The Artist

I think the film was so successful when it was released in 2011 because it's simpleness allowed for the audience to fill in the blanks, like what the characters would actually sound like and look like in color. The audience becomes more engaged when they can feel like an intellectual and naturally interpret the missing pieces of a story, and the film allows for this to happen. I feel that the choice to mimic a silent film made the movie better overall, because it seemed fitting for the time period and it helped the director play on this abstraction of sound. With color out of the picture, the lighting and the textures of the black and white had to be intriguing, and the film didn't disappoint.  I think the film won best picture despite sound being around for decades because the cinematography was intriguing and beautiful, and it was impressive for a silent film to get that kind of response, which deserved an award in itself.