High-Touch Movie In A High-Tech World

The silent movie The Artist turns out to be such an exquisite pleasure to watch. How on earth did it ever lose to Tree Of Life as The Best Movie at The Cannes Festival last year? Silence is not only golden, but it teaches every single member of the cinema world a lesson - why put words in actors' mouths when acting skills speak the loudest? On top of that, a black-and-white movie trumps all colour and high-tech 3D productions of the contemporary world!

Movie critics everywhere love this production by French director Michel Hazanavicius. There are some spoken words and subtitles, but they are kept to the minimum. All expressions are on the face and in the eyes! And even though I'm not a pet lover, I couldn't help but got smitten by the dog superstar in the movie - Uggie!

The acting in this movie is just beyond excellent. I hope Jean Dujardin (a Clark Gable look-alike in the movie) will go on and beat George Clooney in the Best Actor Award category at The Oscars next month. His leading lady Berenice Bejo (the Argentinian-born wife of the movie's director) deserves equal accolades. Supporting actors including John Goodman and James Cromwell (famous for his role in Six Feet Under) are equally impressive. Also, perhaps Merryl Streep can take a lesson from this silent film about "Making Way For The Young?"

There are a lot of movies on the big screen which pull the audience's heartstrings, but this one does it with class, wit and close to perfection. It makes you wonder why the rest of the world can't accomplish such great feats with spoken words?