Movie Review: The Artist

(Posted a version of this in a comment thread in Making Light so I figured I'd repost it here.)

I saw The Artist last week -- I hadn't really heard about it previously but thread_walker wanted a spontaneous dinner-and-a-movie after work and had it in mind.

I found the movie entertaining and enjoyable, if only because it provided scope for my over-analytic brain processes. The conceit of telling a story about silent-era actors using not only silent-era techniques but thoroughly stereotypically silent-era story tropes struck me as a bit of an extended industry in-joke rather than as a creative or innovative storytelling approach. (Don't anyone take this the wrong way, but I found it reminiscent of some of the convoluted self-referential filk music parody-chains in its underlying symbolic structure.)

Highlights included the nightmare sequence and the point when you realize that the creepy stalkery situation is meant to be understood as really creepy and stalkery in contrast with the original silent-film trope in which it might be played straight.

When stripped of the silent-film conceit and when the stylized story tropes are filtered out, I found myself left with A Star is Born populated with characters with unlikable personal lives and questionable morals. So, all in all, for me it was an enjoyable "gimmick" film but one without lasting artistic merit.