Nostalgia is a powerful emotion that governs most of us. We spend our lives thinking about how great it was when we were younger or how much easier life had to have been in some bygone era without realizing that those who were around in that era were thinking the same thing about a time bygone to them. The truth is, we live in the present and that time will always be a bit unsatisfying to us because we experience it as it really is, not some romanticized version that only really exists in our minds.
I watch a lot of films from the 1930s and 40s and connect with that era in films more than I do with more modern cinema. I often feel like I would have gotten along better in that era. Yet, if I were being totally honest, I know better. Life in the 30s and 40s was awful for a lot of people. The Great Depression left people broke and homeless, World War II was building up and set to ravage the world, minorities had little to no rights, many diseases that we have either cured or found vaccines to were still killing or disabling people by the millions…I could go on but you get the picture.
When we look at what is going on in the modern world with political unrest, rampant hatred spewed over the internet on social media, widespread fraud, child abductions ending a time when kids could be free all day long in the summer instead of having to be tethered to a cell phone so their parents know where they are at all times, drugs and sex everywhere in the media and the real world, and so much more it is easy to see why we would be nostalgic for an earlier time. Suzanne Vega wrote in her song Last Year’s Troubles that “trouble is still trouble and evil still evil. Sometimes we wonder; is there more now, or less? If we had a tool or could tally the handfuls, measure for measure it’s the same would be my guess.”
None of us will have the opportunity to actually travel to that bygone era and actually experience the reality of it; we can only fantasize about it or experience it through our media, our entertainment. But we can imagine doing so and what that would be like. Woody Allen wrote and directed a feature film on this very subject, waxing poetic about the fruitlessness of nostalgia but also how we can use the lessons of the past to guide us in the present. We cannot help feeling that nostalgia, but it is important not to forget to live in the present, not in the past because every time in human history has its ups and downs, and there is always that feeling that some other, earlier, time was better.
Midnight in Paris opens in 2010 in the city of love, Paris, France. Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) are on vacation with her wealthy parents. Gil is a disillusioned screenwriter working on a debut novel about a man who works in a nostalgia shop and is finding the writing particularly difficult. He’s also drawn to the artistic history of Paris, especially the Lost Generation of the 1920s, and has ambitions to move there, which Inez casually dismisses. She also coincidentally runs into an old college friend, Paul (Michael Sheen)—whom Gil finds pedantic—and his wife Carol (Nina Arianda), and soon all their plans are disrupted as Inez wants to run off all the time to do things Paul recommends instead.
While going for a casual walk down the streets of Paris at night, Gil is picked up by a 1920s vehicle that delivers him to a party for Jean Cocteau, attended by other famous people from the 1920s, including Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill) and her husband F. Scott (Tom Hiddleston). Soon, he is led away to a café where he meets Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), who, upon hearing that Gil is a writer looking for someone to critique his novel, offers to introduce him to Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). Gil gets swept away in the 1920s, returning every night at midnight to continue meeting the people of the era, falling in love with a woman, Adriana (Marion Cotillard), and finding that he really doesn’t feel at home in his own time anymore, especially with Inez, whom he is quickly realizing he isn’t really compatible with.
Of course, we know instinctually that he cannot stay in the past forever, and there must be some lesson he is to learn from these time-traveling nights in Paris. At barely ninety minutes long, this film doesn’t dawdle too long in getting to the point, and it does so through the Adriana character, a fictional woman and mistress to Pablo Picasso. Adriana herself is nostalgic for an even earlier time, the Renaissance. In another case of movie magic, they travel to that time where she is offered a job designing ballet costumes and decides to stay in the past. Gil tries to convince her to return to the 1920s, but she finds that era dissatisfying and elects to stay behind. Gil realizes that you can be nostalgic for the past, but you live in the present.
Setting this film in Paris, the City of Lights or the City of Love, was a brilliant choice on the part of Woody Allen. It gets away from the New York City that classic Allen almost always set his films in and moves it to a much more romantic locale, one that the average person can only dream of visiting. There is a bit of magic in the idea of Paris that those who actually live there don’t necessarily have. Just like nostalgia, the grass always seems greener on the other side, and we look at places like Paris as dream locations when in actuality they are just another city whose residents live perfectly normal lives. Paris is just as much a character in this film as are all the famous personalities we meet during Gil’s forays into the past.
The casting of the celebrities of the 1920s is spot on, too, though there is a tendency to be just a little stereotypical and on-the-nose with some of the portrayals, specifically Hemingway and Zelda Fitzgerald. In both cases, the script narrows on what we all know from history about these figures and focuses specifically on that aspect rather than fleshing them out as characters. This shorthand is necessary for characters who have limited screentime but does prevent them from being better developed flesh-and-blood beings. Adriana gets more time and more development, but she is also the source of one of the few misfires in this plot. Her character, one of the few fictionalized characters Gil communes with in the past, publishes a memoir that Gil finds in the present day that proves he has been traveling to the past and sets in motion a beat where he tries to manipulate the situation in order to get her to sleep with him. This moment, though humorous, feels out of place in an otherwise well-written story.
The biggest weakness of the script, though, is how broadly Inez is written. This is a thankless role for Rachel McAdams, who is written so over-the-top that it becomes virtually impossible to picture how she and Gil got together in the first place, let alone progressed to the point of being engaged. Inez is the very definition of a Shrew and her parents are painted just as broadly and unsympathetically. This is not a fault of the actors but of a script that doesn’t trust her character to have nuance and depth. In fact, with the exception of Gil, himself, none of the principal characters in the modern day are well written. Woody Allen is better than that, but this is also not the first time he has fallen back on tropes for irredeemable characters. This is not where his heart is in this script, and it is obvious almost immediately.
The lesson being taught in this film is hammered into your brain, yet the character of Gil and his enthusiasm with those from the 1920s is infectious to the point that we don’t really care we are being moralized to. A cynical person will have no problems finding faults galore in this script and in the premise overall, but those willing to go on this journey and just accept the magic herein will find that this is a film that is beautiful, poignant, and utterly charming on almost all fronts. It also paints Paris as we would like to believe it really is, not how it actually is or was. Overall, this is a sweet and charming film that also happens to have strong themes of living in the past and not being content with life in the present.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum
Best Director: Woody Allen
Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen (won)
Best Art Direction: Anne Seibel and Hélène Dubreuil
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Release Date: May 20, 2011
Running Time: 94 minutes
Rated PG-13
Starring: Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, and Owen Wilson
Directed by: Woody Allen
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