(Thanks to the Courtyard By Marriott Century City / Beverly Hills) Ken Davitian
has that face you’ve seen before and probably said to yourself, “I know who he is.” That’s because you have seen him before. Mr. Davitian played ‘Azamat Bagatov’in the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, starring Sacha Baron Cohen. But we didn’t talk about Borat or Cohen, we talked about The Artist at the 2012 Oscars Night Of 100 Stars Oscar Party.
For this blogger the question of the day was why a silent movie was so popular – the then-front runner to land Oscar: Best Picture at the 2012 Academy Awards? Davitian’s answer was memorable: “Imagine you’re sitting in a park then, a leaf falls, fluttering, silently to the ground,” he said. Ken’s point is that is that visual immediately calms you, that’s the impact The Artist has “in the middle of all this turmoil.”
Ken says that the popularity of The Artist doesn’t necessarily point to a new era of silent films, and I agree with him. But I do think it points to a new time for the craft of film over special effects. Now that it seems almost every film has CGI or 3D, or both, perhaps the movie-watching public is ready for simple films that tell a story, even without the sound.
That’s what The Artist did.