Midnight in Paris: Drawn to Its Many Charms Like the Main Character Was Drawn to Paris of the 1920's

I loved this movie!  I am not, I repeat, not the biggest fan of Woody Allen, and I’ve seen quite a few of his movies.  Many of them just didn’t impress me, and I found them overbearing, pretentious, and too artsy, such as Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Hannah and Her Sisters.  Yet over the years, I have enjoyed a few; a small handful of his earlier films, like Take the Money and Run and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask, and a few of his later films, like Radio Days, Bullets Over Broadway, and Cassandra’s Dream.  There are even a few others I might like to see, such as Everyone Says I Love You, Match Point, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  This is still a pretty impressive body of work, so I understand Woody Allen is no slouch.  I like him much better as a director than as an actor.  His pretentious stream of consciousness gets tiresome, and often works better with other actors, such as John Cusak in Bullets Over Broadway.

     Then there’s Owen Wilson.  I’ve just never cared much for this guy.  I usually try to avoid his movies after seeing him in such films as The Haunting, Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights, Meet the Parents, Zoolander, Starsky & Hutch, and Wedding Crashers.  I just don’t care much for his slacker persona, even in a few better films like the Night at the Museum movies and Marley & Me.  However, I get it now.  This character in Midnight in Paris fits him to a “T”!

Tom Hiddlesten and Alison Pill as F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald: Hiddlesten looks much more dapper than as Thor's very villainous brother Loki in "Thor" and "The Avengers"

     I’m a bit of a romantic at heart.  I think a lot of people are, and Woody Allen tapped into that with this film.  Many of us idolize the past (I did just recently with the film Water for Elephants), even though it would not have been as romantic if we actually lived in those times, and Woody Allen captures this mood as well.  Gil is a Hollywood screenwriter struggling through his first novel.  He and his fiancé Inez (Rachel McAdams) are in Paris with her parents, and while she is enamored with a cultured, pseudo-intellectual jerk named Paul (Michael Sheen, another favorite actor), Gil makes any and every excuse to get away.  He finds himself walking the streets of Paris after midnight, and somehow crosses over into the past to the 1920’s, to a time when Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, T.S. Elliot, Henri Matisse, and many other notable artists had flocked to this magical, European capital!  

Owen Wilson, Corey Stoll, and Kathy Bates as Gil, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein

     He is amazed and totally captivated and enchanted to discuss their artistic ideas and to have them critique his writing.  Yet one of the women he meets there, Adriana (Picasso’s mistress) is bored.  She has a dalliance with Hemingway, and back in the future during the daytime, as Gil’s relationship with Inez severely sours, he finds Adriana’s diary, and can’t believe she wrote about him, and was in love with him!  One night, while he is with her in the 1920’s, a carriage appears and takes them both back another twenty years, to Paris’ Belle Epoque era that Adriana romanticizes about.  There they meet Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas, who themselves think that Paris’ best era was during the Renaissance.  It is at this point that Gil begins to understand the true nature of nostalgia, and begins to accept his place in the present.  However, with help from Gertrude Stein, who has critiqued his semi-autobiographical novel, he realizes Inez is having an affair with Paul.  He calls it off, and sets off for the streets of Paris in the rain, with Gabrielle, the girl who helped him find Adriana’s diary, and has a similar affinity to Paris of the 20’s.

Paris in the Rain: Almost as romantic as Paris After Midnight!

     I loved everything about this film:  The music, the writing, the performances, the cinematography, the sweet nostalgic quality, the magical time travel angle, the characterizations of famous artists and writers of the past, their dialogue and pontificating, and the way the past mixed with the future to change his character in the end.  In a word:  Brilliant! 

Images From:

http://teaser-trailer.com/movie/midnight-in-paris/

http://thecineasteslament.com/2012/01/18/the-importance-of-being-ernest-hemingway/

http://www.bartboehlert.com/2012/01/midnight-in-paris-and-murphys.html

http://unknowncritics.com/?p=851