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American Culture

Who’d’ve-Thunks

Copyright 2012 Ben S. Pollock

I knew what to expect of The Artist, a “silent” film, meaning no talking, though it did have sound effects and music (and beforehand, ironically, the loudest-volume trailers since those running with Avatar).

Still, the teenage box office cashier warned My Beloved and me, while giving me $7 change for a twenty, “You know, right, there’s no talking in this one, don’t you? And it’s black-and-white. I’m supposed to tell you that.” The reminder was an order by her management, who’d heard the reports of movie goes demanding refunds over the lack of dialogue.

She did not know if anything like that had happened at the Malco Razorback in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

About two-thirds of the way through The Artist, only 100 minutes long, I saw a youngish man and a youngish woman walk out of the movie (they weren’t together). I wanted to hiss, “Punks! Does grabbing that half-hour mean that much to you, compared to junk I know you sit through?”

I liked The Artist a lot. Liked Tree of Life a lot. Enthralled by Hugo. There was The Descendants, liked that a lot, too. These are among the current Oscar Best Picture nominees that I saw.

MB and I went to these movies on the basis of critical acclaim. Hitting the parking lot, before we starting talking them through, I’d wonder each time, is this one Best Picture quality by my lights?

What qualifies as a great movie for me? I treasure quality. But that translates to competence — if every piece of the movie — script, direction, acting, appropriate music, appropriate effects — is spot-on, well, isn’t that their job?

Superlative for me means that the movie has had a profound impact on me. Two standards: First, it expanded my outlook or philosophy. The second standard is lower but still can make a movie great: Do certain scenes or even images meld into my mind immediately or later?

Let’s call those Who’d’ve-thunk? moments. Great movies like Sophie’s Choice and Apocalypse Now have maybe 10 of those moments each, minimum. Those two movies also hit my upper standard as well, outlook-changing / personal philosophy enhancing. But the lesser movie Cotton Club has enough of Who’d’ve-thunks to make my Great Movie list (among others: its Gwynne-Hoskins watch scene and Gregory Hines gun-riddled solo dance; by gosh, Gere was right for his part).

In that light, for 2011 movies The Artist is the closest to that standard of these movies. But I just am not sure. So, in the drizzly sleety season of best-of lists, what recent Oscar nominees were great?

What follows then is a year-by-year search for subjective greatness, with memory-jogging by oscars.org of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Perhaps half of these movies I saw first on DVD at home. To keep this medium-long, I don’t list other solid movies, that aren’t up to this level.

Still, it’ll sound like we two movies every weekend. But it’s barely one a month in a theater and another one or two a month at home.

2012 (movies officially released in 2011)

The Descendants, solid family melodrama. Midnight in Paris, I should’ve liked this movie (Woody Allen, the plot, the era it honors) more than I did. Tree of Life, a wonderful movie but a falls-short one.

And here are 2011 movies nominated in other categories: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, now non-novel readers who missed the Swedish adaption can see what the fuss was about. The concluding Harry Potter movie deserves awards representing the whole series, as was done with the concluding third Lord of the Rings.

The Artist

Considering all of the remakes that pass for blockbusters in recent years, The Artist echoes two of my great movies, Singing in the Rain and Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie.

Yes, Brooks’ Silent Movie is on my Great Movie List, though ranking under Young Frankenstein, The Producers (1968) and Blazing Saddles but above The Producers (2005)). Full of who’d’ve-thunks, of the giggling sort.

The third movie it echoes, or the third, fourth and fifth movies, is A Star Is Born, which has been made three times (a fourth remake is “in development,” by Clint Eastwood of all people). None of those movies quite meets the potential of the plot (mid-career star with problems meets rising star); maybe that’s why it gets remade every couple decades. On that level, The Artist is the first Star Is Born that works.

Singing in the Rain is the closest parallel. It and Casablanca (and the first five Marx Brothers features) are at the top of my Great Movies list. The Gene Kelly vehicle parallels The Artist in plot points, and the history it chronicles. But The Artist is not a remake and more of a wink than an homage. I bet its star Jean Dujardin would be the first to say he’s not close to the dancer Kelly was, though Dujardin has a number of dances, and he’s good. Kelly’s title dance and the Surreal dance are this show’s top who’d’ve-thunks as well as every single frame Donald O’Connor is on screen.

Let’s just stop 4 minutes and see the trailer of Singing in the Rain.

But a present comparison has a point. The Artist is about a silent movie star failing to adapt to talkies. Hugo hits the same period of film evolution. Hugo is a tender, witty historical drama, and stops there. The Artist has a fable component. The way it shows the transition to a strong, new technology deliberately parallels today’s move toward online communications. Having a layer of symbolism, of depth pushes The Artist up a notch.

Ah, why not call it great? I can’t recall particular scenes that sear into memory. Every wonderful shot I do recall are obvious quotes from previous movies. I appreciate the cleverness, but no who’d’ve-thunks.

BUT, seeing on Feb. 11 a Saturday Night Live parody of The Artist, even starring Dujardin, just may quell my doubts. (NBC sticks a brief ad first, sorry.)

2011

The King’s Speech won. Good bio pik. The Social Network melodrama’d up another nonfiction story. The Kids Are All Right was a predicatble family drama made unique by mom and dad being mom and mom. Inception was clever sci-fi. Winter’s Bone, though about scuzzy Southerners, overall was respectful of my homeland and its people. True Grit was about my home town Fort Smith and based on a novel by who might be my state’s best writer, Charles Portis.

Life changing? None of them. My favorites? True Grit and Winter’s Bone. Who’d’ve-thunks? Inception, whose writing and special effects come close to depicting dreams as maybe we might like them to be, as long as we know we’ll wake up.

2010

Winner, The Hurt Locker, which I didn’t see until late in 2011, at home on DVD. A fine movie. Others that struck me: Avatar, too self-regarding. Inglourious Basterds, daring to give World War II a satisfying ending. A Serious Man, sub-Coen quality. Up in the Air, good comment on the current economy.

Who’d’ve-thunks? Inglourious Basterds for its imaginative audacity. Outlook-changing? Up in the Air. I still can see scenes from it in my mind, Clooney’s mix of confidence and gullibility. I wish I’d seen The Hurt Locker on the big screen. It changed my outlook, on this long war America convinced itself was necessary. It had who’d’ve-thunks, too, chief among them was the hero’s shopping back at home: Overwhelmed by our abundance, he headed back to likely fatal work defusing bombs.

Here’s a solid if predictable drama, Crazy Heart. You know what? Crazy Heart is a version of Star Is Born.

2009

Winner, Slumdog Millionaire. Others notable best-pictures: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, The Reader. Notable but in other categories, The Wrestler, Tropic Thunder.

Life changing: Slumdog, because of the way the protagonist’s life had extreme but remotely possible coincidences, reminiscent of a Great Movie, Choose Me (1984). Plus, the vividness of India in Slumdog is itself a who’d’v’thunk. Who’d’ve-thunk: Tropic Thunder for the chances it took in taste and political correctness.

2008

Winner, No Country for Old Men. Another Best Picture nominee, Michael Clayton, unpredictable but believable courtroom drama. Notable others, Charlie Wilson’s War, based on recent history. Persepolis, a fine adult cartoon. The Golden Compass, the original book (volume one of a trilogy) is better but the movie ain’t bad. Across the Universe, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — a good year for movies, now that I see the titles.

Note here that Clooney has been in wonderful movies, The Descendants, Up in the Air and Michael Clayton. Note who else has: Brad Pitt, with The Tree of Life, Inglourious Basterds and Benjamin Button.

Great movies of 2007, honored in early 2008: Michael Clayton was another good commentary on current American life. No Country, now that is a movie you can’t get out of your head, with numerous who’d’ve-thunk images and scenes. Plus, it turned me onto Cormac McCarthy, so since then I’ve read most of his books. If it spoke to me philosophically it was that no matter what, you can’t outsmart crazy people and while on rare occasions you can outrun death, it’ll still find you.

Let’s stop on that year.

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