Republicans aren't the only people in a race right now. While Newt Gingrich and others look to the Florida primaries, the entertainment industry has its sights set on Feb. 26, when Billy Crystal hosts the 84th Academy Awards. Among the frontrunners for Best Picture and Best Director, a common theme has inexplicably emerged—celebrating the past. Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris revisits Paris' golden age; Martin Scorsese's Hugo celebrates classic French filmmaker George Méliès; The Muppets (an underdog) revitalizes, well, the Muppets; and Steven Spielberg's War Horse uses an iconic, old-fashioned style of cinematic narrative. It's as if the top filmmakers last year all decided to hop on the same nostalgia train. I'm not sure how the trend got started–even The Descendants and Young Adult are about looking back.

The one film, however, that best exemplifies this yearning for the past, this longing for an older style of film, is Michel Hazanavicius' silent black-and-white film, The Artist. Critics predict that the film may snatch Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Jean Dujardin and even Best Actress for Bérénice Bejo. For the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider a film without sound or color to be the best of 2011 is an insightful commentary on how critics and audiences feel about modern film.

George Valentin (Dujardin) would relate. He's a star of the late 1920s' silent era, a handsome and self-obsessed actor of a time when acting equated to exaggerated gestures and facial expressions—none of that silly talky stuff. As Valentin walks out to an adoring crowd after a film screening, a young female fan (Bejo) accidentally bumps into him. Having intruded upon the great Valentin, the crowd goes silent. Yet he laughs, and she charms both him and the cameras on the spot. "Who's that girl?" blares the tabloids. "The name's Miller! Peppy Miller!" she exclaims later (via intertitles, of course). Buffered by newfound publicity, she auditions for one of Valentin's films.

The first moments of their interaction contain a subtlety that was unseen in the actual silent era. If romance is about the lines in between and the dialogue left unsaid, it's no surprise that silent cinema produced few, if any, memorable romances. While Hazanavicius stays true to silent film, using classic-font intertitles and an energetic original score by Ludovic Bource—it'll be stiff competition for John Williams' War Horse score—he acknowledges that filmmakers have acquired new tricks in the past 80 years. Pans, wide-angle shots, montages and reflections in the mirror tease out Valentin and Miller's feelings for each other, indicating a budding romance. Though their love is implied, it is never achieved. Valentin is married and Miller is too young–most importantly, however, Miller represents the new face of sound cinema.

As "Talkies" become the hot new thing—Valentin remains too proud of his silent art to adapt, falling quickly into poverty and desperation. Miller is soon Hollywood's favorite gal. But instead of leaving Valentin in the dust, she tries to help him out of his golden age stupor. Too bad Midnight in Paris' nostalgic protagonist, Gil Pender, didn't travel back in time to buy him a drink. Miller's collaboration with Valentin, which artfully concludes the film, is triumphant in a way that's only possible in a silent back-and-white picture.

Without sound, the audience is drawn deeper into the actors' movements, even if they are exaggerated. After spending nearly the entire film's length pouting and frowning, Valentin's smile in the final scene redeems not only his character, but also his obsolete art form.

The Artist clearly had its share of obstacles to overcome. As a silent film made in 2011, it predictably deterred most mainstream audiences. But The Artist is as universally entertaining as they come. Its story is more similar to Friends with Benefits than it is to Tree of Life. And the film is very aware of the fact that it's silent, as is made clear when Valentin has a nightmare in which he can (gasp) suddenly hear the sounds of the world around him—it's all very clever and meta, believe me. Like him, we are glad to return to the muted world. That says something. It's been a long time since silent film had its day, but The Artist brings back the form's glamour with such audacity that it very well may be the best film of 2011.