In 2011 Michel Hazanavicius skyrocketed to the American consciousness with the delightful and charming silent film throwback, The Artist. The film took home a shelf worth of awards, including the Oscar for Best Director for Hazanavicius and Best Film. Before that film’s premiere Hazanavicius had been mostly working in the same feather-light register with the OSS 117 films. All of this is to say that there must be something rather intimidating about that Oscar looming down from the mantle, because the latest effort from the director is the bruising Chechen War film, The Search.

The Search—inspired by the 1948 film of the same name—takes place in 1999 during the outbreak of the Second Chechen War and opens with a found footage style video made by a Russian soldier that shows the senseless murder of a mother and father. Following the title credits we meet the near-mute 9-year-old, Hadji (newcomer Abdul-Khalim Mamutsjev), who takes his baby brother and flees only to wind up in an orphanage for Chechens run by Helen (Annette Bening). When Hadji can’t stand the presence of so many guns, he sneaks away and is taken in by Carole (Berenice Bejo–teaming up with Hazanavicius again), a non-governmental aid worker trying to get foreign attention for the conflict, and the two become a quick family.

While Hadji’s story is the core driving force of the narrative, two other plot lines are woven in to complete the picture from the opening scene. Kolia (Maksim Emelyanov) is a Russian teenager arrested for smoking pot on the streets of Perm and forced to join the army. His timid nature makes him the whipping boy for the rest of the new soldiers, as well as for the higher-ups, until little-by-little he is broken down and rebuilt by the horrendous monstrosity that is the film’s depiction of the Russian army. The third plotline follows Raissa (Zukhra Duishvili), Hadji’s sister, who is desperate to find her younger brothers. It is this thread, by a long shot, that gives the film much of its burdensome feel.

The essence of the film rests upon Mamutsjev’s shoulders as the young Hadji scrambles to stay alive and cope with his loss while still being a 9-year-old boy. For a large part of his screen-time, Hadji stays mute, and Mamutsjev and Hazanavicius use this silence to heartbreaking effect—mostly early on in the film. Bejo’s (The Artist, The Past) Carole is Hadji’s opposite, a neurotic and fast paced NGO worker who can hardly stop talking. The resulting relationship quickly becomes the emotional core of the entire film.

For the most part, the rest of the cast turns in similar work. Emelyanov is utterly convincing as he seemingly grows hollow and distant and then completely detached over the two-hour plus run time. The notable exception is the normally solid Bening (The Kids Are All Right, American Beauty), who instead of seeming exhausted and rundown by her tireless work, just feels lifeless.

The fact of the matter is, this film is likely a necessary one; how often has a Chechen War found its way into American cinemas? And in Chechen and Russian no less? The stories here are powerful, and, as exemplified by Carole’s interview subjects, by no means unique. The utter confusion and senselessness run rampant.

But that doesn’t stop the movie from stretching its net too wide and becoming overwrought. Much like the heavy-handed early films of this year’s Best Director winner, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Babel), it’s easy to spot the connections between the seemingly random narratives early on. So, while the mass cold shoulder from the rest of the world, and the horrific human rights abuses that occur carry some sickening heft, Hazanavicius piles it on until characters basically start speaking to the audience— “It’s about understanding they’re alive and they have a right to a better life.” But perhaps this gets at the point. These tragedies undoubtedly do pile up, and back in the day the international community couldn’t be bothered to raise so much as a finger in support of Chechnya. But the film gets lost in its frustration, buried so deep that the proceedings starts to feel laborious, and even the pockets of hope and joy hardly resonate.

Somewhere in this overlong film is a very good and rather important story about the way the world can steal our home and how we still have to find ourselves in the mess; about the unspeakable tragedies that can’t continue going ignored; about how we lose our humanity, and how we find it again. In many ways it feels as though The Searchwas directed by a first-time director, lacking in that effervescent touch Hazanavicius brought to The Artist with such authority.

The Search is out in limited release in Canada today, March 13.

In honor of Oscar season being fully upon us, Oscar Winners Revisited is a new column that combines three of our favorite things: arguing about the Oscars, nostalgia, and passing judgment on others. These features hope to re-evaluate past Academy Awards results and see how well the winners and nominees held up versus the choices Way Too Indie Staff members would make today. We’ll be sticking to the big six categories: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress. Make sure to visit yesterday’s installment on the 2011 awards, and check back on Way Too Indie tomorrow for another year’s batch of Academy Award winners, revisited.

Best Supporting Actress

Who Won – Octavia Spencer, The Help
Who Should’ve Won – Berenice Bejo, The Artist

The Artist cleaned up most of the major categories in 2012, earning wins for Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Actor. But I was bummed when Berenice Bejo’s dashing performance in the film failed to capture a win on Oscar night, falling to Octavia Spencer in The Help. Even to call Bejo a supporting actress in the silent film era throwback is kind of a stretch, she spends a great deal of time on-screen with Jean Dujardin. Her charming performance as the young dancer and love interest was done without saying a word. It’s hard to deny Octavia Spencer’s captivating performance, but part of me just wanted this to end in a tie between these two great actresses. [Dustin]

Best Supporting Actor

Who Won – Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Who Should’ve Won – Nick Nolte, Warrior

I’m tempted to award the newcomer Jonah Hill, the youngest nominee by more than 20 years, for his surprisingly textured work in Moneyball. Considering the combined age of the other four nominees totalled more than 250 years, it was unlikely the Apatow-bred actor was going to break through. Beyond Hill, 3-time Oscar nominee Nick Nolte may have delivered the most heart-wrenching performance in this group of actors. Christopher Plummer does solid work in Beginners, but likely garnered a lot of support due to the nature of his role and Plummer’s long career (at 82, Plummer became the oldest competitive Oscar winner ever). Nolte’s Warrior performance came as the sole nomination for a mostly overlooked but beloved smaller project (much like Plummer for Beginners), but his gravel-voiced vulnerability gives his role an emotional anchor. Both veteran actors are deserving of acknowledgement, but the more affecting performance scene to scene for me was Nolte’s. [Zach]

Best Actress

Who Won – Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Who Should’ve Won – Viola Davis, The Help

Surprise, surprise Meryl Streep wins again. Okay, so maybe she doesn’t win all the time, but Streep has racked up a whooping 19 Oscar nominations. That’s enough nominations to make one wonder if she’s getting noms now solely based on her name, not her performances. Her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady wasn’t particularly impressive. In fact, most people that year expected Viola Davis to win since she won at the Screen Actors Guild. And rightfully so. Davis dominated the screen and our hearts when she’s forced to bite her tongue as a black maid serving her white employer. If there was one thing to take away from the 2012 Oscars, it’s that you should never count Streep out when it comes Oscar night. [Dustin]

Best Actor

Who Won – Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Who Should’ve Won – Brad Pitt, Moneyball

2012 lacked the type of standout male lead that drives most Oscars races. With all due respect to Demián Bichir whose surprise nomination came in a film not many had seen (including myself, although the role garnered acclaim from those who did), his inclusion feels like a reward in and of itself. Dujardin’s malleable performance in the lead of the Best Picture winning “silent” film The Artist certainly has a novelty the other nominated performances lack; however, as strong as Dujardin was in the movie, there are inherent limitations to the role. Brad Pitt’s role in Moneyball is by far the more conventional of these two performances. Yet Pitt is delivering a performance that exemplifies the qualities that has made him one of Hollywood’s biggest stars for decades. The ease with which he delivers his lines, the disaffected persona he portrays while still communicating a committed interest in his actions, and the subtlety of the role in comparison to Pitt’s other not-so-subtle standout performances make the part of Billy Beane a highlight of Mr. Jolie’s acting career. He’s no runaway winner, but Pitt is an appealing alternative to Dujardin here. [Zach]

Best Director

Who Won – Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Who Should’ve Won – Martin Scorsese, Hugo

I don’t give Hugo the win for Best Picture and I don’t usually like to give splits in Director/Picture (though in 2013 I would give Cuaron Best Director and The Wolf of Wall Street Best Picture), but Martin Scorsese really deserved it this year. The 3D family film was in fact a much more deserving effort than his long-awaited win for The Departed five years earlier. Hugo saw the filmmaker working completely out of his comfort zone and he absolutely nails it, I’d be hard pressed to think of a more inspiring and heartfelt family film to be released this decade. His use of 3D is also incredible, the best use of the technique I’ve seen thus far, as if Scorsese had turned himself into a sort of modern day version of Méliès (sorry Terry Gilliam). Marty really knocked it out of the park on this one. [Ryan]

Best Picture

Who Won – The Artist
Who Should’ve Won – The Tree of Life

Other than Drive, The Tree of Life was easily my favorite film of 2011 it was one of the most beautiful, poetic, and awe-filled experiences one could have with a film so far this century. A philosophical and emotional epic that sees abstract filmmaker Terrence Malick operating on his most breathtaking canvas yet with the help of God’s gift to cinematography, Emmanuel Lubezki. It’s his most powerful film in a small, but nonetheless outstanding filmography (though Badlands will probably always be my favorite). It’s kind of incredible the Palme d’Or-winning film was even nominated at all (the expanded field helped I’m sure) and it definitely feels like one of those films where the voting body was saying “the nomination is your reward, but you have no chance.” Out of the other nominees only Hugo really comes close to The Tree of Life, though it seems unlikely Malick’s masterpiece ever would have taken home the top prize when competing with the Academy’s continually frustrating choices. The Tree of Life will stand the test of time though which is far more important and telling of a film’s impact. [Ryan]

Michel Hazanavicius burst into Hollywood with The Artist, which won 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The trailer for his highly anticipated follow-up, The Search, has hit today, and you can conveniently watch it below.

From the looks of the trailer, Hazanavicius is certainly trying to break out of his wheelhouse of crowd-pleasing spoofs. The Search is a much grander epic, taking place during World War II, but also focusing on the emotionally wrought story of a European Union delegate (Bérénice Bejo) who takes in an orphaned young boy.

The Search is a remake of Fred Zinnemann‘s 1948 film of the same name. The original film starred Montgomery Clift in the Bejo role, so it should be interesting to see how the gender swap will effect the dynamics of the film. Hazanavicius also seems to have ramped up the film’s scale, adding almost an hour of runtime.

The Search will debut at the Cannes Film Festival this week and later this year in France. No U.S. date has been set, but given the awards pedigree of those involved, a holiday release can be assumed.

Watch The Search trailer

Garnering heaps of positive buzz (and awards) after running through a slew of festivals is Asghar Farhadi’s sixth film, The Past. Farhadi earned Iran’s first Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film with his 2011 release, A Separation, and looks to be continuing a similar level of excellence with his new film.

Ahmad (Ali Mossa) arrives in Paris to finalize a divorce with his estranged wife, Marie (Bérénice Bejo), who is currently living with her two daughters (not Ahmad’s), new paramour (Tahar Rahim) and his young son. The film looks deliciously melodramatic, relying on tensions not only between lovers old and new, but from eldest daughter Lucie (Pauline Burlet).

If you’re looking forward to watching Bejo’s Cannes award winning performance (like me), it’ll be hitting theaters in LA and New York December 20th with a wider release to follow.

Watch the trailer for The Past

Set in late ’50s Paris, Populaire is a loving throwback to the saccharine rom-coms of that decade, dipped in candy coating and wrapped in bright art-deco packaging. It’s scrumptious with every bite, and it’ll make you smile, but it lacks the substance and sustenance of a main course movie. In terms of narrative, this is a straightforward and predictably plotted tale of budding romance between a bullheaded guy and a frisky gal, adding nothing new to the traditional rom-com template. Nothing, that is, except for bestowing upon its heroine the peculiar gift of lightning-fast, immaculately manicured fingers.

Deborah Francois, who bears a striking resemblance to Audrey Hepburn (she emanates the same quirky charm as well), plays Rose Pamphyle, a 20-something blond diamond in the rough from a small town in Normandy who auditions for a secretary position (a coveted one in the pre-feminist era) with a dashing, suit-wearing playboy insurance agent named Louis Echard (Romain Duris). Rose wins the position after transcribing an office note on a typewriter with enough speed to blow back Echard’s perfectly parted hairdo, despite using the “double-pointer-finger” technique typically employed by beginner typists and legally blind grandmas.

As it turns out, Rose is a crummy secretary, accidentally shredding important documents and knocking things over on the regular (she’s a fine cutesy klutz), but she’s obviously some sort of typewriter prodigy. Echard gives her a bizarre ultimatum: she must win the local speed typing competition or she loses her job. She must live with him at his mansion and train day and night, minimizing her secretary work to hobby status. With Echard’s relentless, intensive coaching, she learns to type with all ten of her digits and work her way from French provincial competitions to the speed typing world championships in New York City. She becomes somewhat of a speed typing rock star (groupies and all) and an unwitting feminist icon. (The late ’50s was a turning point for the women’s movement and the peak of teen fanaticism like Beatlemania, which makes the setting apt.)

The conceit is clearly contrived, but the sights and sounds of French director Regis Roinsard’s debut feature are so overloaded with charm that you might not be bothered. Cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman, who received praise and an Oscar nod for his stunning work on 2011’s The Artist, dazzles with a dreamy ’50s pastel-painted wonderland that won me over. Roinsard and Schiffman use every trick in the book in their attempt to make the speed typing face-offs look and feel as exciting as possible—they cyclone the camera around the typists, they hang the camera high, they lay it low, they use dolly shots, split screens, close-ups of Francois’ determined eyes and Revlon-ad-worthy hands tapping away furioiusly. Their techniques are loud, overshot, and overblown, but they get the job done—the climactic typefests are the most thrilling sequences in the picture. Other sequences, like a stock montage of Echard training Rose like she’s a professional boxer (what the hell does jogging have to do with typing?) completely miss the mark.

When Echard more or less holds Rose hostage in his swanky chateau, callously bossing her around though he’d never admit to how much he adores her company, the setup and their chemistry recalls Beauty and the Beast, particularly Cocteau’s classic rendition. (“La Belle!!!”) Duris plays a great jerk, though he makes sure to let just enough heart shine through his bad-boy veneer. He sneers when he smiles and smirks when he sneers, exuding attitude all the way. Francois’ soft, classic beauty and natural intelligence jibe well with Duris’ dastardly charm, though they’re never given any dialogue together that comes close to being interesting. Most of their chemistry is cultivated through the way they move around each other, the glances they cast, and the way they touch (lots of hand-flirt close-ups.) There’s a subplot involving Echard’s American best friend, Bob (Shaun Benson) and his gorgeous wife, Marie (Berenice Bejo), who happens to be Echard’s ex-lover. Duris and Bejo share a revealing exchange in the latter half of the film that’s the only scene in the film with any emotional depth.

The film owes a lot to Doris Day and Rock Hudson and their classic sugary ’50s comedies. In fact, it might owe everything to them—Roinsard and company don’t do much to build upon the foundation set over half a century ago. Despite a painful lack of narrative originality, Populaire‘s peppy charm, game cast, and spectacular bubblegum imagery save the day and make it fun, at least.

It’s hard not to feel underwhelmed when, in the film’s dramatic crescendo, Echard tells Rose goodbye forever in a cold parking lot and she melodramatically retorts, “Je t’aime!!!” “Je t’aime” is a bit much, Populaire. You look mighty fine, but “love” is a strong word, and sadly, I find I’m only “in like” with you.

The first thing that came flooding back into my mind the moment I arrived in Toronto for TIFF was the only thing fest-goers do more than watching movies: waiting. If you want to come to TIFF be prepared to get in line. In fact, with the addition of a “Virtual Waiting Room” in TIFF’s ticket purchasing page, you can do your waiting at home too!

After all my waiting online to get the tickets I wanted, I finally arrived to…wait in a line to pick up the tickets I bought. Once I got my tickets, I victoriously arrived to the theatre and…waited in another line for the film. But standing around and waiting is just as essential to TIFF as catching 3-4 films in a day or running around downtown to catch the next screening. There’s always someone to talk to in line as well, as people at the festival will be some of the friendliest film lovers you’ll meet. Where else can you casually chat with a stranger about Derek Cianfrance before switching topics to the Wavelengths lineup without missing a beat?

That’s exactly what I did with some people in line before sitting down to watch The Past. Asghar Farhadi’s film has already been reviewed for the site by Jansen, but as I wanted to see it badly since Cannes (and also because Blue is the Warmest Colour is one of the hardest films to get into this year) I took the chance to catch it. Anyone who has seen Farhadi’s last film A Separation will know what to expect here. It shares more than a few qualities with his previous film (Couple divorcing? Check. Use of walls and glass as barriers to communication? Check), but it’s still rich and compelling material.

The Past

I’ll keep plot details to a minimum. The Past begins with Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returning to Paris from Tehran so he can officially divorce his wife Marie (Berenice Bejo). They’ve been separated for several years, and he came at her request. The first of the film’s many revelations begin when Ahmad discovers that Marie is not only engaged to another man, played by A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim, but he’s living with her along with his son from another marriage. When Marie asks Ahmad to help find out why her teenage daughter Lucie (Pauline Burlet) is acting rebelliously, he begins to find out details about Marie’s new relationship that begin to tear everyone in the film apart.

Farhadi’s exploration of how his characters are trying to break free from their respective past lives and/or decisions is fascinating, and made all the better by his cast. Bejo, who won Best Actress at Cannes this year for her role, works wonders at making Marie an empathetic character (a lesser actress would have made Marie hard for the audience to like or understand). Tahar Rahim also does a great job with such a subdued character, but the real star is Mosaffa. Ahmad is the heart of the film, and Mosaffa plays the part so well that he’s missed whenever he spends extended periods off-screen.

Unfortunately, when Ahmad does seemingly vanish in the final act, The Past takes a slight dip in quality. Up to that point the focus stayed on Marie, Ahmad and Lucie, but the narrative suddenly switches over to Rahim’s character. Rahim does a fine job, and the way some of the film’s final mysteries unravel makes for a gripping watch, but his character simply isn’t as compelling as Marie and Ahmad.

Nonethless, The Past is still a very good film with an excellent screenplay (don’t be surprised if Farhadi picks up another Oscar nomination for this) and direction. As excellent as Farhadi’s writing is the film’s best moment, where Bejo and Rahim drive home after buying chandeliers, doesn’t have a single word spoken in it.

RATING: 7.5

Manakamana

Next up is Manakamana, the new project by Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab. In my coverage last year, I was blown away by the SEL’s documentary Leviathan. While that film was so excellent at making the forces of nature look otherworldly, Manakamana goes in the opposite direction. Despite its patience-testing format it’s one of the most humanist films I’ve seen all year. People who stick with it will find a documentary whose portrayal of the banal makes for some truly fascinating viewing.

Read full review of Manakamana

Next up:

More Cannes catch-up, this time with Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive followed by Like Father, Like Son which we said was the best film at Cannes this year. Also, I desperately try to get into The Double but don’t get my hopes up. Check back in the coming days to see if I end up catching Richard Ayoade’s latest, or some other film that was playing at the same time.

For many (myself included), the work of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi was relatively unfamiliar before a little film called A Separation rode on a huge wave success; from unprecedented victory in every major category at the Berlinale Film Festival, to an Oscar for Foreign-language feature a whole year later. As a result, worldwide audiences were exposed to a kind of intellectually, culturally and morally even-handed cinema marked by a direct visual approach and equally balanced, literate screenwriting. To those who have yet to see the director’s About Elly — where a L’Avventura-esque mystery eventually reveals itself as an incisive and finally humane look at contemporary Iranian society — I cannot recommend it enough. But by the same token, About Elly’s embryonic formal and tonal strategies for what would later blueprint A Separation become clear in hindsight. The lingering question on the minds of most remained whether such clarity and slow-burning intricacy in Farhadi’s stories could persist in absence of the intricate nuances of Iranian life he obviously knows so well. Farhadi’s answer to that is The Past (Le Passé).

Set in Paris, The Past opens on Marie (Bérénice Bejo, The Artist), a French woman grappling with her myriad of relationships at various points of burgeoning and disintegration. Chief among them is the visit from her husband Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa), who is returning to France to sign divorce papers after four years back in his native Iran. Complicating matters more, Marie plans to marry Samir (Tahar Rahim, A Prophet), whose child she is pregnant with. Both Marie and Samir bring children from previous romances to densify the relational web Farhadi spins, and as the story progresses Marie’s eldest, Lucie (Pauline Burlet) plays an especially pivotal role as we learn of her possible involvement with Samir’s present wife, who is eight months comatose. All of that sounds cinematically heightened because it is. But unlike the matters of faith and custom that so drove the dramatic urgency of his earlier work, Farhadi here seems to relish the opportunity to take an otherwise melodramatic premise and make it agonisingly, persistently relatable, regardless of cultural context.

It’s not my aim to delve too much into the plot, as many of The Past’s pleasures are drawn not merely from the revelations that Farhadi offers (stunning as they are), but the simultaneous deftness and weight with which he announces them: the director’s inherent ability to doubly affect our minds and hearts, to wring empathy from the brink of apathy, is so evident through The Past’s deliberate 130 minutes. The escalating tension that A Separation played straight and fast is here rendered rather more exponentially: curiosities and twists in the narrative are slower to creep in and more pronounced in their unraveling. This has led some to criticise the third act that plays overtly dramatic, but the crescendo that forms is a result of a more patient, more measured setup—so it’s only natural that once those emotional blows arrive, they seem to land harder.

Farhadi is helped in sticking said moments by an ensemble of performances that play like a well-pitched orchestra, Burlet and Elyes Aguis (as Samir’s young son Fouad, quietly absorbing each familial interaction to form his own worldview of death and consequence) offering breadth beyond their years; Bejo’s elastic, rangy Marie providing sharp contrast to both her silent, charming breakout role in The Artist and her co-star Rahim. In the thankless role of the imposing fourth wheel to an existing (though fractured) family unit, Rahim takes his one-dimension and makes it many, playing Samir’s troubled fatherhood, splintered devotions and not inconsequential guilt in a manner so implicitly interiorized that it’s perhaps the most impressive part of the film.

For all the histrionics that threaten to topple The Past overboard, Farhadi ends the film on a contemplative note that revisits (no pun intended) the multiple thematic readings of its aptly abstract title. It gives away nothing to reveal that the closing scene features Samir at his wife’s bedside, speaking though he knows she can’t hear, and asking though he knows she can’t do — a silent, microcosmic moment that flawlessly summarises the film, yet leaves audiences in perpetual wonderment. If my party line here is that The Past is great precisely because it isn’t overly indebted to A Separation, then I’m thankful that they still share instances of Farhadi’s profound ability to close a movie out.

The Past trailer

Being that Steven Spielberg was the president of the Jury for the 66th Cannes Film Festival everyone who I talked to seemed to think that the Palme d’Or would be given to an American film, with Inside Llewyn Davis having the best chances to win. There was certainly a solid American presence at this year’s festival, but I anticipated Spielberg to pick elsewhere (at the very least to prove he is not biased just towards American films). The Palme d’Or ended up going to a French film called Blue is the Warmest Color, which earned fantastic marks from most critics. Sadly, it was a film that I missed while I was there but obviously plan to watch at my earliest opportunity.

See the full list of nominations.

The entire list of 2013 Cannes Film Festival Award Winners:

Blue Is the Warmest Color, (director Abdellatif Kechiche)

Inside Llewyn Davis, (directors Ethan Coen & Joel Coen)

Amat Escalante, Heli

Jia Zhangke, A Touch Of Sin

Ilo Ilo, (director Anthony Chen)

Like Father, Like Son, (director Hirokazu Koreeda)

Berenice Bejo, The Past

Bruce Dern, Nebraska

The Missing Picture, (director Rithy Panh)

Omar, (director Hany Abu-Assad)

Alain Guiraudie, Stranger By The Lake

The Ensemble cast of La Jaula De Oro

Fruitvale Station, (director Ryan Coogler)

Blue Is The Warmest Color, (director Abdellatif Kechiche)

Manuscripts Don’t Burn, (director Mohammad Rasoulof)

Blue Ruin, (director Hirokazu Koreeda)

The Past, (director Asghar Farhadi)

Like Father, Like Son, (director Mohammad Rasoulof)
Miele, (director Valeria Golino)

The Artist is a silent black-and-white film by French director Michel Hazanavicius that is easily the most entertaining film of 2011. Essentially, it is a silent film about silent films. The film benefits from being made in modern times in that it gets to toy with it’s self-aware silent self, unlike the era of films it pays tribute to, with occasional sounds here and there. Most people who are passionate about films will have fun with The Artist.

In the year 1927 silent films are what made up Hollywoodland and George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) dominated the screens. Always by his side are his loyal dog and longtime producer Al Zimmer (John Goodman). His latest film was a smashing hit and during a public photo shoot for it, a lady from the crowd bumps into him that catches his eye. The next morning photos of the two together are on newspapers, overnight a star is born.

Her name is Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), a name that will soon be as big as George Valentin’s in Hollywood. She tries out to be a dancer in his next film and he grants her that role. George would have never guessed that by giving Peppy her first break that she would soon surpass him in fame, but she does.

His producer Al from the film studio he works at informs him that they are switching to the future, talking films. It is a future George does not want to be a part of, he believes it is just a fad. Peppy rises to fame as a talkie while the silent era is quickly diminishing leaving George without a job.

To make the situation worse, the Great Depression hits so the money he is living off from his previous success is now gone. He auctions off all of his valuables, the auctioneer says, “Congratulations! It’s all sold, you’ve got nothing left!” Nothing left is right, wife leaves him and he has to down-size to a studio apartment. It occurs to him one day that he has not paid his butler (Ed Lauter) in over a year, so he is forced to make the hard decision to fire him.

The scene that stood out to me the most is when his wife was leaving him because he would not talk to his wife. It was a metaphor for him not conforming as a talkie film actor. And on similar note, another stand out scene is when he had a dream that he was no longer able to speak, he knows that he belongs in the silent era.

Peppy knows that she would not be a star without George. She not only respects him but has always had a romantic connection to him as well. With George going through a riches-to-rags scenario that turns him on the bottle, will she still have the same feelings she once had about him? When you are at the top, it is hard to see the people at the bottom.

Jean Dujardin was the perfect lead for The Artist. He has the face and body language that silent films demand. In this film, his role required him to be charming, funny, prideful, sad and angry without the luxury of speaking. So it was well deserved when Dujardin won best actor at Cannes 2011.

The Oscar nominations will be announced tomorrow but the buzz around the internet is The Artist has a great chance for the top prize of Best Picture. I would not be surprised if it also won Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score. Also, if animals could win, I think the dog would have a good chance for Best Supporting…Animal.

The Artist proves that a film does not have to have words in order to achieve greatness. When done correctly as in this case, silence can be just as engaging and rewarding as speech is. Similar to a good foreign film when you forget you are reading subtitles, you will likely be so enthralled with the film to notice there is no audible dialogue.