What's this, a silent film about the transitional period of silent flms turning into the talkies? The ironic meta-ness of this film, "The Artist" is quite charming, and uses quite a few cinematic nuggets from the film era of the late 1920s to tell the story of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), star of many silent films, and Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), a up-and-coming dancing starlet, who become somewhat intertwined in the business of making movies as George's star descent and Peppy's star ascents. Jujardin and Bejo have nice on-screen chemistry, and Valentin's dog is great.
The film has lot going for it, though the middle act is dramatically a bummer, purposefully so, otherwise, with such a light touch in tone and style, the film more than makes up for it with such a faithful use of the silent film genre to tell it tale. One theme that resonated with me is when it examines, broadly, the notion of whether or not the meaning of art comes from the message or the medium, or a confluence of both.
I give it 3.5 stars, or a grade of B+.
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