The Film Experience

Yesterday I was asked by a fellow writer to be quoted on a "who will win?" Oscar piece at another site. I said yes without hesistation but why are we always jumping ahead? We don't even know the nominee list yet! One particular way in which I find it hard to relate to my fellow Oscar pundits and even a lot of kindred spirit movie fans is this: Year after year there seems to be a enthusiasm for and a willingness to concede the race to a presumed frontrunner before nominations are even announced.

This "it's over before it's begun" atmosphere enables, no, encourages hostility and backlash against popular films and performances. The annual Oscar carnival, meant to be a celebration of Hollywood's perception of their own best work, becomes decidedly less magical and fun once the atmosphere turns hostile. It's both more fun and more accurate to view the Academy Awards as a two phase celebration which has numerous winners. In the first phase dozens upon dozens of films and talented individuals compete to find placement in traditionally five-wide shortlists. Several people emerge as winners, drawing attention to films and performances that are sometimes really worth the moviegoer's time. In the second phase the nominees go all Highlander with their golden swords. There can be only one.

But why rush to the decapitations?

George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) in "The Artist", a silent film superstar threatened by the "talkie" revolution in Hollywood

The film that has been labelled the winner before its secured a nomination this year is The Artist. Many have already said it's a done deal though nomination ballots don't go out for another 9 days. So the backlash has begun. It's an inevitable fact of frontrunner status as any year teaches us.

On backlashes, nostalgia and scarce originals after the jump

I recently read a hostile piece by Scott Mendelson which is sneakily called "Why The Artist deserves to win Best Picture at this year's Oscars" because Mendelson is anything but happy about the prospect. He makes several clever arguments for (i.e. against) the film such as these...

In a culture ever-more gripped by the need to replicate art of the past, ever consumed by nostalgia for the entertainment they used to consume in their youth, The Artist is the perfect choice...

In a studio system so afraid of originality at the top levels that they relentlessly remake, reboot, and rehash films and properties for no other reason than that the token recognition factor gives them a marketing edge, The Artist is the perfect choice...

The argument about a lack of originality is true enough IF you feel predisposed to disliking the picture... but it's also so broad as to take dozens upon dozens of other well reviewed pictures down with it: Hugo, most prominently, which also celebrates art of the past and is derived not from Scorsese's imagination but from Brian Selznick's book, but also all of the sequels and reboots and remakes and literary adaptations of the year which is roughly all of the pictures considered to be in the running. Two of the only three films still in the Best Picture mix that feel like "originals" are also retro/derivative: Drive is based on a book and borrows heavily from an 80s aesthetic and Midnight in Paris is ironically about our problematic relationship with the past and our own tendency towards nostalgia. Isn't The Tree of Life the only contender that qualifies as something like a true original?

The only real Best Picture contenders not based on previously established materialMendelson's principal argument would be a much better one it it had been applied to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. That film is far more representative of our current franchise-dependent, excessively familiar movie culture. To equate The Artist with "safe" pre-branded entertainments like an annual school year at Hogwarts or movie versions of literary phenomenons like The Help or Dragon Tattoo or a reboot of Planet of the Apes is a significant breach of the spirit of generosity and open mindedness that a moviegoer or critic should feel when he or she enters any theater.

The facts are these: The Artist was a risky project for all involved. It is a French made film with no stars about an artform of the past that only people over the age of 90 have any real memory of (everyone else's "memories" are constructed imaginations filtered as they are through academic interest, nostalgic programming, or cinephilia rather than contemporary experience). To suggest that we shouldn't revisit anything of interest to previous generations is akin to saying that we should stop looking at Shakespeare for good, isn't it? (I'm aware that I've frequently argued for a 10 year moratorium on Shakespeare but not because I don't think revivals and reinventions have worth, only because there are other dead playwrights worth considering if we're looking for classics to revive).

In short -- and I'm surprised this isn't obvious to every one -- The Artist is not a rehash of something that is excessively familiar and safe that we enjoyed in our youth. That'd be The Smurfs for many of us and no one is rooting for The Smurfs to win Best Picture. Since the median age for AMPAS skews older, the safest option for reliving their youth is The Rise of the Planet of the Apes. That one should bring back vivid memories to people who were teenagers or 20somethings in the late 1960s... i.e. many Academy voters.

One argument that Mendelson makes which is far more insightful and compelling from an showbiz-appeal standpoint, is this:

In a Hollywood where pundits and bloggers endlessly wonder why the stars of yesterday aren't somehow magically every bit as famous and successful as they were in their peak years, The Artist is the perfect choice."

I giggled sheepishly when I read that. Perpetual success, as if you can never lose something you once earned, is surely a fantasy for many Academy members (as it is for human beings in general). And lord knows I personally qualify as one of these "pundits and bloggers" since I hang on to my beloved actors and filmmakers well past their peak popularity. I'm loyal! Plus, I actually believe it's the right thing to do. Talent should always be considered more sacred than popularity and the tastemakers should be fighting for it rather than hopping on bandwagons. This is why I can't stomach Oscar predictions masquerading as critics awards. Critics are supposed to be fighting for quality, not attempting to guess popularity. Nor can I get behind the notion that in-the-moment popularity or lack thereof is sacrosanct when it comes to celebrity, something to be interpreted as deserved. There are PLENTY of older stars were once "hot new stars" who would have a lot more to offer popular culture than, say, Vanessa Hudgens or Taylor Lautner, if they were given another chance. One of the strange quirks of our excessively rehashed culture is that pop culture's obsession with youth means that great artists with some years on them are always in danger of being chucked out for unproven newbies even though the things we're collectively obsessing on our getting on in years. Some of those babes in the showbiz woods will deserve the break and will deliver us many riches but others are mere space fillers, gainfully employed only because they are young/beautiful and perceived as popular during the split second when casting took place. And then those young actors star in films which are essentially nostalgia exercizes meant to appeal to people the same age as the ones they're pushing out of the game! It's all very strange and complicated as are our collective notions of who deserves fame.

Should the George Valentin's of the world always roll over and accept defeat when the Peppy Millers arrive? I think not. If you have something to offer the world, fight to stay in the game.

As Peppy's star rises, George's falls

I felt tremendous sympathy for dinosaur George Valentin while watching The Artist but I also felt excited by Peppy's novice energy and rise to fame. Ideally we'd live in a movie culture which could honor both types of stars by symbolic extension both the old and the new.

A healthy movie culture would have a ittle bit of everything, including looking backward as Hugo and The Artist do. Barrelling forward while never looking at the past would rob us of as many untold riches as our current recycling robs us of original triumphs. A cinematic culture which never considers the past would be an embarassingly myopic and ignorant one. But yes, I readily concur, it'd be nice to have some balance for a change. I'm as sick of sequels as anyone outside of the general ticket-buying public (who are not at all sick of sequels at all) but it's unfair to lump The Artist in with films that aren't taking any chances and only delivering familiar comforts and exactly what the audience has already said they wanted.

Dissing The Artist because it celebrates and reworks the far distant cinematic past so joyfully for our present consumption is really an odd thing for people who love the movies to become angry about. But such is the unruly hostility of the backlash phenomenon. Hating on The Artist feels, to me, rather like being angry with Todd Haynes for making Far From Heaven, like getting annoyed that Martin Scorsese signed on for Hugo or becoming furious that Quentin Tarantino and Guy Maddin ever picked up cameras in the first place. Consider this: the movie that The Artist most openly recalls is Singin' in the Rain which has long since been canonized as one of the great films. Have The Artist haters forgotten that Singin' in the Rain is itself a nostalgia piece about the birth of the talkies? The window was just much shorter, a quarter century as opposed to ninety-some years.