful anymore, when I had nothing left to offer the world, or those that I loved.  If one day, I had the pleasure of being married, would a younger, brilliant woman have any use for the outmoded, irrelevant man that I would one day become?

     And that is a part of what the Artist struggles with in dealing with living and being loved by Youth.  Grace and affection tendered by Youth to the Artist is a poignant, even devastating reminder of his own ineffectuality.  When he discovers that everything he had sold had indeed been purchased by Youth (an act of her love and devotion – and worship), he finds that he cannot accept it – going home to his own, burnt out hovel.

     One of the scenes that really amazed me was his nightmare, where objects in the movie made sounds as they moved.  It was such a clever portion – I almost wished they let the movie transition to a talky – but that wouldn’t be true to the films ethos.  

     Whereas movies like Dreamsville moved from black and white to colour (to visibly show the change), this movie did not use such a trick, for which it should be applauded.   In a sense, it kept true to the initial premise, only allowing sound and speech at the end, completing the Artist’s emergence into the age of Sound, and affirming the mutual affection that Youth and the Artist share for one another.

     As couple of final thoughts, I love the 20s – the dance, the fashion, the excess, the dizzying heights of capital and industrialization.  It is very much what the PRC is going through now, we have yet to see whether a bust will follow the rapid expansion of the middle class and the capital intensive infrastructure projects that parallel the like developments in the US 20s.

     We forget so quickly that Rockefeller and his peers sponsored art that celebrated industry and development – a time when the smokestack represented progress and rapid urban expansion desirable.   Statism may or may not be desirable, but it was not so long ago that N. America was, in effect, statist – and in that period, industry and government colluded – though at a personal level not in cross-ownership.

     Last thought –

     A different era without sound in movies – in capture – required actors and actresses to express nearly the whole of their persona through body language.  There’s so much richness to body language – something that we sometimes forget in the midst of advanced camera techniques, CGI, speech and mood music, that the center of human drama is human.  All the other dressing should enhance, not distract from the experience and sharing of humanity.

     I cannot give up Sound.  As much as I adore visual beauty, sound still strikes me more deeply.  I hope I never have to do without any of my senses – but sound is so beautiful to me.  The voice of loved ones, the sound of my mother’s singing – I miss it…

     The Sound of humanity. 

     It is a kind of grace to hear art.