Without naming names, I can say that the arguments on this forum have gotten a little...deaf. What I mean by that is that people are seemingly not listening to their opposition and then just blithely plowing forward with their own points. So let me make it clear that I am not trying to do that here. I don't think that anyone who disagrees with me is stupid or wrong (necessarily ) and I hope we can have a nice discussion.

Now, The Artist.

On what basis could it be fraudulent? Certainly not the basis of the story itself. Not unless we want to call A Star is Born, or even Sunset Blvd, the same thing. And not the characters either, unless I'm misreading my opposition. They're well-drawn, with legitimate motivations and emotions, and they're well-embodied by the actors. So I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that there's nothing fraudulent about the story itself. The film's detractors don't have a problem with the "what" of The Artist, but rather with the "how."

Alright, so presumably the problem most people have with the movie is that it is not only about silent movies, it *is* a silent movie. People seem to feel that this is some sort of gimmick that detracts from the film. And I disagree with that statement. Here are my three main reasons.

1) Filmmakers are under no obligation to use every technology available to them in order to not be a "fraud." Meek's Cutoff, which I saw recently, didn't use a theatrical aspect ratio. That's right, a modern movie about the old west filmed in 4:3. I didn't hear anyone saying the filmmakers were being dishonest. Most of us just assumed they were trying to harken back to Westerns of the 1950s before widescreen between the norm. Widescreen is not inherently better than standard, color is not inherently better than B/W, sound is not inherently better than silence, and 3D is not inherently better than 2D. It all depends on what you're trying to say, and how you're trying to say it

2) Making homages and references to the past is a HUGE part of filmmaking. Many, if not all, of our best filmmakers seem obsessed with previous films, in a way that authors of novels never are. Filmmaking is incredibly self-referential, especially in regards to style. For instance, would anyone say that the Coen brothers The Man Who Wasn't There is fraudulent? I think that's a perfect analogue for The Artist. The Coens made a neo-noir in 2001 that was shot entirely in black and white. No one screamed that they didn't have to make in in black and white because it's 2001 and we have color! Rather, people realized the style suited the subject matter.

3) The silence suits the subject matter. Form should follow function in movies (most of the time at least). The filmmakers didn't make a movie about Vietnam and decide to make it silent for the fun of it. They made a movie about the silent era, and silent filmmaking, and made it silent. It builds up to a final scene and punchline in a way that makes the previous silence important and not just whimsical. Compare it to Spielberg using B/W in Schindler's List when he didn't "have to." Not only is the Black and white appropriate, but it allows the scene with the red coated girl. And not only is the silence appropriate throughout, it allows the final line to have meaning.

So there you have it. I think the Artist is a worthy film, and I hope you think about it a bit differently after reading my post. Next week I'll be making another one about how we should all be banding together to hate The Help instead of arguing over this much better film

Your arguments are not valid because they don't meet MY criteria for validity.

This is my ANGRY FACE!!!

First off, I agree with your 1st and 2nd points very much and think it's quite silly for anyone to disagree with those outright (even though clearly, some are doing so).

The third, though...



I do see your point. When I used the word "fraudulent" (which I admittedly did not explain), my feelings were simply that the way it ends (and again, I see your point of view in appreciating the ending) is very very gimmiky indeed -- to me it felt like the whole thing was built around building to that ending, in which case a 9-minute short might have gotten the point across just as well. I don't hate the film and have no problem with anyone liking it.



You have achieved this goal. I haven't come over to your side and don't plan to, but I see your point and it's made well.



You just better not be saying the film is about a white person saving black people or about a white person who needs to meet black people to see the light that racism is bad, you racist bastard. It's about a white woman who needs to meet black people to find material for her bestseller. Get it right.

Most of you haven't seen as many 1950s westerns as I or a lot of other people. If you had, you would intuit that had Anthony Mann, John Ford, or any of the others been making a western in 2011, they would have made it in widescreen and color. Why? Because they're professionals who want to do a good job; that's one reason. Another is that they weren't immature faux-intellectuals with something to prove.



In this case, you've misread. I despised the notion of the characters, let alone bothering to care about them. They were less developed than Lillian Gish ever was for Griffith or Keaton for his own stuff, less badass and appealing than Rudy Valentino, lacking the natural charisma of even the relatively unmemorable leads in Sunrise. I thought the main guy was unpleasant to watch, which is absolutely part of my beef with this film.



So is originality. But I dunno, maybe I should be happy about this film's popularity. After all, doesn't that relieve me and other aspiring artists of the great burden of creativity? Wow, it's so much easier than I thought it would be. All I have to do is imitate an 80 year old vogue, and I'll become famous. I'd like to take this opportunity to announce my thesis: a remake of the Marlowe film Murder, My Sweet in black and white and 4:3. I'll have to find someone who looks just like Dick Powell, and I wouldn't be able to add any themes of my own because that would be veering too far from THE CLASSICS (masturbates). I better get an award for this. Oh wait, I forgot. I already made plans to come up with something original to me. Shoot. Why do I make things so hard on myself?

Just in case you're interested in how 4:3 is used for an actual purpose i.e. vertical imagery; becomes more obvious when the gun stands up straight:

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en ... 29,r:0,s:0

So again, you're reading our minds?



Actually, there's several reasons we might not reach that conclusion. First of all, Kunz never said that older filmmakers wouldn't use modern techniques, he simply said that Meek's Cutoff was made too look like the older films. That's a very different thing. Moreover, Reichart's film is furthest thing from faux-intellectual, as is The Artist. The Artist, for all its faults, never pretends to be anything other than cute homage. Whether it succeeds is a matter of interpretation, but it's not the film's fault if critics are making more of it than they should. You can accuse those saying The Artist is a great film of faux-intellectualism because that's possible, but you can't accuse the filmmakers of that.



Explain to me a single element of War Horse that was original in any sense and I'll listen to your argument here. Not to mention that there's nothing creative about Tintin. You defend Spielberg's right to do what you damn other films for doing. When Drive didn't adhere to traditional storytelling, you used that to say the film was bad and Refn was a joke. Come on. At least be consistent.



Interesting. And in case anyone else is wondering what the ocean looks like, here you go:



Quit talking down to people, dude.

Cute homage? The entire second half of the film is the guy trying to commit suicide, and that's what you pass off as cute?

I find it amusing that you accuse me of talking down while you are the one who defends films that no average moviegoer would enjoy. Recommending Drive and the Artist to a general audience? That's talking down. And unless your aim is to promote those films for other people, I don't know why you argue for them in the first place.

And no, I won't bring up specific examples because your only interest is to use them as a basis to insult me. You know that my Winchester example is legitimate, yet you mock me with a stupid picture of an ocean. Give me a motivation for citing specific examples, then I'll do it.

Umm, yeah. I've talked to many people who have liked both of those; I took a few different people to Drive who normally wouldn't see anything out of the norm and they either liked or loved it. It's not like I'm saying everyone needs to watch and love Killer of Sheep just because it's a favorite of mine. The user ratings on every site I can find express high praise for Drive. By what basis are you saying general audiences won't enjoy it?

And I guess I'll apologize for wanting general moviegoers to expand beyond bullshit that tops the box office every week. I suppose you see no use for music that's not top-40?



With Drive, of course that's my aim. I think it's great and I want people to see it. Is there a problem with that?



I mocked you because you were acting like you're talking to a bunch of 5th graders. Most of us here are film fans and understand 4:3. Have you seen Meek's Cutoff? How are you so sure it's not used for "actual purpose"?



I don't understand this.

Guys...did anyone read my first paragraph?

A pleasure to see that yet another thread has gone in the same direction as so many others. An inspired though fascistic little challenger to the status quo is all it takes.

Originality is oftentimes just creative synthesis being confused for daring. Creativity does not equal originality, etc..

Yes I read it, and I believe I responded both directly to your opinions and without being at all out of line.



The same. Everyone I know was either baffled or underwhelmed. They all recognized that it was trying to be different, and they resented it for that as much as I did. Actually, a few fellow students did like it and predicted a nomination for best picture, but those guys are pretty quiet these days.



Aren't those the same user ratings that place Inception as the 5th best film of all time?



No disagreement here. War Horse and Tintin have been nearly as ignored as Drive. My aim is the same.



Few films I've seen use vertically aligned imagery the way Mann does in Winchester. You'll find that with a lot of old movies, you can crop them into widescreen and not really miss anything. Winchester is a stark exception to that rule. Much of the art is lost when the vertical aspect is de-emphasized (this is also not true for any of his other westerns). So Mann made thematic and visual use of the form at a time when the form happened to be in vogue. But if you're gonna go ahead and use it at a time when the form is not in vogue, there must be an absolutely essential reason. Unless the art of Meek's Cutoff is completely lost in widescreen, I don't buy it's necessity. I certainly didn't see that necessity in Artist.



Maybe you misunderstood or I just didn't explain properly. I wasn't just trying to demonstrate what 4:3 looks like. I was referring that specific image from the film. When the younger guy stands the gun up 90 degrees, his head and the head of the Indian trader sitting down look like points on a graph, the gun being the Y axis. It's a visual foreshadowing of who will acquire the gun next. The man with the lower ground tends to win in this movie.

I'm sorry. I'm done.

Also, originality does not always equate to superiority over unoriginality.

Doubtful that any of us would agree on what "originality" means, anyway.

Sorry James.

The Internet has Godwin's Law, Reelviews has Mann's Law (or perhaps Nolan's Law).

Please don't get me wrong. But could you please stop jerking off for just a second. I don't see how this is any useful contribution. I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

It's the first part of my post to which you're responding, I gather. If so: you're right, what I typed was unnecessary. I should have gone about my business.

If the second part (starting with "Originality") is what bothered you, I don't know what to tell you. I believe it, it isn't "jerking off".

Either way, I'm not offended. My posts aren't always constructive and it doesn't bother me to be told to shut up.

I'm going to attempt to respond because I genuinely respect the opinions of a bunch of the people who really liked the film and want to get a better understanding of why they like the movie. Hopefully, I can avoid talking down to people, sarcasm for no reason, and masturbation. That last one will be tough, for sure.

Incidentally, I'm writing a blog post about this and comparing it to the Married Life montage from Up. One is a successful homage, the other a bloated, self-important one.

I don't have any big issues with the film itself. As I said in the Last Movie thread, it's inoffensive and safe. I didn't necessarily enjoy the movie, but it's something that would be pretty difficult to hate. My issue is with the existence of the film at all. I agree with MGames in that if you want to use silent technology in 2012, it should have a purpose other than mimicry. I think we can all agree that the film has no grand ambitions above replicating what silent films look like. Preserving the past for the sake of preserving the past isn't valuable. This is why I've been comparing it to Hugo, because that film took the time to show us why preserving the past, for a reason, has value. The Artist mimics the silent films of yesteryear in order to show us what those silent films were like. We have an entire generation of silent films, from that time period, that already exist to show us what they were like. It's like a painter making an impressionist painting in order to show us what Monet's work was like. They already exist! We know that already! We can simply look at a Monet painting in the same way that we can watch a Chaplin film.

If the opposition argues that the general public isn't familiar with silent films, or that they won't seek out older silent films, then my rebuttal is that we should move on and accept that tastes have changed with technology. We don't need to tell people what they should like. That's about as pretentious as it gets.

The bottom line is I just couldn't take the movie at face value. As a stand alone silent film, I think it's a pretty average one. As a movie that's been hailed as "important", "an achievement", and is a potential Best Picture winner, I claim it to be a fraud. Maybe my issue is with those reacting to the film, not necessarily the filmmakers, or the film itself. That's entirely possible.

This is the part I disagree with so strongly. You shouldn't need to file a request with the Film Gods to use silence any more than you should to use black and white.

Once again, it's not like this is a movie about (say) the Vietnam War which is arbitrarily silent. It's a movie about the transition of cinema from silence to sound which uses, as its medium, silence in the beginning and sound at the end. Its form follows its function. The silence is not just "mimicry," but has a function with the plot and with the subject matter.