Review of Our Hospitality (1923) by Ryan S — 19 Apr 2010

When I first saw Sherock Jr. two years ago, I had been making my way through cinema for quite some time. This wasn't a movie I grew up with, or had any personal affinity towards whatsoever outside of the way I felt about in a critical sense (heck, the first time I saw it I was all by myself watching it on Google video). That said, there is now no movie I feel more of a personal attachment to. Sherlock Jr. is my favorite film, and it is largely responsible for my feeling that Buster Keaton is the greatest filmmaker of all time.

The film is only 45 minutes long, and it feels even shorter. However, Keaton masters with this film, something that I don't think any filmmaker has even dared to approach on such a large scale since: simple complexity. Keaton's style has always been extraordinarily subtle for his era, but with Sherlock Jr., subtlety is an understatement. Laughter is produced with the mere movement of pool balls; the simple smiling gesture of a sidekick; the placement of furniture in a room; a side glance with Keaton's trademark stone face. In order to fulfill the film's lofty ambitions (nothing less than a full discussion on film and its relationship with the audience, as well as a pretty solid psychological evaluation of the young protagonist) each moment must work on a variety of levels on top of the humor. When the pool balls are moved, they must say something about the ideas of the movie, as well as the mind of the projectionist in whose dream they are moving. Every scene works like this for forty-five minutes. It is breathtaking and an achievement I feel safe in saying will never be approached again as long as there is film.

Some people favor Keaton's later, less stunt-driven works. I can't blame them. As any artist becomes more comfortable with themselves and moves into more ambitious (often less audience-friendly) material, the majority of the critical masses with support them. I don't disagree with this sentiment. My defense of Sherlock Jr. is that it manages to fit the bill for both Keaton's major works and his laugh-a-minute shorts. Its breakneck pacing and manic nature cleverly disguise it as nothing more than entertainment. However, as our protagonists dream world plays around with time and space for maximum laughter, it also manages to pull us through a rather revealing look at the way movies affect our daily lives (or the way our lives affect the kind of movies we want to imitate).

Keaton is an ideal protagonist for this film because, in everything he ever did, his humor is the most human. What I mean to say by that is, Harold Loyd's laughs, to me, seem the most generational. Charlie Chaplin produced his greatest laughs as part of a character. Keaton, and Keaton alone throughout cinema history, never really takes on too much of a persona. His stoneface personality mirrors us. He views the world in befuddlement, as we are viewing it from our seats. So when his protagonist looks to the movie screen to try to figure out how to woo the girl, he is making us laugh at our own insecurity. When his dream turns his curmudgeonly boss into his best friend, we aren't laughing because the character is someone who would do that, unless the character represents all of us (which he does). This, I think, is why Keaton's comedy has endured, even more favorably than Chaplin's. It serves itself best in Sherlock Jr., when the movie is about the people sitting in the seats watching it all take place.