The recently concluded Academy Awards nominated nine movies for Best Picture of the Year. These included The Artist, which was the evening’s biggest winner, Moneyball, Hugo, The Descendants, The Tree of Life, and Midnight in Paris among others. Several of these we have previously reviewed on this site.
What all these had in common was their backstory – the pain and anxiety caused by shifting circumstance. All “answered” the question, each in their own way, “What do we do when life turns sour, when we lose our moorings as individuals, or as a family, or nation? What is our response to be when what previously seemed sure is no longer the case?”
Here is our situation as Americans living in 2012. None of us are as confident as we once were about what life provides or how life in the future might play out. And it is that anxiety, however latent or overt, that the Academy’s filmmakers addressed in many of their movies this year.
The winner, The Artist, was much discussed for it opted in its storytelling to return to the era when movies were both silent and filmed in black and white. Though it was a French made film, the movie was shot on location in Hollywood.
In reviewing The Artist, many film commentators thought the movie an example of our country’s turn to nostalgia, given our present tough circumstance. Often lost in the discussion about the cultural relevance of this film, however, was another more primary reason why the movie proved the Oscar winner. Surely the decision to make a 1920’s style film was gutsy, the editing and cinematography exemplary, and the acting wonderful (in particular that of the lead actress, Berenice Bejo, who plays the joyful and life-giving Peppy Miller… and we can’t forget the dog). But not as often commented upon was the deep connection that many viewers felt with the lead character in the film, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin).
Valentin was a star of the silent screen, just when movies changed to “talkies.” He thus became the victim of job obsolescence. Like linotype operators and hand drawn animation artists, Valentin found his services were no longer needed, despite his considerable skill in the craft. The rug, so to speak, was pulled out from under him, just as it has been for tens of thousands of workers today.
For all of us, whether directly or indirectly, job security has similarly been called into question – consider the loss of jobs, reduction of benefits, cuts in salary, and increase in workload that seem epidemic today. In an iconic image, shot in the Bradbury building in Los Angeles, we see George descending an interior staircase just as Peppy Miller ascends the same staircase. The symbol is plain; George’s future seems certain, a downward walk to oblivion, even as the vivacious and talkative “Peppy” is becoming a star.
Though George tries to hang on to his old success by making an even better silent movie, no one wants his “product” any longer. His attempted “magna opus” is a failure. Moviegoers want to see and hear “talkies.” Nevertheless, after years of struggle and despite the tectonic change in the entertainment industry, George eventually is able with the assistance of Peppy Miller to reinvent himself as a dancer in movie musicals. Though he was down, life did not ultimately count George out.
Viewed from this perspective, The Artist is not so much about nostalgia, as it is about hope – hope that we too will be able to reinvent ourselves, given the times we live in. The Artist’s theme of hope amidst adversity resonated deeply with many current viewers. Though viewers often entered the movie theater skeptical that they would enjoy a silent movie (and even more stayed away from seeing it altogether given its supposed, retro-themed “nostalgia”), viewers soon fell in love with George and Peppy.
With much of what we do obsolete before we are ready to quit, we, like George, fear the future, while hoping for the best. We hope, against hope, that there is the equivalent of a dance musical in our future. And if only for a moment in the movie theater, The Artist gives us that hope.
Our culture is changing faster than we can keep up. We all know this. I am, admittedly, technologically challenged. But I am paying a heavy price for not being on Facebook and Twitter. Increasingly many of my friends neither answer their phones nor look at emails. If I send an email, it might languish for days before the addressee thinks to check. If I don’t text my kids, I can go days without contact.
Or to give a different kind of example, the number of friends and acquaintances who have lost their jobs to “restructuring” (an impersonal word that masks personal loss) is sobering. This week, as I write, I have spoken to a financial officer at the local Volvo dealership who was summarily dismissed from his previous job though he had been there twenty years and was a productive employee. He had had no work for two years before being “lucky” (his words) to find a similar job. Skill, it seems, is no longer enough. I also got a call from a friend who is a senior level administrator at a retirement home. She said she had just been restructured out of her job without warning after more than a decade of success. We are about to take a nine month sabbatical to Spain where unemployment is over 25% and where of the one hundred members in the church that we attend there, most have no work. Life brings no guarantee. We know that in a new way today.
As an American culture, change is our only constant; institutions are in crisis; and moral failure too often seems the norm. As a nation, we announce that we plan to get out of Afghanistan by 2014 because positive change is occurring, only for a “careless” book burning and then a soldier who snaps to radically alter the situation. Our monthly bills for cell phone, TV and internet skyrocket, even as the next generation of gadgets makes what we now own obsolete.
Not only is change rapidly escalating, but the ground under us seems also to be less secure. Many of the institutions that have been our stability as individuals are in crisis. Some, like Congress, seem paralyzed by single-issue agendas. Others, like our health care system, remain unavailable to millions, except with long delays; or, as with Wall Street and our banking system, have caused our retirement funds to dwindle amidst economic uncertainty. Moral failure also seems to have reached epidemic proportions. Schools in Los Angeles, where I live, for example, seem paralyzed by the multiple revelations of child abuse, while schools in other parts of the country experience senseless killings.
Change…failure…uncertainty…moral failings…anxiety! In such a cultural crucible, The Artist resonated with viewers, even while it providing a light, but longed for, hope to its viewers – perhaps our lives will also work out in the end.