I finally saw The Artist

When I was young, we had a Christmas Eve tradition to go the candlelight service at the Reformed Church in Interlaken, NY, the town where my parents grew up. My grandfather was the pastor. I have a lot of memories from that church, and that Christmas Eve service in particular. I remember one year, I think when I was five years old, I wanted to partake in communion. But my parents said I couldn’t because I was too young and didn’t understand its significance. I started crying, and when they asked why I was crying, I said I was sad that Jesus died on the cross for me. This didn’t help my case for why I should eat the body and blood of Christ. It’s a good thing that he died for you, said my mother, you should be happy, not sad. Clearly I didn’t get the point of communion. I just didn’t like being left out.

Even though we attended various other churches over the years (seven, by my count) we always went to the candlelight service in Interlaken. After my grandfather retired and moved to another town, we stopped going every year, but some years we did anyway for nostalgia’s sake I suppose. I believe the last Christmas Eve we went was four or five years ago. I enjoyed it, seeing people who had been on the periphery of my life since I was a child. There was one guy I would always talk to who was a classic movie buff. In one of those last years that we went to the candlelight service, he and I got into our typical conversation about old movies and more general talk of how my life was down in Philadelphia, and he asked if I had a girlfriend. I said I did not, much to my chagrin. "Don’t worry," he said, "One of these days you’ll go to a silent film festival and meet the perfect woman for you."

That sounded like an ideal scenario, said I. Since then, I have yet to go to a silent film festival. Yet, I still think of his comment (prophecy?) with fair regularity. This last weekend I thought of it again as I watched The Artist, a silent film from 2011 that garnered some critical acclaim and major awards. Back when it was in theaters, some friends of mine recommended that I see it, but I never did. When it became available on Netflix last year, I started to watch it several times but usually abandoned it before getting past the first ten minutes. (Too be honest, I am the type of guy who likes the idea of silent films, more than the actual films.) Now I have finally seen it and have a several thoughts about it.

Watching The Artist on a television made me realize that I should have seen it in the theater. Silent films are really quite different than modern movies in that they require a more disciplined attention span and level of concentration to understand what is happening. Watching it on TV or a computer screen in one’s home leaves one open to potential distractions that could be eliminated by sitting in a dark theater. Secondly, the film is a tribute to the era of silent film, in which television did not exist, so watching it in a theater would be necessary to optimize the experience that its creators intended. This is true about most any movie released in theaters (not counting mumblecore), though I think that for The Artist, it is especially true.

Contemporary silent films for mainstream audiences are a rarity, so the success of The Artist is somewhat phenomenal and speaks to how really well it was made. Every shot of the movie is beautiful, and the story is well-paced. It has a meta-something-or-other quality in that it tells the tale of a silent film star named George Valentin whose career careens into obscurity with the advent of talking pictures, while simultaneously his young protégé, a woman named Peppy Miller manages to successfully transition into movies with sound. It is ostensibly a love story about these two characters. But the form of the film draws a nostalgic emotional response from the audience which is refocused as empathy with the characters that are undergoing a departure from the nostalgic period in question.

The plot is that Peppy Miller, an avid admirer of Valentin by clumsy fluke gets thrust into the spotlight with him. Later they happen to meet on the set of a film and her gives her some advice about her image. There is also a strong chemistry behind them. Yet they part ways. In the years that pass Peppy rises to stardom taking on roles in talking pictures, while Valentin, as a silent film star becomes more obsolete. One scene I liked was when they are sitting in some restaurant with their backs to each other. Peppy is being interviewed and Valentin can hear what she’s saying, though she is unaware of his presence. The interviewer asks Peppy what she thinks about the studio canceling all silent film production. She says that people no longer want to see the inauthentic gesturing of silent film actors; they want to hear the actors. “Make way for the new!” she proclaims. At this point Valentin stands up, gets Peppy’s attention, and performs a gesture as if to allow her to pass by. Then he walks away. This distresses her because she is in love with him.

Valentin’s situation only grows worse as he becomes more washed-up. I won’t spoil it for you by going into the events of the second half of the film, but it’s important to note that Peppy becomes instrumental in Valentin’s survival. I am interested in musing upon this "out with the old and in with the new" mentality. This film is largely about changes that occurred in history because of the advancement of technology. It reminds me of the technology cycle that I’m sure you’ve heard talk of somewhere at some point, in which popular technologies are mass produced to the point of excess, when they become incredibly cheap and typically lower in quality, but then are surpassed by some superior technology that can supposedly do the same thing better, and the massive quantities of the old technology are viewed as trash, and are trashed until they become rare, at which point some enthusiasts dedicate themselves to preserving what remains.

There’s a documentary about pinball machines called Special When Lit that I think illustrates the technology cycle well. Pinball machines were at first highly lucrative and their manufacture increased immensely over a short period of time, but when video games were introduced, pinball machines were slowly replaced, and, if I remember correctly there is currently only one company making pinball machines today. The documentary features the stories of several near-fanatical pinball machine collectors. You get a sense of their urgency and sadness that pinball will no doubt be lost to our culture.

Here’s a question: are there some things in our culture that we are losing that are perhaps more important than consumer products like silent films or pinball machines. I think there are. I’m not really going to go into what I think is being lost, but I think it’s an interesting question to ponder, and I would encourage you to do so. What do you remember having as a child that was precious to you but you no longer have? What is keeping you from it? Can you recover it, or recover from losing it?

Do you have a real community that you call your own? What holds you together? Have you lost something with them over time? Are you building anything with them? Do you have any roots at all? Are you planting new roots? If not, why not? Is it because everything becomes uprooted so quickly these days? Do you even need roots? Maybe you don’t need roots, but if not, then what do you need? Just something to consume, or is there something more?

That’s a lot of questions. They are kind of weird. I find myself asking these questions all the time. At different junctures in life I’ve had different answers. But I sure would like to firm up my answers. I’d like to preserve what good things we are close to losing, prevent them from dying, help them to continue to grow, prune them of disease and evil, and water them with my life. One of the guys in my small group at a Men’s Retreat a few weeks back said that our small desires are connected to the more deeply rooted desires of our heart. I think about silent films and I get a nostalgic feeling. I think about old arcade games and I get a nostalgic feeling. These are small desires, like most pleasurable things. But as such, they are signals that, if we pay attention to and meditate on, could lead us to the deeper desire.

I once knew a professor who told me that the word art has a similar origin as the word arm because both of them reach. (I never did the research to find out if this is true and I never heard of it elsewhere but it makes sense. Think about the words arch and archery, which also seem to have something to do with reaching.) Might it be possible that The Artist is named such because it is a film about reaching back and grasping onto that thing we are desperate not to lose because we love it so much, as Peppy Miller does with George Valentin? Watch the film and you’ll see what I mean. Or don't watch it and just think about what you're reaching for when you get that nostalgic feeling.