Few directors can photograph a city with the lush elegance of Woody Allen, and his newest film, Midnight in Paris, offers the perfect venue for his trademark revelry. As he has done for Manhattan in countless films, Allen now pays cinematic tribute to the City of Light.
Gil (Owen Wilson) is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, who feels he let his chance to be a true artist pass him by. While vacationing in Paris with his prickly fiancé (Rachel McAdams), he yearns to stay in the city he glorifies in every way. The catch is that the Paris he truly longs to reside in is its “golden era” of the twenties, where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the like wrote, drank, and smoked up a storm. As luck would have it, on a somewhat tipsy stroll one night, a funny thing happens – Gil is magically transported to his ideal place in time.
Sweet Surrealism
Evoking the sweet surrealism of Allen’s 1985 gem, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Midnight contemplates the merits of fantasy over reality. In this outing, though, the fantasy is an idealized place in time – one that always exists prior to our own. The past would naturally be sweeter than our current, stale existence. Midnight explores this dilemma through Gil, as he realizes all that he’d wished for, only to find that this alternate reality might not be the road to happiness.
The irony, of course, is that Allen, himself, might be a perfect example of this dilemma. The clever charm of this film brings to mind his own golden age of filmmaking. There are moments in Midnight – the perceptively smart/funny dialogue, or the transfixing first conversation between Gil and the Parisian girl of his dreams (Marion Cotillard) – that are so essentially Woody, that one can’t help but hearken back to his greats, and both celebrate a return to form, and bemoan what’s currently lacking.
A New Concept
No matter how many “comebacks” Allen experiences (Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona), he’ll never quite capture the same feeling he once did, because his films so defined an era that is, well, in the past. With Midnight, though, Allen comes to the conclusion that while one can never go back in time, contentment might be found in the present. Such optimism is a new concept for the Woodman, and that’s reason enough for attention to be paid.
A few more reasons? The ensemble cast, including Wilson, McAdams, Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, and Adrien Brody is exceptional, highlighted by standouts Alison Pill (as Zelda Fitzgerald) and Corey Stoll (as Ernest Hemingway).
Grade: B+
Nicole Falcone - Nicole A. Falcone earned a B.A. in English, with an Emphasis on Writing. She has a background in writing, editing, and television. Her ...
Join the Conversation