The Seagull

I've never given much thought to creating new dramatic forms.

I figured I'd just keep going and if something remarkably different popped into my head one day I'd share it and see what happens.

The Seagull examines an eager son's desire to impress his dismissive mother whose highly regarded literary partner has fallen for a would-be ingenue.

Her son loves her as well but the world is set to injure.

He writes an innocent play involving animals and the devil and boasts of having created a revolutionary form which is ridiculed thereafter.

The daughter of the family who manages their farm loves him, although he never notices, and an enthusiastic yet dull schoolmaster loves her, and she could sincerely care less.

An admirable doctor and a wise aged uncle (Brian Dennehy as Sorin) provide colourful commentaries throughout the film, which is based on the play by Chekhov, and contains characters who are generally engaging even if they're somewhat hedged-in.

He's a cad, she's a diva, he's seen better days, she's a dreamer, he's optimistic, etc.

But most (or all) plays lack the thousands of pages Proust had to consider his characters as they grew over the course of a lifetime, so I can't categorically fault an artist for introducing individuals prone to one trait or another, especially when they have so many clever and passionate things to say during so many meaningful exchanges.

Imagine no one ever spoke their mind or shared their point of view, their silence an attempt to preserve a sense of authoritative detachment when observing a discussion held between friends and relatives (they aren't bored), which often expresses either a lack of courage or adventure, if they truly have something valuable to say.

Someone could write a play where a modest youth consistently presents novel insights and ideas while surrounded by established personalities who refute everything he or she says through recourse to stereotyped vitriol and name it after The Logical Song.

Or call it Canonized.

The Seagull tragically blends innocence and maturity to warn artistic youths to beware of popularity and its influence as it unconsciously recasts everything it can control in its own marketable image.

It promotes novelty and difference but situates them within a covetous frame that scathingly materializes naive spirited dreams.

To mock itself, perhaps.

Perhaps not.

The Artist

Pride leads to a tragic fall in Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist, as silent film superstar George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) refuses to adapt to a technological paradigm shift. Losing everything after the advent of the Talkies, he descends into a self-obsessed alcoholic tailspin while remaining loyal to his preferred form of artistic expression.

To which he was an unparalleled sensation.

Paying hommage to an abandoned form of film making which was responsible for cinema's resounding success, The Artist works, presenting a remarkable synthesis of motion and sound whose historical resonances are fashionably festooned.

Ludovic Bource's original music playfully harmonizes with the action and temporally positions us within a revitalized inspirational epoch. Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo (Peppy Miller) use the full range of their creative non-verbal subtly to emit an understated existential dialogue which encourages evocative sensual reflections as one tries to imagine what might have been said.

Even as Valentin seems destined for dereliction, a sense of innocent naivety permeates The Artist's being, as its expertly timed stylistic complexities leisurely conjure an effervescent cascade of childlike simplicity by delicately condensing multilayered supporting complements into an affective cry.

Nothing that surprising takes place in the narrative itself. It's the cohesive viscid micro-details which transform each moment into an exception of its own that make The Artist such a compelling film.

Nice to see Ed Lauter with a supporting role.