Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Artist
Posted by PaddyH on 8 January 2012 - 9:48pm.
When:
Sunday, 8 January, 2012
Where:
Picturehouse @ FACT, Liverpool
Comments:
An audacious and brilliant silent film directed by Michel Hazanavicius and starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. Dujardin is George Valentin, a hugely successful silent movie star caught by the onset of the talkies. Bejo, the director's wife, is the aspiring star Peppy Miller, who idolises Valentin and who forms a bond with him on one of his last successful pictures. As her star is in the ascendant, his is on the wane. She becomes one of the big stars of the early talkies while Valentin struggles on the shelf. Dujardin and Bejo (who some of us saw in the French spy farce OSS 118) are sensational in the lead roles and Hazanavicius' direction really brings the silent era to life. There are obvious parallels with Singin' in the Rain - Dujardin is a ringer for Gene Kelly - but it is a remarkable achievement by a talented group of people. This really deserves an Oscar.
The Audience:
FACT is our art house joint and an oasis in the city centre, so it attracts a wide range of people from the beardy hipsters writing novels on MacBooks in the coffee shop to our 11-year-old daughter who was transfixed.
Food & Drink:
Popcorn for the bairn, coffee for me and the Mrs and Wasabi Peas in honour of the mighty Beany from this here blog. (He brings them to Mingles).
It Made Me Think...:
Two of my last three visits to the pictures have been this and Scorcese's Hugo 3D. It can only be downhill for the rest of the year.
Perfect!
All the reviews are spot on - I've never read the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw lavish so much praise on a film. Although I went at 12.35 pm, the cinema was full and the audience was as silent as the film, entranced by the beauty of a perfectly-realised evocation of the silent era. You don't need to spot all the filmic references to enjoy it either. Dujardin is impossibly handsome, too. I cried - and I wasn't the only man to emerge into the light claiming something in my eye - and I laughed, especially at the wonderful dog, Uggy. Not a wasted frame - go and see it or miss the best film of decade, probably
Agreed
I was skeptical before I saw it but it's a genius film.
I agree you don't need to be a film scholar to appreciate it either: it works on a purely visceral entertainment basis. The monochrome/silent thing is NOT a novelty, it's a medium for some first rate physical comedy and dancing. See it on the big screen.
Proper old-school ratio too! 3:4 I think?