It is difficult to recover from one’s death. It’s unnatural, for one. Death is supposed to be final—the full stop. And the promises it brings of transition imply a new—or at least unknown—opportunity. A person is not supposed to be left to wallow in their own decay while the world marches on without them. And living through one’s death is an insufferable torture not even the foulest creature deserves. But it happens. Otherwise, we may not have The Artist to talk about.
To be clear, The Artist is not some insufferable gimmick. It is a silent film. Mostly. And it is shot in black and white. It’s also a period film. (Historical, not the other kind.) As you may have read elsewhere, it has earned considerable hype for all of these things.
Beyond the hype is a good story told well. In the beginning, we meet the greatest actor of the silent film era. He is beloved. He is rich. And he is presented to us as if his work has no equal. We learn that sound recording technology is his only rival. Without revealing too much about the story, the silent film actor is no match for the technology that gives (more) voice to performers. The Artist‘s conflict concerns the silent film actor’s struggle with his own fading light. He is a man tethered to a time that is ending and there appears to be no place for him in the loud, new world.
There’s also a woman. An actress. The fresh face that emerges to win over audiences and fatten the purses of her studio bosses. She is the talking, walking, dancing, singing avatar of the loud, new world. And she should be the silent film actor’s nemesis. She is. But she’s also the love interest. Or that’s what she aspires to be. It’s a parallel storyline that softens the macabre journey of the man who is dying his first death.
(Image via The Atlantic)
Death is generally singular. Only a few unfortunate bastards have it inflicted on them more than once. Artists. Politicians. Athletes. People whose job it is to perform on some grand stage.
Athletes are the class of sufferers we observe often. Their living deaths are such public experiences. The great leaper becomes sadly earthbound. The blur of a runner can no longer trick our apertures. The beauty and power of youth dims harshly as youth expires for the most physically gifted among us. It can happen in a moment. Or across the seasons. Only the boldest athletes refuse to succumb to it. They walk away from the game before their bodies betray them. And if they suffer at all, they suffer away from the gaze of the camera.
Death is not a very dignified experience. It is a sublime shock. The instinct is to revolt against it. The leaper may do an extra set of squats or add more weight to the leg press machine. His muscles may swell once more. But his joints can only take so much. Eventually, the failure is complete. When it is, a great depression can set in. What is a person to do when he can longer perform the acts by which he has defined himself? The answer sits on creased bar stools or in dingy armchairs and smells of cheap whiskey. It yells at future ghosts that gallop across TV screens. And it fondles pictures of a man who lived once and is waiting to die a second, final time.
That is the journey The Artist takes us on. While it may sound like a dark, awful process, the film emits a joyful lightness as if maybe the dying silent film actor will have a place in the loud, new world. Sitting in the audience, you kinda have to hope for that. Even if you’ve never been the great leaper. The alternative–that the man whose time has passed will have to suffer through two deaths–is too much to bear. It is also far too common a fate.
