If Kaagaz Ke Phool had not been Guru Dutt’s self-fulfilling prophecy but just a film about a fading star (a director) and his bond with a protege, it may have ended on a happy note with two lost souls hitching themselves to a rollicking wagon called the Future or Forever. Both Guru Dutt and Michel Hazanavicius’ artists have many things in common. They begin their stories on top of their careers, surrounded by applause, screaming, jostling admiration and drum rolls that promise them immortality. They are both unhappily married, deeply alone in the silence of their souls and they both find a new surge of hope in a young woman who they mentor and who then finds fame and success just as the man who marked her for fame, is spiralling down.
In a way The Artist is a life reinforcing version of Kaagaz Ke Phool because it is about the acceptance of failure and then finding a new song to dance to. It warns the artist against the vanity of believing he is bigger than his craft. Or rejecting help and wallowing in  pain and letting the weeds of dejection grow over his soul. Because artists grow dated but art never does.
If Kaagaz Ke Phool was an indictment of the world where fame feeds on brilliance and then  wrings it out to dry on the side walk, The Artist is more introspective.
Not looking so much at the world that has moved on but at the man within who hasn’t. Who still watches his old films. Sinks his wealth in a last ditch attempt to make a silent film in an era that has begun to talk. Watches his forlorn  shadow leave the silver screen while he is still there. Tries to merge his reflection wistfully with a tuxedo in a shop window because he can no longer afford real luxury, only its shadow. Who knows something has shifted when a chit of a girl he had given a break to rushes past him to go up while he is coming down the stairs of a studio he once ruled. Who watches his own portrait being auctioned off. And who sits unnoticed in the audience to watch a talkie and is approached by a gushing woman who should have recognised him but is only drawn to his faithful dog. He says something to her and the  dialogue card says bitterly, “If only he could talk.” We also hear the unsaid, “Then he would have been more than a dog and I would have been more than just a footnote.”
The silence in the film could be a metaphor for that dark phase in any artist’s life when he is beginning to be phased out because what he has to say is unintelligible to his audience. He does not make sense any more in a world that speaks a different language . The sound of a conversation comes to life only when ideas are dusted and art reinvented. This may sound like a cop out to those who think that artists must not be puppets but what if art was meant to evolve, stretch its possibilities, to move from silence to conversation, from isolation to connection, from vanity to humility, from bitter survival to revival, from angst to joy?
An aside. I also wondered at the many striking similarities between ingenue Peppy Miller’s (Bérénice Bejo) character and Silk in The Dirty Picture. The dancing girl in the chorus line who reaches starring roles. Her fascination for an older star. Silk just like  George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), also puts her money and her reputation at stake for a film that sinks, leaving the dregs of a success story behind.
This film’s biggest success is however in creating a  cinematic world that no longer exists and that ironically is so palpable and eloquent, even though wordless that it connects and resonates with every one who cares to experience it. It is only when the film ends that you realise you haven’t missed colour or human voices because the visuals are like coded messages that when deciphered say everything that needs to be heard, even without the sub titles. “Lonely Star,” says a movie sign when Valentin, way past his prime, walks down a street alone. “Guardian Angel” says another when Peppy is trying to save Valentin from himself. And there is that scene, marvellously evocative when Peppy envelops herself in Valentin’s hanging coat, trying to imagine what would it be like to be embraced by him.
The bond between her and Valentin is a thing of understatement, of stolen glances, shy smiles, yawning distances and a brave reaching out just in the nick of time.The film in the end is about the value of connecting yourself to another..maybe an animal who loves you to death, maybe a stranger you feel drawn to, to that face in the mirror that won’t smile unless you do, to the best in yourself and those who reach out to you when even you won’t. In a heart breaking moment, Peppy watches Valentin’s last big film where in the climax, he disappears in the quick sands, his hand reaching out for something or someone to hold on to.
The performances are like harmonious piano keys, finding ebbs and moments of flow, quiet tenderness and hysteria. Jean has the face of a dream. Someone who just needs to frown to transform himself from a man attracted to an unknown girl on a set to a hamming superstar. And Berenice is just a brook of light. And the dog ofcourse who reminds us just how simple and heart warming our cinema used to be once.
On the surface, this film is a tribute to naive melodramas of  the silent era in Hollywood but it is a universal story of hope, of the struggles of those who cannot live unless they create something that expresses to the world, who they are, really and truly. Don’t miss it because deep down, all of us are artists looking to find our voice.